I was lucky enough to meet Yvon Chouinard at the Tenkara Summit in Montana last year and try his rod briefly. It is indeed suprisingly stiff. That was long enough ago that I couldn't make a good comparison with the Kiyose, so thank you, Mike for your comment. If they do let you try it on the water, I would be very curious to hear a side by side comparison of fishing with the two rods. Also, the Soft Hackle is still not on the TFO website, so there is no way to look at the stats. Do you know what it weighs?
edited to add: The reference to Yvon Chouinard's rod is because I believe he was TFO's inspiration in developing the Soft Hackle tenkara rod and I suspect they modeled their rod from his.
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