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This past winter I tackled Ernest Schwiebert's biblical epic Trout. Near the end of volume 1 (800+ pages!) there are many tables illustrating the relationships of line weights and definitions. As early as his writing, (it was published in 1978), it was evident to the eminent Mr Schwiebert and his peers, that fly line definitions and rod weights' traditional criteria were becoming distorted. I am not a technical fly fisher in any traditional sense. I have fly fished for 48 years and am self taught (except for two great days with one of Jim McLennan's instructors in summer 2019 to help me finesse minor errors), and I do a couple of things which are unconventional and would make a purist weep. However, as old Dylan wrote all those years ago, you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows, and I do have a good feel for things. My professional life evolved to take advantage of my proprioceptive and kinaesthetic abilities which I implicitly trust. A dear friend, now passed, once gave some profound, gentle counsel to his daughter who was struggling with relationship issues. Dirk wrote to her, trust your organism. In context it was a very thoughtful bit of advice. This is all a roundabout way of getting to the idea that for better or worse, and this is not just true for fly fishing, but established criteria for a great many things in our present era have been mightily eroded. A prime personal example for me, that I have considered in depth and consulted expert writing on is the old idea that a rod must be balanced by it's reel mass. The old school idea was that with about 30 feet of fly line out the business end, the rod should balance in level equilibrium, at a point somewhere on the forward grip. (Purists please forgive my philistine ways). Anyway, on a long rod, the mass gets large very quickly and you need a darned heavy reel to achieve that balance. As rod materials got lighter, so did reels and the idea of basic weight (mass) became pre-eminent. So, trust your organism. Casting a modern hyper light alloy reel on a composite rod is waaay easier than any old balanced set up. If one fishes for a few hours, the difference in muscle effort is gigantic. Against all this intuitive information I have stored inside my brain I still have a pressing issue with a new/old rod I bought last spring. It is a 12'6" switch rod. I have not cast it yet because I cannot make my mind up and all the information, as Don has aptly and succintly demonstrated, is highly confusing. There is also the problem that a huge amount of stuff made in the USA is in short supply. My present plan is to wait a bit longer. I have some fishing arranged with a friend who had a huge number of reels fitted with a large array of rod-weight-suitable lines and I am going to experiment with a selection and let my organism decide.