and was overhead in style) Grant suggested for a rod to cast that length in a practical fishing situation, should have a lifting power of twenty yards or more on grass. Mr Marston then said “Do you mean to say you can lift and throw 70 yards of line? Grant replied “ I mean to say that, if I can cast practically 49 yards 1ft, I shall certainly lift and throw 20 yards more”. The following morning the challenge was set. After a brief warm-up, the line was laid out on the grass and lifted into the backcast. Without shooting any line on the forward delivery, when the end of the line touched the grass again, it was 74 yards away from where Grant stood. He asked if an official would walk to the end of the line to find how taut it was. The official duly obliged and on pulling the line, found there to be only six inches of slack line!
John Enright witnessed this amazing spectacle and Grant’s subsequent demonstrations over the three days. The next time they met was three years later at a casting tournament in London. On asking Enright why he was not competing in the event, he informed Grant that he had not cast competitively since witnessing his demonstrations at Kingston-on-Thames. He further asked if he could come to Scotland to learn more about Grant’s methods and also if he could be an agent for selling the ‘Vibration’ rods. Unfortunately Enright was never able to make the journey north to Inverness as very soon after their meeting, the big powerful Irishman succumbed to a fatal illness and died shortly there after.
In the early 1900s, Grant sold the patent rights to the ‘Vibration’ rods to Charles Playfair of Playfairs of Aberdeen for an undisclosed amount, with a royalty payment for each rod made. During the crafting process, Playfairs did not utilize the acoustic principles with each individual rod as Grant did. With the characteristics of greenheart being fairly consistent, the company’s rod makers simply copied with great accuracy from a master version of each size of rod. During the first half of the last century, Vibration rods became the must-have salmon rod, and sales continued to grow steadily until the advent of man-made fibres for fishing rod construction in the early sixties.
make as rod technology advanced and rods became lighter and cheaper.