Hi Brandon, Sorry was off the airwaves for a few days! Well put!
Hi Daniel! As said I think you are looking at things in quite a difficult way to be honest I got a bit lost! There is never any right or wrong and this forum is here to help everyone and one of the great pleasures of being in this community to get great advise and help along with reading people views and feedback. I think it is great you trying to figure things out from a human/scientific prospective but with fishing this rarely works out. If this was the case then we would have the perfect rod, perfect lure, perfect reel etc. But with fishing a lot has to do with personal taste, styles, physical attributes, experience etc. So nothing is perfect and as you build experience you build your own style.
Basically a shorter rod does not mean a stronger rod as a manufacturer will make a wide range of rods with various materials and strengths and you choose what suits your needs and requirement from flyfishing to popping to trolling etc. For me I was answering your query about a rod for Maldives that was possibly going to be a Carpenter. So those were my suggestions and still pretty much I would suggest the same.
The whole fighting to rod to angler questions with strain on the angler really boils down to the manufacturer of the rods and how parabolic the rod is and what materials along with what reel and braid. I can fight fish on the EP85/36 all day but if I fish with my Wild Violence 80XH which is a shorter rod and catch one big fish I'm most probably done and will use another rod as the rod maxs out and hurts like 25 kidney punches but it does the right job in right conditions ie shallow water big fish and current. But for Maldives this is not the right rod and from my suggestion would be find a rod 8ft+ that is parabolic and casts a mile with PE6. No matter how close you get to the reef you need more distance in Maldives as it is about covering as much water as possible. Plus the rod must be able to handle a decent sized fish like a Carpenter, Ripple, Smith etc. To put another spanner in the works your lures are also very important in Maldives, you want something that is short and solid and casts very well rather than something that is light and will catch the air and tumble.
Hope this helps a bit with your train of thought and can possibly answer a few of your queries, but I think rather go with your gut feel than a scientific formula.
Cheers,
Nick
