I am not an expert caster, but I know what I like in a rod, how it fits my style of casting. For about five years, I was the education coordinator for one of the fly fishing clubs I belong to. As such I scheduled many casting classes, from beginning thru intermediate.

People would show up for casting classes with their outfits and our instructors would spend hours working with them. I assisted in almost all of the classes. That means I was able to cast a lot of different fly rods. From well known brands to some that are totally unknown.

Oh what a difference there is in fly rods. We would have students who just couldn?t cast 20 feet. I would take the rod and I don?t blame them for not being able to, the rods were horrible to cast. After seeing this a few times, I asked our club to start buying some low end but decent casting rods for our members to use. If they were brand new to the sport they could use our rods to get the hang of casting, or when I ran into one of those worthless rods, I would hand the person one of the club rods and then the light would go on in their head, yes, they could actually cast a fly.

Expensive rods like Sage, yes that is my favorite, and Winston and Thomas & Thomas almost always cast very well. There are some Sage rods that do not fit my casting style, and as such I don?t own one of them. But, their rods cast very well. As they should. They spend a lot of money on research in constructing the rods, in the materials they use and how those materials are created, and in testing the rods to fine tune them.

Lower end rod companies, for the most part, can not afford to do that so they order blanks that are for the lack of a better word, generic in nature. That is not to say they are bad rods, some of them are very nice, but others are not.

Always buy within your limits, but if you can afford a high end rod, why not buy it? If you can?t then test the rods that fall within your price range and find one that fits your style of casting.

I firmly believe that because of companies like Sage and Winston and Thomas & Thomas, the other rod companies have had to improve their quality of rods and improve their warranties to compete with the large named companies. That means the fly fishers are the winners. There are more decent rods available for us to buy than ever before.

Enjoy that and get our there and cast.

Larry ---sagefisher---