clarkman23 wrote:
"...
I believe BD in the past has mentioned busting out his RPLX when it gets really windy (correct me if I'm wrong). There's a reason for t....
Hate to sidetrack the thread, but this was my first salt fly rod from the late 80s, and it has served me well for 3 decades (so has the hat). Flats, surf, jetties.
I end up using it often because 3 pcs packs well in a kayak hold. I'll usually go out now with one of my 2-pc rods, rigged for flats wading, Izch 6/7 para S-glass as first choice - this does everything the Sage does except shock your joints when you shoot line, here with a slime line on a thigh-deep hole by a duck blind on Lighthouse Lakes, and earlier fishing a floating line on skinny water and casting to fish sign
The lighter S-glass is the first choice, but before I had that rod, and what a wonderful backup, now, Fisher Natural 8-wt, absolute magic wand for quick, accurate presentation to fast fish sign - these two rods are the choice for wading (this is across big Aransas Bay in the back of a barrier island "lake")
Since launching at Aransas Causeway and paddling to fish Lighthouse Lakes, we always end up back at the deep cut into the channel and awesome fishing on a falling tide, I'll break out the Sage to rig a TS-250 into the fast deep cut and channel slope, here hooked up to a nice black drum, who was running through the cut toward the channel.
The Sage RPLX never claimed to be anything except a graphite III cannon, and it is - nothing delicate in any way.
In fact when Sage made the move to graphite IV, they fished so harsh that people complained, and graphite V, c 2000, came out with slower tapers and dampening designed-in.
None of these power rods are good for fishing close when you're sitting in the kayak, and recently added the CGR 7/8 for that job.