My, my. All this sturm und drang, and no one mentioned boron in the context of a rod matrix? I use all four substrates, and for very light trouting (think Tricos and midges) or small stream work, some modern canes will LAND more trouts for me than stiffer materials. When boating, especially boats with metal gunwales, I steer away from brittle hollow plastic tubes - I've seen too many unexpectedly bust (all in the hands of friends). Hexagraphs are particularly agreeable to driftboating without worry.

Modern glass, especially the 'S' glass which got overwhelmed by the graphite revolution, can produce wonderful wonderful actions.

But TSA is pushing me towards using graphite more - it lends itself to ffishable actions in 4-7 sections, and I can put those in a suitcase or even a carryon. Before the airlines started charging for baggage, I routinely packed 15 or 20 sticks just to be sure to optimimize according to conditions when I flew to ffish.

tl
les