Maybe you have a similar attitude like mine. I love to read rod tests but don´t really believe in them. It´s not that hard to find a lot of bias for example, the testers have to adapt less to rods having a similar action to their "everyday rods". Some rod and line combinations work much better, thus using only one line in a test situation may be beneficial to some rods only. There may be more the sublime bias of identifying an expensive rod and then have the preconception of it being superior to a more modest priced rod. (I saw this headline in the Scientific American Mind magazine "Paying for pleasure; Wine tastes better when we think it costs more money", but this isn´t news to us?)

For two persons testing a lot of rods; 23 of them all 5 weight 9´, on a windy, rainy day the order in which they were casted may be of importance as well.

But here is some findings from the Trout and Salmon May 2008 issue. Two testers , three categories: Performance, Value for money, Overall. Max points in each category: 10. Rods were divided in sub categories according to price, rods under £150, rods £150-£300, rods over £300.

Some findings. Even the "budget rods" generally performed well with only one or two of the nine in this group scoring low marks. The Airflo Delta Classics had a verdict (overall ) of 8.75 by both testers. Ron Thompson V8 Fly got an overall score of 8 resp. 8.5. A clear disappointment in this group was the Shimano Biocraft EV with an overall score of only 3.5 and 2.

In the mid priced group of nine rods the testers found some really good performers with an excellent price worthiness. Here we find the total winner of the test, Guideline LPXe; overall 9.5/9.5. Second in this group comes Marryat Tactical; overall 8.25/9 and the very close third place rod Greys G-Tec 8.5/8.5 BTW it´s a call in performance: 9/9 for both of them.
A noticeable bit behind: Loop Multi 7.5/7, Redington CPS 7/6.5, Scierra HM3 7/6.

In the top group, -when it comes to price at least but eventually often in performance, here are some results. The only rod scoring 10/10 for performance and the winner if price wasn´t an object: Sage ZXL. The overall figures are 9/9.5 , thus considering the price makes it only second best. But the comments by the testers speak for themselves. "A superb casting tool at all distances with a wonderful sense of lightness and power......A lovely rod which will not disappoint anyone willing to pay the price". (Mike Weaver).
"Dear me! Can a rod get better than this?...Richard Slocock.

There are five rods in this "expensive" group and if we disregard the overall scores and concentrate on performance I now give you the cumulative performance scores. As said Sage ZXL 20p , Orvis ZG Helios Mid Flex 6.5 18.5,
Hardy Marksman, CF Burkheimer Presentation, G Loomis Streamdance (says High Line Speed in the picture, a miss by the magazine not stating this) all got 18 combined points for performance.

As expected (?) top scores for the most expencive rods but according to these testers´opinion Guideline LPXe at £ 229.99 had 9.5 and 10 points for performence. Sage ZXL reaches the top by a 10/10 mark and a price of £ 570 in England.
Finally. I can get a Sage ZXL blank and build my rod. Blanks are not available for the Asian-made Guideline rod. This matters to me.

It is the same when you pick up a copy of "Golf Magazine" and read the evaluations of the season's newest golf clubs or read a copy of an automotive magazine's review and comparisons of the newest model sedans. There is no way to remove the bias that we all bring to the experience of "feel".

With cars, I finally found a writer with whom I found I agreed over time. We apparently have similar tastes so I trust what he writes when I'm looking for info. Fly rods are way too personal a choice.

I met a young guy who can throw 90+ feet of line and then pick it up as smoothly as can be, and then throw it again. His loop is as tight and text book perfect. He and I probably will not rate any group of fly rods with anything close to the same experience or criteria.

All that being the case, I eagerly read all of the articles comparing golf clubs, autos and fly fishing equipment when the magazines arrive each month!

The industry(s) count on it.

I believe these so called rod tests are a great way to determine which rods the tester prefers. They certainly do not affect my opinion of any rod, and as a rule I don't bother with them. Everyone has their opinions and preferences. For instance, how do you test high end 9' 5 wt. rods and not include Winstons.

Both the way a of expressing a result and the content of the writing affects my attitude towards a test. This is the complete comment made by the tester Richard Slocock about the Sage ZXL. "Dear me! Can a rod get better than this? Oh so light with a gorgeous action giving perfect loop control under any circumstances. Shame about the price but the justification is there for those with the wallet to cope." Of course I don´t deny him the right to express himself in the way he wants to. But I am free to perceive his message in may way, so here it is; I do understand he likes the rod but as a consumer he´s expression doesn´t give me much cues about how I would evaluate it. How fast is it compared to rods that I have casted? How deep does it bend? What´s the "feeling" and feedback to the caster when using it? Generally, I don´t appreciate tests where the market department of the "winning" concept can quote the testers verdict word by word....

Quite a different approach is given in a test in of the Orvis Helios 9´#5 Midflex 6.5 and Tipflex 9.5. This test appears in the March 2008 issue of the also British magazine FlyFishing and FlyTying. The testers are Magnus Angus and Stuart Letford. One of the two pages primary contains pictures of the rod wirth some parts highlighted. Ther´s also some facts about it together with opinions like "Build quality: Excellent....Warranty: Lifetime. Excellent product support."

The next page deals with the origin or heritage of the rod and the material developed for the blank. As the approach is far more technical than in the T&S test there is much weighing involved. How much does the upper three sections and especially the top section weigh? We are told that the lightest top section of the two versions weigh in at 3.5 gr and this is in fact 0.5 gr heavier than the lightest assessed, in per cent it´s a significant difference we are told.

The test contains the impressions of casting the two rods and some comparision between them. This may be the most interesting part to the average reader.

Naturally, common cent measurements are carried out and some interesting conclusion are made such as "Finding two rods from one maker. with different actions and the same stiffness is unusual." "In fact I prefer the Midflex rated as a # 6 which seemed to thrive on the small increase in weight - loads more quickly so short casting was just a little more precise, with the WF 6 in the air it loads more deeply for better distance."

Then follows some recommendations for the manufacturer, and the precise nature of these are rather uncommon. "To me, that suggests Orvis might reduce the overall stiffness of the Midflex, which would inevitably reduce its weight a smidgen, and they might find a more useful 5-weight - as it stands this is the lightest # 6 I´ve used, and the power to weight ratio is amazing.
Just to satisfy my rod-geek curiosity I´d love to try smaller rings on the tip of a Helios and perhaps try a less stiff tip section on the Tipflex - both of which would save shave fractions of a gram."

I think the T&S review suffers from some lack of stringency. The more technically oriented one of the Helios rod may be interesting to advanced readers who have some knowledge about rod design, but the average reader may not posses such knowledge?

Maybe it´s easier to evaluate tests than to carry them out? If I have to chose between the two approaches I chose the more deliberate one of the Helios rod (only).
But then I still miss someting in it!

I agree with a most of what has been said. My personal take? They are fun to read, but give little value to those of us who have been fishing for a while and realize that our casting skills/style will render the test results useless for the most part.

The comparison to golfing is a particularly apt one, considering that if any hobby has more differences in personal style/skills than casting, it has to be a golf swing. I've noticed that golf magazine tests have moved to having a group of testers from across the skill range. From 120 stroke duffers to 0 handicap guys. Then they take comments from all of them and gather their results that way. Either that, or they take the human element out of it and test with the "Iron Byron" robot that has the same swing every single time. However, while more accurate, those are a lot less fun to read. And I can't imagine an "Iron Kreh" or some such thing being of that much interest to fly fishers. But who knows, maybe it would be.

However, I think that rod (or golf club or snowboard or mtn bike) tests like these are very popular for "newbies" or people just trying to decide what the heck to buy when starting out in this hobby. I can't quote any statistics to prove it, but I'm guessing that the "test" magazine issues are vastly more popular on the newsstand with that group of readers then with more experienced people.

But like I said, I enjoy reading them myself. So who can say. We're all suckers looking for the next gadget to make our loops perfect I guess.

I agree.
I read'em all!

15 rods later, I just want to assure you that they have no affect on me at all.
PER

I read rod tests if there is nothing better to read. The big variable that seems to garner less attention than it should, to me, is the lines. I can hate some of my favorite rods with the right line, or is that wrong line?

I generally don't put too much stock in rod tests but I did get some good info from one that FlyFish America put out a few years ago.They rated a bunch of 5 wts divided among newbies,intermediate casters and advanced casters. A sidebar about the "surprise " of the test ,Cabela's Stowaway 5 pc ,found me buying a few of them for my sons and some friends.

I remember this test quite well because I translated it to Swedish on behalf of a fly fishing company. It was an unusually deliberate one, but I can´t say if the conclusions made (mainly presented in tabular form) were statistically significant.

A test like this takes a lot of resources to execute. And still it is up to probability; if most of the beginners liked the rod X , there may be likely that many in a big enough group of beginners will like it as well. But to the individual, there is a risk that he or she will have a divergent opinion.

Taking my David Norwich EV5 9.5´#7 rod as an example. I predicted that no beginner will ever like it, as it (in my opinion) is an extremely unforgiving rod. But out of a bunch of beginners, two persons did like it.

Still I believe it pays dividends to divide casters into groups according to their skills. It makes sense that your prefereces will change when you develop your ability.

I got to agree with Jake...it is too personal. I have cast the Axis and sure light and crisp, I then cast the ZXL, which is more to my liking, but in the long run, I went with a BIIx and a JWF.....why? For nothing else they are me!

"Statistically significant" hooha,doubled over laughing. Those two words are both foolish and irrelevant when comparing flyrods.Subjectivity cannot be quantified ,nor should it be.
Best,
Steve

Oh, forgot to add this to my previous post, ol' Magalloway is right on about flylines often making a considerable difference on the rod's ( or rod throwing person's)performance. I'm one of the few people that have not been happy with Rio Selective Trout ,though I've just thrown the WF type. I'm heading back to Cortland 444 (peach) or an SA line.
Best,
Steve

Glad you enjoyed this! But while I don´t want to grudge your happiness I´m sorry to claim it to be a product of a misconception.

A quote taken from Wikipedia:
"In statistics, a result is called statistically significant if it is unlikely to have occurred by chance. "A statistically significant difference" simply means there is statistical evidence that there is a difference; it does not mean the difference is necessarily large, important, or significant in the common meaning of the word."


Significance is for example that it´s less likely that the result telling us that many beginners liked a StCroix rod in the is actual test is due to a measurement fault. If the numbers of beginners is small enough the probability or chances that the sample;-the testers said to being beginners, is different (i.e. have preferences that diverge from the population which is "the whole body of beginners to fly fishing; -at least in the US") can be "significant" . If the groups preferences don´t "match" or correspond statistically ( to a degree greater than that given by how "certain" you want to be that they indeed differ), the result is said to be statistically insignificant. The connection can very well be a result of chance. Which in turns means we can´t do any conclusions with much confidence. There may be a correspondence between variables but that is not confirmed "good enough".

The volunteers to this test may also differ in aspects as age, income, education from "the common" group they are said to represent, thus there is more bias to expect especially as the testers probably havn´t been selected in a random way but selected in some other way.

Sorry, this is a bit difficult to explain even in my native Swedish language, regardless of how tired I am , and of course you have the right to deny that subjective phenomena can be measured. I just objected as I had to due to my subjective nature.

Subjectivity can be quantified for sure, but not without pitfalls. Of course the question "who will you vote for in the presidential election" can be falsely answered by the subjects. But this is due to a measurement problem (validity) and we have to live with some uncertainty, don´t we? Or put it in another way, subjective matters can´t be measured in a perfect way, but can anything be measured without some bias?


BTW. Subjectivity determines much in life, what food you find price worthy and worthwhile to eat for instance under current prices. And the consumers decisions mirror their preferences. In Sweden, gasoline prices are about double that of the price in the US, and Swedish drivers react subjectively different to the price than US drivers and different groups will subjectively react differently to price increments. Which can be measured if we have large enough aggregated groups and a good methodology But of course social codes determine some of the subjectivity, we usually don´t eat snakes or worms in our countries. Often people´s actual behavior is taken as a measure of their preferences and many times this is "good enough". There are some hazards you have better look for though.

In short; I don´t apologize! I even don´t ask anyone to understand my bewildered postings

Magnolia,
lighten up. my comments were said in jest.I do,however,understand statistics. It is a necessary part of my profession to be able to discriminate good research from bad and ,to my knowledge, there hasn't been any good research when it comes to fly rods.
Best,
Steve