LINE METERS - How accurate are they?

[Half-Pint]

If the line was under tension perhaps that would be so but winding it back with a 9oz sinker for tension I doubt it

[REEFMAN]

I dont think this affects anything... we measured the line, and then wound it in, and there was no difference ????
If stretch was a factor, the line meter would have read higher ?

Agreed. The line was attached to a 9oz sinker, which would have mimicked a cast retrieval.

[Sylvester]

I dont think this affects anything... we measured the line, and then wound it in, and there was no difference ????
If stretch was a factor, the line meter would have read higher ?

Exactly the problem with the system when throwing into water.


I don't have the access to the formulas to calculate distance on a curve but I can tell you this....
Last week I paced out a throw which I thought was around 175m, on the beach. It looked very far, On Saturday I threw the same tackle and thought my marker shot was well over 150.....no it wasn't. Surveying equipment operated by a qualified person tells me something else! 141m was my opening shot! I tell you when we all stood on the beach and the first throw went out it looked like 180m at least.....measurement....143m!!! It is crazy how far 150m is!


To all of you guys that think you throw over even 130m.....think again! I guarantee you that 95% of you don't!

[Half-Pint]

If you throw .50 line into the water with a 9oz sinker reel up the slack where does this mysterious stretch come from??? I understand when fighting a fish you are effectively tensioning up against a fixed point(the fish) forcing the line to stretch. When casting there is no fixed point   surely you dont mean that the weight of a 9oz is enough to create a significant amount of stretch in your line to affect the line meter?

[Homie]

Exactly the problem with the system when throwing into water.


I don't have the access to the formulas to calculate distance on a curve but I can tell you this....
Last week I paced out a throw which I thought was around 175m, on the beach. It looked very far, On Saturday I threw the same tackle and thought my marker shot was well over 150.....no it wasn't. Surveying equipment operated by a qualified person tells me something else! 141m was my opening shot! I tell you when we all stood on the beach and the first throw went out it looked like 180m at least.....measurement....143m!!! It is crazy how far 150m is!


To all of you guys that think you throw over even 130m.....think again! I guarantee you that 95% of you don't!

I dont think this affects anything... we measured the line, and then wound it in, and there was no difference ????
If stretch was a factor, the line meter would have read higher ?

[Sylvester]

If you throw .50 line into the water with a 9oz sinker reel up the slack where does this mysterious stretch come from??? I understand when fighting a fish you are effectively tensioning up against a fixed point(the fish) forcing the line to stretch. When casting there is no fixed point   surely you dont mean that the weight of a 9oz is enough to create a significant amount of stretch in your line to affect the line meter?

Stretch is my business, it is what we do here. I run an elastic factory in Cape Town. Stretch of any product operates on a pointed bell curve. The initial stretch of the product is very soft and easy, illustrated on the curve as a very flat initial gain in power required,  and as the stretch increases the pressure required to gain more stretch is increased drastically. This obviously varies from product to product but the shape of the curve remains constant. Any constant tension created in the product will create stretch.


Try this... ask your friend to grab the end of your leader and get him to walk 100m, you then stike as hard as possible over 100m and see if you can jerk his hand. Remember to "hit it" as hard as possible. You will be surprised how little he even feels on the end of the line, if anything at all. We have done this experiment a few times, it is an eye opener!

[Sylvester]

Unfortunately Homie, physics says you are wrong!

[Homie]

I hear you Craig.

What we do, is cast out, then attach metre, then reel in all slack, until sinker starts moving... THEN we zero the counter.

Whatever stretch there may have been is now obsolete ! we then reel in intil we have the same drop as we started casting !

If tyou can send us this lazer measurement goody, we'll test and prove that the way we measure is 100% on the money ?

[Homie]

Unfortunately Homie, physics says you are wrong!

How ???

 

Remember, we measured the line with a tape measure, then reeled it in with the 9 ounce attached, and we got the same measurement ????

[Kumz]

Stretch is my business, it is what we do here. I run an elastic factory in Cape Town. Stretch of any product operates on a pointed bell curve. The initial stretch of the product is very soft and easy, illustrated on the curve as a very flat initial gain in power required,  and as the stretch increases the pressure required to gain more stretch is increased drastically. This obviously varies from product to product but the shape of the curve remains constant. Any constant tension created in the product will create stretch.


Try this... ask your friend to grab the end of your leader and get him to walk 100m, you then stike as hard as possible over 100m and see if you can jerk his hand. Remember to "hit it" as hard as possible. You will be surprised how little he even feels on the end of the line, if anything at all. We have done this experiment a few times, it is an eye opener!

Thank you for that info Stretch Master ....  ...

[Half-Pint]

Once again your buddy holding the line creates a fixed point. If you lay a hundred meters of mono out with no slack and start winding it won't take 5 or 6 winds before the sinker moves. This would mean therefore that the monos resistance to stretching(what ever scientific term this is) is greater than the weight of the sinker. Even if there is some stretch how much do you reckon there is over 130m? I doubt its 10m

[Marthin]

i still wanna know how u cast for practise unless it's in water, without ur sinker going a foot into the ground?

[Sylvester]

How ???

 

Remember, we measured the line with a tape measure, then reeled it in with the 9 ounce attached, and we got the same measurement ????

There are two variables though that you have zero control over and one point which disqualifies your test completely.

• Temperature and humidity affects Nylon massively, in a controlled environment this can be measured
• whether you believe it or not you are applying stretch to your nylon when casting it and when retrieving it. How much you can never say but just because you do not know the answer does not mean you can disqualify its effects. Out of sight out of mind does not work here. Also the recovery characteristics of mono-filaments vary greatly. your test does not allow for any of this.

Your disqualification point is that you cannot measure 100m accurately with a 20 metre tape....there is a reason that we have to carry 3m tapes when fishing league. If you have a 1.5m tape and your bronzie is 1.8m pcl then guess what goes on your score card....yip 1.5m!


As much as you would like to believe your results are true and fair it is not possible to substantiate your claims.

[Sylvester]

Once again your buddy holding the line creates a fixed point. If you lay a hundred meters of mono out with no slack and start winding it won't take 5 or 6 winds before the sinker moves. This would mean therefore that the monos resistance to stretching(what ever scientific term this is) is greater than the weight of the sinker. Even if there is some stretch how much do you reckon there is over 130m? I doubt its 10m

Well 10% stretch is already 13m and a rigid polyester tape has between 10 and 15% stretch....so ja if you put in 20% you are already at 26m and 20% is not very much at all!




How do you know when there is no slack in the line? At which point does no slack become tension which by definition equals stetch?


Have you seen the Mythbusters episode where they try and lay out 400m of hot wheels track with the purpose of racing a full sized car against a hot wheels/matchbox car? They couldn't lay the track because the nylon it is made from is not stable enough over the distance to lay flat it kept expanding and contracting uncontrollably due to environmental influence. Now if a ,relatively speaking, heavy nylon object cannot remain stable long enough to run a 30 second test how are we supposed to believe that the thin piece of Nylon mono is stable enough to use as a measuring tool! Its ludicrous!

[Homie]

There are two variables though that you have zero control over and one point which disqualifies your test completely.

• Temperature and humidity affects Nylon massively, in a controlled environment this can be measured
• whether you believe it or not you are applying stretch to your nylon when casting it and when retrieving it. How much you can never say but just because you do not know the answer does not mean you can disqualify its effects. Out of sight out of mind does not work here. Also the recovery characteristics of mono-filaments vary greatly. your test does not allow for any of this.

Your disqualification point is that you cannot measure 100m accurately with a 20 metre tape....there is a reason that we have to carry 3m tapes when fishing league. If you have a 1.5m tape and your bronzie is 1.8m pcl then guess what goes on your score card....yip 1.5m!


As much as you would like to believe your results are true and fair it is not possible to substantiate your claims.

Interesting...

Makes a lot of sense.

Heres what i dont get though...

Lets say that that the nylon was stretched when we where reeling it in... if that was the case, then we should have gotten a much higher reading on the meters... say 10% stretch, the reading should nave been around 112 meters .

we measured the line, with no stretch, and it came in at 102.... we reeled in and it came in at 102
 

does this mean that the meters are under reading ???? coz it came in at 102, and not 112 ???

If this is the case, then Im more than happy, coz that means Im casting further than what the meter says
 

[Sylvester]

What I'm saying is that you can lead a horse to water but if he wants to use a line metre he must just know that his measurements will always be taken with a bit more than a pinch of salt!!

[Homie]

What I'm saying is that you can lead a horse to water but if he wants to use a line metre he must just know that his measurements will always be taken with a bit more than a pinch of salt!!

WHY ????? 

As i said, send us that range measuring goodie and we'll test

[Sylvester]

WHY ????? 

As i said, send us that range measuring goodie and we'll test

Because they are wrong....


Hire one at one of the few thousand tool hire places in Gauteng! I don't own one.

[REEFMAN]

What I'm saying is that you can lead a horse to water but if he wants to use a line metre he must just know that his measurements will always be taken with a bit more than a pinch of salt!!

Having read all that's been written here, I still can't agree with you Craig! A 20m tape measure measures 20m. A 3m tape measure measures 3m. Give or take a cm or 2 for operational/human error. Centimetres don't count in the grand scheme of things. The point here is that a line meter will give you a reasonably accurate measure of how far your line is out. We're not measuring cm, but rather metres, and even if there is a few meters discrepancy, it's still good enough to measure any improvements made in technique, which is the point of using it in the first place. To me, it's not really important whether you cast further than me or not, it's whether I'm improving that's the issue here.

From a competition perspective, when comparing 2 different anglers' casts for brownie points or for trials or whatever, yes, point taken, all things need to be equal, and a line meter's readings can't really be used. A proper Laser metering device would be 1st choice...

It's a fascinating subject...

[Sylvester]

Having read all that's been written here, I still can't agree with you Craig! A 20m tape measure measures 20m. A 3m tape measure measures 3m. Give or take a cm or 2 for operational/human error. Centimetres don't count in the grand scheme of things. The point here is that a line meter will give you a reasonably accurate measure of how far your line is out. We're not measuring cm, but rather metres, and even if there is a few meters discrepancy, it's still good enough to measure any improvements made in technique, which is the point of using it in the first place. To me, it's not really important whether you cast further than me or not, it's whether I'm improving that's the issue here.

From a competition perspective, when comparing 2 different anglers' casts for brownie points or for trials or whatever, yes, point taken, all things need to be equal, and a line meter's readings can't really be used. A proper Laser metering device would be 1st choice...

It's a fascinating subject...

Here I agree with you it is good enough for that!