Originally Posted by ingwe
You kinda answered your own question...the longer rods make a delicate dry presentation easier, but your 30 ft. rivers and my creeks I find myself fishing a lot of terrestrials, and frankly they work better if they " splashdown", so the shorter rod and sloppier presentation isn't a hindrance. Besides, I'm not good enough to get the advantage out of a rod that can present a fly " just so"..
A short one would be fun on water that size...say about a 7.5 footer??
Just my 2 cents...
Ingwe


Ingwe and I could make this debate go on for another 161 pages. I like a 9 footer for everything. It's much easier to finesse a longer rod. You have a much higher degree of control all the way around on a 9'er. If the winds calmed down, I can slap a dry down, fly first hard enough to make every fish in a beaver pond look on a creek, or I can belt 50' of line on high mountain lakes and make beautiful presentations. I use different weight floating lines more than I use different rods. I run a 3 wt line a lot on the lakes, with 10-11' leaders if the fish are picky. If I need to soften the rod up to throw 20' loops on creeks with a 7' leader, I'll go a 6 weight. The St Croix I'm running is their super fast action blank. Its a somewhat tempermental rod if you're a newbie, but if you've been fly-fishing half your life and you remember your chops, it'll make you look like a Superman.

The shortest rod I've ever ran was an 8'6"er

I'm Irish...

Of course I know how to patch drywall