Stumbling upon a "rod wanted" post for a certain Garcia glass rod, it triggered a memory of recently picking up a Garcia Conolon 2537T 8&1/2 footer at a local yard sale.
I finally got around to fishing it..and was pleasantly surprised at how relatively light and "fast" it was on a quick trip yesterday to a local lake.
Alas, cannot report on how well it handled fighting large..or even medium-sized....fish, but I was fairly impressed with how it cast pretty far with good accuracy out of a float tube. The water temps must be in the 60's, and a weak front was coming through, but the weather was decent and wind gusts not too bad.
Researched the Garcia Conolon (sticker saying "Conolon" was faint) a bit, so learned something about a brand I never paid much attention to. Owned an 8' Silaflex with similar uneven length butt and tip sections that I no longer have, but the action and performance of this rod rivaled that of another 8&1/2' 3 piece Silaflex I currently own and like a lot. Both cast 7 wt lines and fairly large flies well, though I could not find the spare spool for my vintage English-made Battenkill in time to switch to a floating line towards dark...brought a long a bunch of reels to find the right line for casting/fishing.
The Silaflex casts a 6 OK, but don't think this Garcia would do well with less than a 7 wt.
Nice to find a functional bass rod, even if longer than ideal, and even nicer to learn about a new (to me) brand of vintage glass, though it seems Conolon made blanks for a lot of companies back then.
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