What go get?
Will be fishing mainly small rivers/streams and trout ponds in
northern new england.
Been looking at:
Orvis T3 $475 - nice color and finish.
Sage VT2 $410 - hard to get past the bright blue but Sage quality.
The new Loomis East Fork $410 nice color and finish also.(anyone know anything about this new rod?)
Suggestions appreciated and thanks in advance!
Close your eyes and cast all three. Pick the one that FEELS the best.
If it happens to look good too that’s a plus!
Welcome, Triopond -
For your first post, you put up a pretty tough question. Don’t have enough information to really work with it, but with the price point you’ve set, there are so many options available that it would be difficult to know where to begin.
IF you have already gone through the process of narrowing down the choices, out of all available, to the three rods you inquired about, all I can do is second Bamboozle’s suggestion to go cast all three, on water if at all possible. You can’t go wrong with any of them, if it is the right rod for you. ( When you have a fish on, rod color will not be a factor. )
IF you haven’t really looked at all the quality rods that suit the type of fishing you plan to do, it would be well to elaborate here on things like your experience, your preference to rod action, your casting stroke, etc. Scott and Winston are two other really good rod builders that quickly come to mind, and there are many more, that others on the board might favor for one reason or another.
Good luck pursuing your question and choices - and whatever fish you target when you finally get on the water and start putting it all together.
John
Get the one that you cast best. Cast as many as you can. I saw a custom maker building T&T 4 piece XL-4’s at a good price recently that fits in your price range.
You may want to try Great Bay Rod Co. They have probably the largest line of small stream rods something like 16 different models to choose from and considering they’re their handcrafted a bargain at $329.00/
I’ve got a Winding Brook 7 foot 4 piece 3 weight that is a dream rod to cast.
One thing to add to the good advice of trying the rods and picking the one you like the best, especially if you’re going to be fishing small streams.
When you cast it on the lawn, try to make casts of the length that you’ll actually be fishing. I have a couple of rods that I loved on the lawn, but they don’t fish well on some of my local water because I was casting twice as much line on the lawn as can be cast in many of the spots I fish. So I ended up with rods that are too stiff for much of my actual fishing, which are small spring creeks 15 - 25 feet wide in many spots. There’s plenty of times that I may have only 15 - 20 feet of fly line out.
Thanks for your responses! I will let u know what I ultimately end up with…