clarkman23 wrote:
I'm curious what you ended up going with, Colt.
A little update on my OPST experimentation. Previously, I had the 350gr that I use with my 7wt Echo glass switch and my Epic Bandit. This year, I purchased the 300gr to use with my Steffen 8wt...(sad sad story on the Steffen, I fell down an embankment while winter steelheading and broke the butt section---by the sound it made I thought I had broken something on me real bad, thankfully not, but I was still in absolute shock when I looked at my rod, luckily, Mark is quite accommodating with these types of things)...at any rate, I decided to try out the 300gr on my Bandit. All I can say is WOW. I like it just as much as the 350gr, perhaps slightly better. I threw on a 7.5' T-14, 3' 15lb fluoro, and a 2.5" Dolly Llama and it was throwing lasers on the small stream I was fishing (at least when I was fishing river right, where I could do my snap-T and cast over my right shoulder--off-shoulder? forget about it, I almost gave myself a couple new piercings).
I also picked up a 175gr head for use with my Lami 4wt. I don't doubt that it'll work well with that rod, but I'm also looking forward to trying it out on my 8' Steffen 5/6, with a short section of T-8, I think it'll absolutely sing.
Your experience parallels mine, Clarkman. I keep going lighter and lighter with the OPST heads. There's less 'feel' to the cast, but somehow the casts keep getting better. It's a little bit of a leap of faith.
I need to play with the Bandit rig more and shorten the tips as you describe above - I've used it with a 350, 10' med MOW tips, and 3' of Tippet and had a hard time getting the T11 out of the water. The Bandit is just so short! I'm kinda waiting for the 5' OPST tips to come out.
Can't wait to build out my Steffen 7/8 and try it with the 250. But weirdly my favourite combo for the rivers I get to most is the 350gr on a 9'3" Fenwick 1093 with the 6" fighting butt.