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I have the 7'6" TFO Pro in a 2wt... and it is fine as long as there is NO wind. It is a little soft and slow for my likes. It takes quite a bit of effort to keep any amount of line airborne... Big grayling are a serious hoot with it though.
art

Sitka,

I thought about a 2 wt, but I just don't think it'll have the backbone I want for the way I fish.
I throw probably 90+ percent nymphs and a ton of those are weighted.
I tend to abuse my rods, asking them to do things they're not designed for.

I want a 3 wt to add to the bag, along with my previously mentioned 5 wt and the 7 wt that I use on steelhead.
That 7 see's almost all it's use pulling flies or plugs from the DB.

I'm not a fan of long rods (over 8'ish)simply because I fish from the boat most of the time or it's a small stream.....
Maybe when I retire in a couple of years, I'll try conventional fly fishing for our half pounders on the Rogue.

From what I've heard from ODFW, the fish only get to about 6". Since the min. length is 8", that means catch and release. It's so brushy it's hard to cast ... anything.

Yeah, that country has a full dose of creepy. Think I'll just leave it at that.


I'll check that out!


Were you above the mouth of Glade Creek or down below where the houses are? That upper end has changed hands, used to be it was ok to go up past the gates, just behave. The new owners don't seem to like folks up there though.

I tell you one thing I've learned, there's a lot less competition if you're fishing closed waters.

Tom

An old guy gave me his Orvis split cane fly rod when he learned of my desire to fly fish. It was a 5 ft. "Mighty Mite" from the mid-1960's, built for a 5 wt. line. I kid you not. Not knowing any better, I taught myself to fish with that rod. 30 years later finds me with more varying length fly rods than a sane man needs, but that little bugger, with an old Orvis Flyweight reel and Wulff TT #5 line, still gets its fair share of stream time.

Wow! A 5' 5wt!
Your either going to learn "good form" or take up golf!

I was throwing a sofa pillow with my 7' 5wt in the wind the other day..... I had to lead my target like a clay bird!

I was under rod'ed by a lot and should have used the 7wt, but the 5 is so much more fun to fight with...

{{Were you above the mouth of Glade Creek or down below where the houses are? That upper end has changed hands, used to be it was ok to go up past the gates, just behave. The new owners don't seem to like folks up there though.

I tell you one thing I've learned, there's a lot less competition if you're fishing closed waters. smile smile}}
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Tunnel Ridge country.

I would scout blacktails from some landings until about 10am or so and then drop down to the crick..... pretty stupid, really.
I do know how to read. Now days I'd just go a bit further down the road and play in the main stream.

And yes! It was very peaceful....... Haa!

With no one to teach me, it took a few frustrating days on the lawn to get to the point where I could finally lay out a decent cast. You're right, there is no forgiveness in a rig like that.

I lived close to Carlisle, Pa. back then (late 70's). On one of my early forays on the Letort (another frustrating venue for a beginner) I ran into Vince Marinaro who took one look at my rig, looked at me like I had two heads and walked away muttering. I didn't know who he was at the time and thought he was just an old opinionated curmudgeon (which he was). It was Charlie Fox (who by then spent most of his stream-time sitting on his bench down by the water) who kindly suggested I might be better off with a longer rod.

I got my start as a grade schooler in our back yard ( late 50's ) casting a bamboo rod that ( I was told ) came back from Korea with an Uncle.

I popped off a lot of flies and leaders back then, but still thought it was fun. That old rod made it all the way through high school with me and then disappeared....

The rod came in a wood case with compartments in it for other gear. The reel was a Pflueger Medalist, of course.

Lots of GIs brought back bamboo rods from Japan, and they were in boxwood boxes. They came with a few flies and a couple of bobbers. You see them occasionally advertised on ebay. The boxes were made by hand and were nicer than the rods, some pretty good artwork on them.

I had a 9' bamboo rod as a kid myself. It was Japanese made, cheap, not in a box but from a hardware store. It was pretty bad, very heavy.

With you on the Japanese and GI rods, but the cases were never boxwood. Box is among the hardest of woods and very dense. It is the origin of the word box, but originated from its use for tough, strong, hard, and heavy turned containers for tiny religious icons and possibly very early coins.

The wood used in the rod cases I have seen have been aspen, paulownia, ash (tamo), or soft maple. I have heard of beech being used but have not seen it.

Yes, I was using boxwood in the sense of boxes, didn't think of it in terms of genus or species types. Boxwood (capital B) is hard.

What I saw was a white wood fairly soft in the Japanese rod boxes. I'm not sure maple or aspen grow in Japan, but maybe they do. I haven't seen ash used, it has a distinctive grain pattern that would be hard to mistake.

This one was a hardwood of some sort..from the memory of an 8 year old. I'd love to have the whole thing back.

It was supposedly brought home by my mothers youngest brother, who served in Korea during the conflict. He came home a mess ( PTSD, sick and with horrible memories ).

The rod itself cast better than I could. I have no idea what wt it was....maybe 6 or 7 I suppose. I caught a lot of fish on that old thing and wished I'd had a better appreciation for it's family value and history. It had two tips, so you could vary it's overall length and line weight, I assume.....

Some were fly/spin combos. Here's a link about occupation bamboo rods: http://en.allexperts.com/q/Fishing-1634/2009/3/Value-vintage-rods-1.htm

Interesting Link, Gene. Thanks!

Capitalized species was dropped quite a few years ago as proper by virtually all style guides. Boxwood would not be capitalized even when named to the specific...

Japan is actually noted for its red maples which have produced many lace-leaf cultivars... And poplar is a common native Japanese tree. Japan is extremely protective of trees and has the highest forested percentage of any country.

Japanese ash, which they call tamo is not as distinctive as the American ash species, but is commonly found in Japanese musical instruments. It would be easy to mistake in some cases.

Art;

What is paulownia going for these days? Any idea? The stuff is everywhere in the rural areas I frequent, and some of it has got some fairly good saw log potential.

I do not have a copy of a recent wholesale lumber price guide, but those seldom list specialty stuff... The Japanese have always been the center of the paulownia market, though. It would be an ideal wood for a non-specialist to look at marketing due to its incredibly forgiving nature while drying.

No need to kiln, and air-dry enough to sell in a few months...
art

I thought red maple was an American species. There's Japanese maple, of course. I've seen it as an ornamental. Poplar sounds like the boxwood I saw; my mother in law's brother brought back two or three from Japan in occupation time. Never used so far as I know.

What I saw was light-colored and I can't remember a grain at all. Cedar, maybe, but it didn't smell like cedar.

Rule of thumb on wood ID says hardwoods (angiosperms) are easy to ID macroscopically and difficult to ID microscopically... while gymnosperms are easy to ID under power, but tough without...

In lumber form "red maple" is commonly used interchangeably with "soft maple", though it is technically incorrect. The fact red maple is one of the most common eastern trees has everything to do with that. I believe I remember the Japanese species are all relatively soft. Their commercial species are all "soft maple" when lumber.

Not all cedar smells, too... Our AK yellow cedar smells nothing like TN cedar, or red, or anything else... stinky stuff!

I only saw two boxes, by no means a representitive sample, and probably from the same maker. That was a long time ago.

I suspect in the post-WW II/Korean War era, Japanese used whatever wood they could salvage. Might be the wood originally came from a U.S. packing crate.

There have been auctions of similar sets, sometimes with a few flies and sometimes with bobbers or spinning lures offered on Ebay. None currently. You'd think a spin-fly combos were limited to Asia, but they were offered here in the US in fiberglass by at least local maker and at least one brought at VERY high prices. I was looking for vintage fiblerglass rods and saw one that sold for more than $1.2K apparently to someone who collects them or something. It was a rare brand name thing, I guess.