My reel and line finally arrived yesterday in the mail. (Kudos to Hook and Hackle for the speedy service!)

I loaded up the Pflueger Supreme reel with H&H DT-2 line. I'd have preferred a black reel to complete the stealthy look of the rod, but the gold doesn't look too bad on there I think. It balances the rod out pretty well, too. The Pflueger seems like a nice little reel for only $40.


The forecast called for 70% chance of rain and 15 mph winds. I wasn't gonna let that stop me from trying out my first rod building project.

Fortunately the weatherman was at least partially wrong, it was mostly sunny and 75 degrees out this afternoon. The winds were blowing, but I wasn't going to let that stop me.

My parent's are in town so I took my dad out with the float tubes looking to catch some 'gills. When we set out I decided to tie on my usual fare for this lake: A crappie candy with a jitterbee dropper. I wasn't sure if the wispy little 2 wt would handle the two flies, but what the heck. Turns out it wasn't too bad. I couldn't cast super far, or with much delicacy, but I could cast and that's all I needed. In fact, it was on my very first cast that I broke in the rod. My Dad was still getting in the water at the boat launch. I cast the flies to the nearby floating dock and let them sink. As I pulled in the slack line, bam! I had a nice frisky 8" gill took the jitterbee and ran with it. Wow, this little rod is so sweet! I cringed a bit as the gill doubled my rod nearly in half, hoping my craftmanship was up to the task. Thankfully it was, and it held up to several dozen more bluegills much like the first one.


Later on we were fishing in very shallow, weedy water so I took off the double rig and tied on a sz 10 mackie bug. I was grinning ear to ear. This thing casts so nicely, I can't believe it. I can cast it just about as far as I can my 4 wt. I didn't think I'd be able to do that. I'm not a very proficient caster to begin with, but I measured out 40 and 50 feet on my lawn this morning and I was able to hit 40 feet fairly easily, and 50 feet part of the time. This was in the wind, too, so I'm very pleased with that. I really have no need to cast further than that anyways.

All in all I had an excellent first outing with my new rod. The only thing to make the outing better was that I got to fish with my Dad for the first time in quite a while.

Pops, playing tug-o-war with a fatty gill: