I just happened upon the newly released 2017 Yellowstone 5wt. Shootout, and to my surprise I saw that ********* Rods is in the mix.

https://www.yellowstoneangler.com/gear- ... air-sage-x

I know it is not fiberglass and I question the criteria used to judge performance, but I still thought that it was cool to see a smaller boutique company that started out predominantly on this forum mentioned and reviewed among the big box companies. I still fish my 8'9" 7wt. ********* glass rod regularly, and I am bringing it with me to the boundary waters in about a month. It's a great all-around warm water rod. I am also looking forward to fishing with Dusty again at the upcoming Coulee Conclave in a couple weeks!

Colt

I find a lot of faults with their testing criteria and I could fill a few pages discussing it but the one at the top of my list is that they don't even rate the rods with 5wt lines only. Almost all of them are 5.5 wt rods or more. The order of those rods would be totally different if the ratings were based on how well they cast 5 wt lines. But they say it's ok if they cast best with 5.5 wt lines. What a crock! At least their top rod, the NRX LP, is a good performer with a 5 wt line but most of those rods are not.

Just glad to see ********* in the mix....

Thanks guys, I was very happy for the press. I will actually have that model in Wisconsin. I've spent all morning looking at WI DNR maps getting ready for the Coulee Conclave. So excited.

I 'think' that is it Tim, his brother who is owner/designer for Echo who fishes glass predominantly.

Very cool!

I think you are very correct.

However the shoot out is based on a very narrow application: fishing in western conditions. That's basically large dries, heavy nymphs with large indicators and an occasional streamer tossing.

This is typical how the most sold rods (9ft #5) are marketed.

The actual testing procedure is even narrower: they tied on a piece of yarn about the size of a medium sized dry (so maybe a 14?). They say that a good 5 wt should be able to do it all (dries, nymph rigs with shot, smaller streamers), but it seems that they are judging how the rod will perform in non-dry applications by how the butt and mid-section feel rather than actually taking the rod out on the water with a nymph rig, etc. Now these guys are all experts and so I'm sure that with all of their experience they have a pretty good idea how a rod will perform certain tasks based on how it feels in their hand, but as far as I can tell the testing procedure was limited to casting yarn at targets.

Another thing, of the possible 140 points total, 50 are assigned to how the rod casts at various distances (25', 45' 70'). The "perfect 5" category has another 20 points possible. If a rod is supposed to do it all, I would think that category should be overweighted, or possibly even be the sole category. But I guess the various categories can be helpful to some people as they can place more emphasis on those that apply to their fishing conditions and ignore those that don't--not that I would ever advocate buying a rod based on the shootout.

To me the most interesting aspects of the shootout articles are the comments sections. And the one that stood out to me was that TYA apparently has a small stash of Sage LL 389 blanks and they chose Dusty to build them out for them.

For many people it's a big help to distinguish the different brands and models. Especially for who doesn't have access to a fly shop nearby.

Eventually you should cast the rods to really see what fits your casting and budget.

Then there is a group of people that rely solely on 'popularity lists' like this. Generally they know squat about fly rods or just have too much to spend. As long as their friends are impressed...

Shootouts are useful marketing tools. They teach us to look for the perfect rod. Nice way to get us addicted to gear and into fishing.

For everything else they are flawed and of little practical use. Luckily most of the gear on the market is more than adequate for the purpose of catching fish and spending a nice day on the stream, river, flats or lake - so no one risks being too disappointed.

This forum is definitely better. Worse?

It was few years ago now, but I really liked how Trident Fly Fishing handled its 5 wt rod shootout. For one thing, they had "judges" of varying skill levels, not exclusively top notch casters like TYA does. They also had the judges rate the rods on, in addition to casting dries at various distances, how it performed nymphing and with streamers. Also, while they had a suggested line for each rod, the judges were allowed to try different lines to see if, in their mind, that changed the rod's performance. I'm sure the methodology wasn't perfect, but to me it sounded a lot better set up for trying to determine the "best do it all 5 wt" than TYA's shootout criteria/procedures.

I have no intrest in the shoot out because I have no use for a 9' 5WT but for someone that fishes big water they might find it informative.......aurelio