often misleads fisherman. Often it is believed that a hard, stiff rod puts more control and power on the fish to fight, while it is actually the fish who is putting the power on the fisherman. In commercial fishing practice, large fish are often pulled in on the line itself without much effort, which is possible because the absence of the leverage effect. A rod can bend in different curves. Traditionally the bending curve is mainly determined by its tapering. In simplified terms, a fast taper will bend a lot more in the tip area and not much in the butt part, and a slow taper will tend to bend too much at the butt and delivers a weak rod. A progressive tapering which loads smooth from top to butt, adding in power the deeper the rod is bent. In practice, the tapers of quality rods often are curved or in steps to achieve the right action and bending curve for the type of fishing a rod is built. In today's practice, different fibres with different properties can be used in a single rod. In this practice, there is no straight relationship anymore between the actual tapering and the bending curve. The bending curve isn't easily described by terms. However, some rod & blank manufacturers try to simplify things towards their customers by describing the bending curve by associating them with their action. The term fast action is used for rods where only the tip is bending, and slow action for rods bending from tip to butt. In practice, this is misleading, as top-quality rods are very often fast-action rods, bending from tip to butt. While the so-called 'fast-action' rods are stiff rods (with absence of any action) which end in a soft or slow tip section. The construction of a progressive bending, fast action rod is more difficult and more expensive to achieve. Common terms to describe the bending curve or properties which influence the bending curve are: progressive taper/loading/curve/bending/..., fast taper, heavy progressive (notes a bending curve close to progressive, tending to become fast-tapered), tip action (also referred to as 'umbrella'-action), broom-action (which refers to the previously mentioned stiff 'fast action'-rods with soft tip). A parabolic action is often used to note a progressive bending curve, in fact this term comes from a series of splitcane fly rods built by Pezon & Michel in France since the late