picketpin52 wrote:
I'm curious, can someone who has cast, or fished the rods built on these glass (?) blanks offer insight as to which other blanks/rods they might compare, and/or are similar?
Well, if my rods cast like someone's else rod... Why would I go through all the trouble of developing my own tapers? As Carl stated, the 836 has some "nice swing weight". This is balanced throughout the taper. Phillipson rods have that slightly heavier wall too, it helps with the taper's recovery and loading in close. Everything from the type of fiberglass, ferrules, etc., have been thought of. The 836 is a medium action in flex profile, but it's not a noodle. Progressive in nature, but not cookie cut progressive. The complex taper allows the rod to cast in close, yet reach out to respectable fishing distances. They are "fish poles", not just another pretty stick. I intended the 836 to be a standard trout rod for slightly bigger water. It would serve well on the Beaverkill, East and West Branch Delaware, Housatonic, etc. It can fish smaller water like Mossy Creek (large brown trout in a spring creek) too. The 836 does have a 4.5 tip top, that transition, in the right spot. I started with a Dickerson 8014 as a rod that I would like the 836 to be like, after changes to the taper during develop... I feel we have surpassed that. To explain the feel of one of my new tapers is easy... you "connect" to the rod on the first cast. Good loops and the line does what you are asking it to, you forget about the action and what it's like (slow, fast, parabolic, semi-parabloic, dry fly, and all that other stuff!!!) and you concentrate on the fish you're casting to.