Colt Rods offer a revolution in fishing rod design and technology. For the past few years, our research and development team has determined shortfalls in traditional tubular rod design and addressed them with innovative technological advancements. To understand how Colt has overcome these shortcomings, let’s take a look at the primary differences between Colt fishing rods and tubular fishing rods.
The Colt Advantage
Colt Rods employ a hexagonal I-Beam construction technique, which allows us to use 100% uni-directional carbon fiber for enormous benefit. This same technology also allows us to create an engineered spine for improved guide placement and casting accuracy.
Carbon Fiber Use in Modern Fishing Rods Misses Potential
To begin, tubular fishing rods are made by wrapping a piece of composite material around a metal mandrel. This composite material is primarily composed of carbon fiber. Carbon fiber is the strength and backbone of most modern rods. Carbon fiber is strong when bent or stretched, but breaks when compressed or sheared. The strength of carbon fiber is referred to as modulus. The modulus of carbon fiber is always measured when carbon fiber is perfectly straight (zero degrees of angle on a plane).
However, when you wrap a sheet of carbon fiber around the metal mandrel, it creates a spiraling effect or “bias” as it’s known in the industry. Changing the angle of carbon fiber (bias) to be something other than straight begins to seriously affect the performance characteristics of the fiber. By changing the angle of the fibers, you’re downgrading the potential performance of the fiber lowering its effective modulus (strength). Further, the wrapping process creates a sporadic spine, with the outcome being a rod that is difficult to properly mount guides on and a rod that does not efficiently transmit sensations from the tip of the rod to the angler. Therefore, tubular rods inherently fail to maximize their use of carbon fiber, and, in many ways, decrease the potential performance of the rod.
Solution: Uni-Directional Carbon Fiber
Uni-directional fiber overcomes these issues. Colt Hextreme technology is the only fishing rod design in the world to incorporate true “uni-directional” fiber alignment through its hexagonal shape and I-Beam construction. We don’t have to wrap any carbon fiber — our carbon fiber lies perfectly straight for the length of the rod (think steel construction beams lying horizontally) so the carbon fiber we use achieves its maximum potential. The benefits of constructing rods in this manner are impressive.
The Colt Advantage: Explained
• Sensitivity is dramatically increased as sensations are not transmitted in a spiraling manner down the rod, instead they are transmitted quickly and accurately down a straight line.
• The ability to use multiple types of higher compression vs. lower compression composites in a rod in order to create an engineered spine which in turn results in very high casting accuracy.
• The hexagonal I-Beam configuration allows the rods to have dramatically more lifting power and strength than that of a tubular rod.
Because our fiber runs in one direction and we’re maximizing its fullest potential, we can use a lower modulus carbon fiber to achieve high performance characteristics and effective modulus. Remember, the higher the modulus, the stiffer the carbon fiber is — so using a lower modulus carbon fiber to its maximum strength allows our rods to perform with more responsiveness than a rod that has to use stiff, high modulus carbon fiber. Furthermore, we’re able to mix in greater amounts of other composite materials to achieve incredible control over the performance of our rods. In fact, just one Colt Rod design can have as many as 49 different material configurations in it by using materials other than just carbon.
Typically, our rods are comprised of 80% carbon fiber and other composite materials, with the other 20% being a lower compression composite such as glass. That lower compression segment enables the rod to flex in the exact same manner every time. This is what we mean by engineered spine. I-Beams can be 50% carbon fiber, 50% glass or really any sort of combination that achieves our desired result. We can make them with a higher composite, higher compression carbon fiber on one side with a lower compression composite on the other side — it all depends on the application of the rod.
The engineered spine is critical. It enables us to use the leverage of uni-directional fiber for extremely accurate casting. Because a tubular rod doesn’t have consistent fiber volume throughout, the recovery of the rod on the forecast is erroneous. We have solved this and the difference it makes out on the water is incredible.
Lightness vs Balance
In the quest to make the ‘lightest’ rod on the market, many fishing rods have gone so thin with their carbon fiber walls that there are often serious breakage problems. Lighter does not necessarily mean better when it comes to fishing rods — it just means the rod is lighter. And, chances are, more prone to breaking. Some tubular rods break when nicked by a lure on a cast!
What affects the performance of a fishing rod more than weight is balance. We pay careful attention to make our rods perfectly balanced. We have found the exact location of the position of the reel seat on the rod to know specifically where that seat must be situated in order to properly offset the balance of the rod. To go further, some of our rods will have an adjustable weight balance on the butt section. They will have a dial that will allow you to add or take off weight to the butt section to balance your rod even further and perfectly for you. Lighter is not better, balance is better.
We’re very proud of our technology here and invite you to ask questions and go through our technology presentation if you haven’t already.
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