cjtarbox wrote:
I know from past posts you're not a fan of 1/2 weight lines, but I really like this line best on this rod.
If you think I don't like 1/2 weight lines, you've misread my posts. I don't dislike them at all. In fact they are quite necessary for many rods today, unfortunately. What I don't like is that 1/2 weight lines have to exist. What I don't like is what rod companies did to warrant the need for 1/2 weight lines. What I don't like is what fly line companies DON'T do to properly label them.
In there silly race to make rods faster and faster and faster and faster, rod companies started labeling 6wt rods and 7wt rods as 5wt rods. In response, fly line companies came up with this practice to circumvent AFTMA standards and make 1/2 wt lines so that these fast rods rod companies made would cast better but still label them as a 1/2 wt less. So a 5 1/2 wt line is still labeled as a 5 wt line. It is so absurd that one rod company makes their line a full line weight heavy, i.e. a 6wt line is labeled as a 5wt. Why do they do this? Because they think their customers are stupid. If they were honest about it, they would change the AFTMA standard to accommodate 1/2 wt line specifications and label them as such. But they are getting away with it. And so it goes.
I actually have reels that have 2.5, 3.5, 4.5, 5.5, 6.5, and 7.5 wt lines on them. So if you come to my house or to a MichiGlass outing, you can try them on your rod to find which line wt works best.
Odonata, thanks for noting the relationship with Echo's glass rods. Unless Echo has changed the lineup since they first introduced them, I guess I'm not interested in the LLBean rods either. With the Fenglass rods going off the market, I was trying to find new rods that I could recommend to beginners for 7-8ft trout/panfish rods. The Fenglass 7'0" 4wt was a pretty decent 7'0" 5wt for trout and panfish. The 8'3" 7wt was also very good. I'm not fond of the Echo or CGR rods so it's pretty difficult finding new rods to recommend now. The best advice for the time being is to wait for a good deal on a used Fenwick, Berkley Parametric, Cortland, Silaflex, Phillipson, etc. It's just hard to tell that to a single mom wanting to buy a rod for their enthusiastic child. It's a lot easier giving them a recommendation for something they can get on Amazon.