It had been a minute since I had fished my 8'6" Steffen 7/8, so it was time to dust it off. I had originally intended to take my Bandit since I was going to be fishing big-ass flies for bull trout during a family camping trip but didn't really have room for it (the 3pc is 2pc as the lower two sections have been completely stuck together for several years (yeah, I've tried everything & my rod building friend tried everything when he was touching up the first stripping guide--no worries there since I rarely need to take it fully apart since it's my primary tiger musky rod....by I digress). Anyway, I had it lined up with a ~300gr Airflo Streamer Max Short which actually worked very well for an ~8" fly. Originally I worked a bunch of submerged timber and moved one out from under who didn't like the sun in his face so he retreated back into his cave. I did find a low 20s player in a nice in a deep current seam who decided that something very similar to this (only with no eyes) looked tasty:


the player:


Unfortunately, I could only fish for about 45 minutes before I developed a bit of sciatica (twisted my back a little bit when loading up our camping gear the previous day, but didn't seem to be serious). At any rate, I spent the next several hours in urgent care...not fun. But, it's on the mend slowly, but surely.

Nice that you’ve got some good water for bull trout, and I’m glad you got one, on a fun rod. Heal well, and catch a few more next time.

Indeed it is. It was nice to see it could handle this size of streamer as I'd never tried it before with streamers (unweighted) any larger than 5". It's one of my rods you'll have to pry out of my cold dead hands (along with my other 5/6 Steffen & the aforementioned Epic Bandit). I'll it for everything from smaller trout streamers to steelhead to bass to carp to surf. While the 300gr definitely pushes it, it still handled it just fine. Like you though, I do prefer it with slightly lighter shooting heads if that's how I'm fishing (like 250-275 is a really nice sweet spot).

My Steffen 7/8 is my "go to" rod for big hair bugs.