What would be a good short fly rod for fishing with heavy cover?
Posted by admin on Wednesday, January 6th, 2010
Where i fish is loaded with cover and i am thinking a seven footer might help out i am thinking about spending around $150 thanks
Filed in Fly Fishing Rods | 2 responses so far
Chaddon 06 Jan 2010 at 10:30 pm 1Yeah, a shortish 7-footer will be ideal for heavy cover and shorter casts, provided the fish aren’t too huge. You don’t want to hook up with a 5-pound trout on a 3-weight rod (at least not too often).
The problem here is that most inexpensive big-box-store combos are much longer and usually in the 5-weight range — see numerous previous discussions here in Y!A about inexpensive 5/6-weight combo outfits.
Here’s what I’d do — get yourself an Eagle Claw 7-foot feather-light fly rod.
http://www.troutlet.com/Eagle-Claw-Featherlight-Fly-Rods-P217.aspx
I know, I know, I know. Looks like a cheap-o piece of crap. But it’s not! Yes, it is somewhat cheaply made and it’s not even rated in terms of fly line weight (I make it about a 3- or 4-weight). And there are some drawbacks — first, they come only in a 2-piece kit, so they’re not exactly easy to transport and store. Next, the eyes are not of high quality, so your casting suffers a bit. They also have very little stiffness, which, again, limits your casting. Also, of course, if you break it, you’re done — no replacement coverage.
HOWEVER, consider your situation. Limited budget — you can buy two of these and provide your own replacement warranty (at least for one breakage per piece). Second, you’re making short casts anyhow in heavy cover (these rods cast fine at distance of under 30 feet and if you’ve got good line, you can push it out to 40 feet… maybe). If you upline it with a nice 5-weight line, you’ll be in fat city. Third, the paltry price tag will allow you to get a decent reel, some good line, and have a few bucks left for flies or Gink or whatever.
How do I know about these rods? I bought them for my boys for Christmas a while back and before I wrapped them up I went fishing with them. For a 20-buck fishing rod with $30 reels, they did pretty darn good. My boys have been using them for several years and they catch fish. Just gotta be careful not to break them…
As for a reel, since you’ve got 150 clams to blow, I’d recommend the TFO Midge, an excellent reel for lighter outfits.
http://www.blueflycafe.com/product/Temple_Fork_Outfitters_Midge_Reel/Fly_Reels
If you bought two Eagle Claw rods and the TFO reel, this leaves more than $50 for line. Line is a rather personal choice (like deodorant or underwear), so I’ll leave that to you, but any decent line will work very well with this set up.
In any case, this outfit will work well on any small water you encounter — it works great for the streams and lakes that we fish.
pheasant tailon 06 Jan 2010 at 11:28 pm 2Cabelas makes a whole line of such rods called “TQR rods” I bet I know what kind of places you’re fishing since we’re pretty close by.
I built a 6′ 3wt awhile back, works great on small brushy streams where roll casting is all you do. Here’s a link to them, you can judge for yourself what would work for you
http://www.cabelas.com/cabelas/en/templates/links/link.jsp?id=0065012320760a&type=product&cmCat=SEARCH_all&returnPage=search-results1.jsp&Ntt=tqr&Ntk=Products&sort=all&_D%3AhasJS=+&N=0&_D%3Asort=+&Nty=1&hasJS=true&_DARGS=%2Fcabelas%2Fen%2Fcommon%2Fsearch%2Fsearch-box.jsp.form1&_dyncharset=ISO-8859-1