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september 07, 2020 4 min read
Article by David Southall
For many years I was a lover of short light-line rods for virtually all of my fly fishing. In the late 1960s I even used a 7’ 4/5 weight rod built from a Hardy’s Fibatube glass fiber blank for pike fly fishing on a local canal where most pike were under 7lb, whilst in the late 1990s I still used the same rod when fishing for small still water rainbows. However, over the last 20 years I have found myself fishing more & more with long rods (conventional ‘western rods’ of 10’ to 12’ & Tenkara rods of 11’ to 14’ 6”). I sometimes still fish with very short rods, including a couple of cane rods, one a 5’ single piece 3 weight & the other a 6’ 2 piece 3 weight.
So why have I changed & what are the pros & cons of short & long rods?
Short rod advantages:
Long rod advantages:
When I first started fly fishing in the mid 1960s there was no such thing as a fast actioned fly rod & fiberglass was just starting to take over from bamboo as a rod making material. From the mid 1970s till 1998 I had a break from fishing, having become enthralled by rock climbing, ice climbing, mountaineering & then mountain-biking. On my return to fly fishing I discovered that the big trend was for stiff, fast action carbon fiber rods. I never fully took to them, although the rods that I bought were certainly faster actioned than my old cane rod & fiberglass rods. In recent years I have tended to move back to softer, more progressive actioned rods for my fly fishing. So what do I see as being the advantages of each type of rod?
Advantages of stiff fly rods:
Advantages of soft rods:
Rod-choice is a very personal thing, however in my opinion a good rod should be capable of efficiently casting accurately & effortlessly at both short & when necessary long range. It should be capable of protecting the chosen tippet strength from the power surges of a big fish, yet should not seriously overpower the typical size of fish that I catch. It should be as long as possible for the conditions in which I am fishing & it should be a subdued colour with a matt finish to avoid scaring the fish during casting. The new Sunray Microlite rods fit all of these requirements.
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