Quote:
"My favorite rod for fishing with micros is the 7.5 - foot, 2.5 ounce Paul Young Perfectionaist calibered for a 4-weight line. There are other bamboos just as suitable, but what I want is a rod with a slow casting cycle, so I can 'paint' the fly on target. The current preoccupation with speed-of-recovery in space age materials, boron and graphite, is in one sense mis-leading: it's fabulous when you need to get a fly out fast in front of a cruising tarpon, or bang a Polar Shrimp at a far-off steelhead, but when trout are rising in pockets of silky water between weed sweepers, the last thing I want in a rod is speed. Teacup accuracy with a controlled turnover at distances up to 40 feet is much more realistic."
from "McClane's Angling World" by A.J. McClane (1986 E.P. Dutton, N.Y.)
Sometimes slow rods are optimum. Joe Brooks always advocated slow rods for saltwater fishing with large flies or for bass-bugging; because a slow rod can pull more sunken line into a backcast than a faster rod, and slower rods require less false-casting.