Fun with light rods

This one is for JC and JH and any other of you expert casters or light rodders out there.

I recently bought a little 5 ft 3 wt from White River (Bass Pro). It wasn't expensive and I thought I'd try it before I launched into a small glass or bamboo. This was a graphite rod and somewhat stiff by my measurements. I took it out for a trial run and I didn't like the feel at all. I could cast it but it was very insensitive. You almost had to watch the line and go by timing. There was no "feel" to it. Now, I have noticed this in many of my bigger graphite rods and I almost always over line them by a size or two for trout fishing just to get that "loaded" feel on casting. So I thought I'd try this on the little boy. So I loaded it up with a 6 wt DT. I am telling you, what a difference. I like to sometimes close my eyes and cast totally by feel (you have to do that for night browns anyway). This rod cast like a dream from 15 out to 25 feet or so. Eyes open, eyes closed, it didn't matter. Since this is all I need on the small streams I bought it for, it was perfect.

Now don't get me wrong. If you wanted to cast 40 -50 feet with this heavy line, the rod just ran out of gas and you had to resort to competition distance casting techniques to get it out there. But in! Wow! You could feel the rod load behind you and time your cast perfectly without any trouble at all. Something you (or at least I) could not do with the 3 wt line. I am going to line the little reel up with maybe 40 feet of 5 or 6 wt (half a DT minus a little) and use it for those little brook trout streams that are all choaked with tags. You know, cane rod and black line streams with a night crawler when you were a kid. Ought to be a blast.

Maybe you all know this already and its just a personal revelation to me - but it was fun anyway. I think I'm going to like this little stuff. Red ears and blue gills down south are going to be a blast too. Too cool.

Bobinmich

Bob.

I quite often use a 5 wt DT on my 3 wt 9 ft rod. Works great for me.

Tim

I have a 6' 2 weight TFO Signature Series. It's just a toy where I am, but it's a lot of fun for brookies and casts a DT2F just fine out to 30-40 feet (aka twice as long as I need it to). It even roll casts pretty well.