For those who are curious about glass rods, check into the Fiberglass Flyrodders forum. I fished graphite for years, then I picked up a Winston WT 8’ 4 weight, and discovered I really liked a slower action rod. This eventually led me to trying glass. As mentioned previously, some of the old glass rods had a great action, while some were dogs. I have some old vintage rods that will cast with the best of the graphites, such as Hardy JET or an old Hardy Perfection (not the one Byron is talking about). The Perfection he is talking about is a very slow smooth action. I recently attended an outing of flyfishers here in southern Oklahoma, and let some of the guys try a few glass rods. Everybody that tried my 8’ 3/4 weight Steffen was amazed at the way it cast. I have about 25 glass rods, and am trying manfully to resist buying more.
Byron,
Hardy first built a Perfection series back in the 1960’s, and that is the rod I have. I believe it came out after the original Hardy JET, designed by John E. Tarantino, who was a world champion fly caster. The rods were based on Fisher blanks. Actually they may have been Hardy blanks built in the rod factory that Fisher built for Hardy. All the equipment was built, then disassembled and shipped to England for reassembly. The Hardy blanks of the time were very similar to blanks made by Fisher for Winston, Scientific Anglers System series rods, and the Leon Chandler series rods from Cortland. J. Castwell did a report on this forum quite a few years ago on the newer Hardy Perfection, which I’m assuming is the rod you have, as yours still has the plastic on the grip. The old Perfection rods were built on a brown blank. The newer rods were built on a black blank, and came out in 1998. The newer rods were only built for a few years, and the rod cosmetics were much more luxurious than the the older series. The original Perfection was a fairly fast action for fiberglass, while the newer Perfection has a buttery soft, slow action. So far I have cast only a couple of rods slower, a Lamiglas 6’6" 2 weight and my Axisco Airrite Stream 6 piece 7’6" 3 weight. The one characteristic I always hear mentioned whenever anybody casts my friend’s Perfection or my Axisco Airrite is the smoothness of the action.
Larry
p.s. - Betty, it has been a long time. I’ve been hanging out mostly with the glass folks and ultralight folks, but I have seen many familiar names on here since I checked back in. I’m afraid “buy more” is my lot in life.