I went to the local spring creek yesterday, to try the new rod. It’s been a pretty windy year around here and the 5wt rod was a good choice. I usually fish 7’ 6” 4wt or 7’ 3wt Lamis on this stream, but the 8-footer performed admirably. It felt comfortable and fairly precise in close. The casting stroke needs to be relaxed and the smooth loop would follow-I used a WF5. What surprised me the most was the power this rod has in comparison with his shorter ‘brothers.’ Just for the fun, I shot some longer casts in the shallows, into the archways of the slab bridge. With the haul, the rod was able to produce pointy loops into the wind. I closely observed the loop shapes… The rod is capable of producing nice loops without little wave-like formations in the bottom leg of the loop. They are fairly common on most fiberglass rods, since the tip-wobble is so typical for glass. This would be a nice rod to fish in lower sections of some trout streams around here, where you can expect a mixed bag of trout and smallmouth bass.
I managed to hook six browns, and landed five of them. There was no hatch going on and the fish would not take beetles nor ants, but went for soft hackles fished on the greased line and CDC Loopwing Caddis Emergers. Below is a picture of the first brownie caught on the rod. The rod handled 6X and 7X tippets with absolutely no problem. The little extra length proved really handy in turning trout when they would rush into the thick weeds. I can't wait to try it with grasshoper imitations in the upcoming months.
