I thought I had found the best two rods ever: A Hardy Zenith 9 ft 5wt and a new old stock Hardy “Perfection” glass rod in a 4wt.
I stopped in and showed them to John Juracek (formerly co-owner of BRF in West Yellowstone). He was impressed with the Perfection. I told him I loved the action and wished I had a 9ft Perfection.
He told me a lot about his rod selection philosophy. Finally, he suggested I would like the Sage ZXL.
I subsequently bought one in a 9 ft 5wt.
I now think it is probably my best all-round rod. In small streams, I will still use the Perfection. But in bigger water, the ZXL is about the best I’ve found.
Yep, I have the Sage ZXL in the 9 foot 6 weight 4 piece. It is a fantastic rod. Sage’s medium auction rod that still has the backbone to handle large flies on large rivers in a strong wind. It is a total joy to cast and I use it all the time as my dry fly rod on the rivers of Montana and Washington. I have another Sage medium action rod in a 5 weight, the old VPS Light, and it is also a great rod but on some of the large hoppers in a strong wind I sometimes needed a little more strength in the rod and the 6 weight ZXL took care of that problem.
I was loaned a 590-4 ZXL to try out. I really liked it a lot as an all around trout rod with floating and sinking lines. The most pleasing all around 5wt I have ever used.
They are available at closeout prices now that they have been discontinued.
I had a ZXL for a while…it was a 9ft 4wt. I liked it well enough. It would cast dry flies quite some distance and it was also pretty good at light nymphing too. Not a bad all around rod.
Isn’t that interesting. The only other Sage I really liked was my 2 piece LL (Light line). There was/is a cult following for the LL’s. Perhaps there will be for the ZXL as well?