Bernd Ziesche | Wednesday, 3 March 2021
All big fly rod labels (and most smaller ones as well) offer at least one new fly rod series EVERY year! I wish my favorite label would start a vote for everyone's favorite rod series of all times and then bring the winning series back to live!
Of course not just for a year, but for at least several years!
On my facebook site I was sharing these my thoughts and asking what other fly fishermen thought about it.
The feedback was quite large. Many fly fishermen agreed this to be a great idea and named their favorite rod series.
Sage XP and Sage Z-Axis as well as G.Loomis GLX Classic came up most often.
To me it was no surprise, that nearly all fly fishermen favored one of the truly older models. Nearly none of the newest models were listed!
Now it may be, that we all have of course lots of great memories connected to our older fly rods as Jay Lee pointed out. Memories that in one way or another make whatever fly rod being a very special one for us.
Since I made my living on teaching fly fishing for 15 years now I very often was asked about which fly rod might be the best choice.
Since nearly all fly rod companies for decades have been working on fooling our minds by telling us, that they just have developed a brandnew again much better fly rod THIS year, most of us seem to want a new fly rod. Buying a used fly rod on (for example) ebay seems not very common.
Personally I am interested in 4 key factors when aiming to get a fly rod:
A) Rod action = Where does it bend? (tip flex, medium flex, full flex)
B) Rod stiffness = How much does it bend?
C) How hard will it be to break that rod?
D) Components = mainly rings (single foot vs. double foot), cork (quality and shape) and reel seat
I am not so much interested in the overall weight! BUT this was a very STRONG key factor for many fly fishermen as shops told me often!
In my experience there were always clearly differencies in how easily (or not so easily) a fly rod could be broken. No wonder that some rod series left the market after just one year. The percentages of claims by broken rods changed from series to series. That's for sure. Of course fly rod companies don't like to talk about that at all!
When buying a fly rod, which has been used a while you can be pretty sure, that it did not come with any sort of production failure (or improper design itself) causing it to break too easily. A big plus especially when going on trips into the jungle. When buying the latest series I wouldn't feel very safe here. And these my doubts are based on experience!
Now this is SEXYLOOPS and I am glad that also the Sexyloops Hot Torpedo rods were listed several times. I very much like, that Paul doesn't come up with a new rod series all the time, but keeps the rod live, which he fully believes in. I have one myself and it's a great fly rod for sure.
Well, maybe some of the big labels will be reading this and at least think about our ideas!? Lots of your customers would love to vote for their favorite rod series for sure! ;)
Last week I have been fly fishing for Zander every day. It was great fishing and I caught quite some fish as you may see in the pictures below.
Great fishing week to all of you!
All my best
As always...
