Five types of rods

Not all rods suit every caster. This is why we have everything from slow bamboo and glass to ultra fast graphite. Progressive tapers, mid flex, tip flex, the list of differences goes on. The variety of rods and casting styles is exactly why I hate hearing someone ask "which 5wt rod should I get?" and even worse is when people reply with a specific rod. What a complete waste of time. The rods I love to cast and fish are not necessarily the same ones someone else will. Plain and simple.

If you're looking for a new rod the best thing you can do is go down to your local fly shop, tell them your price range, and cast all the rods in that range. If the fly shop won't let you try a rod in the parking lot then it's time to look for a different fly shop. So what does this have to do with the five rods in the title? I've found that when I try rods out in the parking lot they fall into five categories.

The first category is the simplest. It's a rod that you just plain hate. You hate casting it at long distances, at short distances, into the wind, with the wind, you name it. This is probably a rod that just does not suit your casting style, which isn't to say it's necessarily a terrible rod as someone else may love it. It just isn't the rod for you. Glass rods like the Butterstick and Blue Halo fall into this category for me. They aren't bad rods, just not my style.

The second category is a bit more difficult. These are the "meh" rods. They cast ok but they don't thrill you at all. To me these are the Toyota Camry or Honda Accord of fly rods. You can buy this rod and fish it but you'll always wonder if you should've held out for something you liked more. I've experienced this with the BVK, NRX, and Helios 2. They cast ok but to me they were lacking something that I can't place my finger on.

So next we have a dangerous category. This is the rod that casts great in the parking lot but once you get it out on the water you come to hate it. For me this is caused by casting for distance in the parking lot. We've all done it - get out there and start double hauling to see how much line we can throw. That might be fine if you're buying a rod for flats fishing but not so much for trout rods. This happened to me with the 9' 5wt Sage Method. In the parking lot I was casting it a mile and it felt like it would cut through any wind. The only problem is that as an all around trout rod it was too stiff for casting shorter distances and didn't protect light tippet well at all when fishing dry flies. After this experience I always make sure to try casting rods I'm testing at shorter distances that I'm more likely to use when fishing for trout. These are the rods you often see posted for sale as "lightly used" or "only fished a couple of times".

The fourth category is a little more difficult. This is the rod that you don't like or maybe outright hate the first time you cast it but grow to love it. For me this was the Sage Circa. I'm pretty sure the first time I cast it that it had a heavier line on it and since it's a slower rod to begin with it just felt like garbage. The next time I tried this rod I brought my own line - a Rio Trout LT - with me because I was looking for a small stream dry fly rod. With the lighter weight line the Circa was suddenly a hell of a lot better than the first time I tried it. So if you can, bring your own line with you when testing a rod. Most fly shops seem to have either Rio Golds or SA GPXs as their demo lines so if you don't particularly like those lines then you're probably going to have a bad time. And also test the rods more than once preferably on different days.

The final rod is the holy grail. This is the rod that you love from the first time you pick it up and continue to love through every fishing situation. It's magical unicorns puking rainbows. This rod becomes the first one you reach for. You start questioning why you even own any other rods (but you'll never sell all the others because that would be crazy). If you find this rod it means that you've found the rod that suits your casting style almost perfectly. It lands your fly where you want it and you don't even have to look at the line while casting because you know it's going to go where you want. If you find this rod you need to hang on to it and not let it go for the next latest and greatest rod X (see what I did there?). This is the reason you find some people still fishing an RPL or old Fenwick glass rod (other than hipsters). I only recently found this rod after 20 years of looking.

So there you go. This is why you shouldn't bother asking people online which rod to buy unless you're just looking for a few recommendations on what to try, and you shouldn't just blindly reply to people who ask to go out and buy a TFO (or Sage or Loomis or Hardy or whatever). If you're a beginner, all of this is incredibly difficult to navigate. That's ok though because you may not have developed a casting style yet. Stick to a lower priced rod until you get a better feel for casting and when you're ready to buy another rod you'll have a better feel for them. Don't be afraid to fish a meh rod at first then later on you can figure the rest out.

Quadrophenia Rod

Maybe it's just my age, but every time I see the word Mod I instantly think of Quadrophenia. Luckily you don't have to ride a tricked out Vespa to own this rod or I'd be in some trouble. Sage bills this rod as a MODerate action (see what they did there?) that fits in between the slow Circa and fast One. Being an owner of each of those I'd have to agree, but just because you like the Circa or the One doesn't mean you won't like the Mod. I like the Circa for smaller cutthroat streams where you don't have to bomb casts out and generally use it to cast a single dry fly. The One is my go to rod for larger water where wind may be an issue and I'm more likely to cast larger and heavier rigs like a weighted streamer or multiple nymphs under an indicator.

So where does the Mod come in? I've used it on cutthroat streams when it got windy enough that the Circa couldn't handle it and on larger water when I'm just casting one or two lighter flies. It'll cast a weighted streamer, but that definitely isn't its strong suit and you may find yourself working harder.

Unfortunately I think a lot of people aren't going to like this rod when they try it out in the fly shop parking lot. Why would that be? Well, like the Circa this rod works best with a true to weight (AFTMA standard) line. I've found that the demo lines most fly shops have are overweighted like a Rio Grand because of all the faster action rods out there. Luckily I already have some 5wt lines spooled up so I tried those with the Mod before I bought it. The lines I tried were the Airflo River and Stream, Rio Trout LT DT, Rio Trout LT WF, Rio Gold, SA VPT, and just for the hell of it an Airflo Xceed which is an overweighted line. As expected the Xceed was terrible on this rod. It isn't a bad line and I love it on my One, but the Mod is slow enough that it doesn't do well with the extra line weight. The Gold was also terrible but I don't care much for this line in general, so that might have had something to do with it. The other lines did well on this rod, but the Trout LT DT ended up being my favourite. Not exactly sure why, but the DT version even seemed to be better on it than the WF version. If I had to rank them I'd say the Trout LT DT was best, followed very closely by the River and Stream, then the Trout LT WF. The VPT is an alright line but I found it works best for single hand spey casting and isn't great as an overhead casting line probably because of the long head.

So one more thing about this rod - the blank colour. I think you're either going to love it or hate it. I'm sure the traditional purists will hate it, but then again they're probably out there waving around cane or glass rods instead of looking at graphite rods. Personally I like the colour since it really pops in pictures.

Lamson Litespeed

A few months back I was looking for a reel to put on my new to me Circa 589. I wanted something lightweight, large arbour, and with a decent drag. After looking around at a few options I checked out the Lamson Litespeed IV. It got a lot of good reviews and from what I read the hard alox coating is capable of taking a beating which is good since I'm pretty hard on my gear - I did break a rod and dent a reel while scaling down some rocks to get to the river this past summer.

After fishing it for a while, I picked up a spare spool so I could use the reel on another rod as well. The drag is incredibly smooth and has little startup inertia. I've had no problems fishing 5X tippet with dry flies and having a fish take a screaming run. The drag wasn't cranked down, but it wasn't so light that it caused any overspooling.

The thing I love the most about this reel is how fast it picks up line. I'm not one of those people who fights every fish on the reel, but if I feel that I need to I can pick up slack line incredibly fast. It's also helpful if you move around a lot from one run or pool to another. I've since replaced the reel on my 3wt with a Litespeed and picked one up for my 13'6" spey rod. I've caught a lot of fish on these reels now and have tons of confidence in their ability. Can't wait to test the Litespeed 4 on some steelhead next...

Sage Circa Update

So I've been fishing the Circa 379 for a little while now. I'm still loving this rod, so much that I bought a used 5wt as well. The thing that blows me away the most about these rods are how well they protect light tippet. I've hooked some big cutties (up to around 19") on these rods using 5X tippet and had the rod bent in a horseshoe without breaking off. Actually now that I think about it, I don't think I've broken off a single fish with either of these rods. I've had a few shake the fly but no break offs that I can recall.

The 3wt still seems to be money with the Airflo River & Stream on it. Loads nicely at short distances but is also capable of casting further. The 5wt I've played around with a few different lines just for fun. The first line I put on it was the Rio Gold. I've never been a big fan of this line and I'm still not. Second was the SA VPT line. It's a terrible overhead casting line for small streams because the head is so long on it. But! This line has a great taper for single-handed spey casting. I was able to cast a Fat Albert ridiculous distances on the Elk river around Fernie with the Circa and VPT. It's a fun line for spey casts so I think I'll hang onto it even if it doesn't see a ton of use. At the very least it'll be a good line to take on a windy day. So that leaves it down to two similar lines - the Rio Trout LT in a WF and a DT. The WF is nice, but the DT really sings on this rod. The DT is the line I've been using on it the past few weeks and I've really enjoyed it. Hopefully I can put it to more use before the weather gets too cold and the snow starts to fly.

Quick 3wt comparison

This summer I've started fishing the mountain streams a lot more. In the past I didn't really bother with them as much because the Bow is so close and is such an amazing fishery. I think this year with the low flows, high water temps, and lack of dry fly fishing on the Bow I started looking to the cutty streams to get my dry fly fix. The one problem I had on the smaller streams was that all my rods are medium-fast to very fast action, so they don't load very well at some of the shorter distances you're going to be casting. Any excuse to buy another rod really. I decided on a 3wt because I figured it would be light enough to make smaller fish fun to catch but still be able to handle the bigger cutties and throw a hopper in the wind.

I went down to the fly shop and looked around at the 3wt rods they had in the 7'6" to 8'6" range to test. The three rods I ended up casting were the G. Loomis NRX LP 8'8" 3wt, Sage Accel 7'6" 3wt, and Sage Circa 7'9" 3wt. (I realize there are lots of other 3wt rods that probably fit my criteria, but either the fly shop didn't have them in stock or they were not carbon rods.) I have to admit that I already had a bias going into this. A few people I know raved about the NRX LP rods, and I own a Sage Accel that I really like. At the same time I had cast a Circa once before when it first came out and didn't care much for the slow action. I fully expected that I would be walking away with the NRX or Accel but boy was I wrong.

Rather than bore anyone with a long description of how I tested the three rods I'll just sum it up. The Accel was nice when casting 20 feet or farther. At short distances the med-fast action just didn't load well at all. It's a nice rod, just not suited to the water I'd be fishing with it. Next up, the NRX LP was much better than the Accel at short distances but once you got to 20 feet or more I felt it didn't cast as well and lost a lot of accuracy. Maybe this was just because of my shitty casting and the wind that was blowing, but that was my experience with it.

So the Circa. Like I said, I cast one before (can't even remember which length/weight it was) and didn't care for it. I think when I did try it before I was probably trying to cast it like a fast action rod or maybe it was just poorly lined. When I tested it at shorter distances it loaded up no problem but was still able to cast up to 50 feet easily. If you try double hauling hard or muscling this rod it will end up being a mess, but with a smooth casting stroke it'll lay line down in a straight line every time. It feels a little strange going from something like a One or Accel to the Circa, but once you adjust your cast it's a sweetheart of a rod. I used it on the Livingstone last Sunday and had a blast. I don't think I've ever had a rod place my dry flies on the water as gently before. I caught cutties between 6" and around 12-14" and had fun, which is all that really matters. I currently have it lined with an Airflo Super-Dri River and Stream, which seems to be a great delicate presentation combo, but I'm still able to toss something foamy like a Fat Albert.

Rio Single Handed Spey line

I ran into Simon Gawesworth (yeah I'm name dropping already) today while he was giving a spey casting course on the Bow. He had a Sage One 590 lined with the new Rio Single Handed Spey line with him and he was kind enough to let me try it out. Ok, really he's a nice enough guy that he'd let anyone walking by give it a try if they asked. Seriously, one of the nicest guys you'll ever meet.

Right, so back to the line. I played around with it for a little while doing some double speys, snap Ts, and Perry pokes. All these casts were incredibly easy to perform with the taper on this line. Even a "turbo spey" - adding a haul to the cast - was so easy because the line loads the rod well making the timing pretty easy to nail. Even overhead casts work with this line making some pretty tight loops.

I think this line will work well for hopper-dropper and streamers. It should do ok for some dry fly fishing, but I don't think you're going to want to use it for tricos and little BWOs. From what I experienced it isn't the most delicate presentation line compared to something like the Trout LT or River & Stream. I'll have to see how it works for indicator nymphing, but right now there's no line out there that'll beat the Xtreme Indicator for that in my opinion.

If you already use a lot of single hand spey casts you're going to like this line. If you already know how to do spey casts on a switch or spey rod, this line will make it easier for you to transfer those casts to a single handed rod. If you don't know how to spey cast at all, you might want to pass this one by. It roll casts nicely, but so do other lines out there that are more versatile. I have one on order for my 5wt rod so I'll see how it really fishes when I get it.

Why?

So what's the point of this blog? 

Lately I've noticed there aren't a lot of unbiased gear reviews, especially for fly fishing gear. Sure, there are reviews by online shops and magazines but they're looking to sell stuff or for advertising dollars so they never truly give a negative review (unless it's a brand they don't carry or who doesn't advertise with them of course). Last week I was looking for a 3wt rod to use on some of the smaller mountain streams around here. Now granted you need to cast a rod to know for sure if it's right for you, but where to start? I'd love to have unlimited time to visit every fly shop in the area and test every 3wt rod they have on the rack, but that just isn't going to happen. Asking the staff at your local fly shop can be hit and miss too. At one shop the guy working there started going on about how this one 3wt rod was great because he could cast the whole line with it. I think he's missing the point of a short 3wt rod for cutties in small mountain streams...

So I'll post up some reviews for fishing gear I've actually used, camping gear, and maybe some cameras and lenses as well. I might throw in some trip reports, rants, and ramblings too. Maybe later today I'll start out with a post about the 3wt rods I tested.