For me there is a small but significant shift in gearing between 6 and 7 weight rods. With 6 and below you will be frequently making very short line fishing casts and possibly all the time. Whereas with a 7 you are more likely to be fishing mid to long distance. There are exceptions of course and both rods need to cope well in all scenarios. But if most of your 7WT time is taking shots at bonefish, redfish and banging out streamers then that is a slightly different profile to versatile close to mid range dry fly/nymph fishing.
The HT6 came about because of my twenty seasons fishing in New Zealand. I’ve spend most of my life fishing with a 6WT line, not just there but it also used to be a go to line weight for Stillwater trout. So that was all very straightforward.
The 7 on the other hand has to be a little bit more powerful for me. It still has to bend into the handle, of course, but the gearing is slightly different. That difference for me is 7 WT and above vs 6 WT and below.
It’s of no surprise that Rickard can use the HT7 for 5WT distance competition as a backup replacement for the HT10. And with MED7 I expect to cast into the mid 140s under competition.
But really, where this rod excels I believe, is with shots. I ran with it for Snakehead for about a year, fishing the 7 instead of the 8. Just to see if I could blow it up! Its final testing, as I wrote earlier, was to put it through the MCI test.
For most of my SW fishing nowadays I’d fish the 7. I suspect when we become pirates then this is the rod that will get the most use.
Cerecoil Strippers on the US builds. We spent a lot of time talking to REC before making this decision. I do have them fitted to a 9WT prototype with me in Malaysia and have found them to be very hardy.
As always you can email me on paul@sexyloops.com or WhatsApp me +60198549552
Every rod comes with a Zoom casting meet and a 1 in 666 chance of flying the Jolly Roger with me for two weeks.
