As soon as the rod was in my hand I knew that this was a nice piece of kit. I like a reasonably fast action rod and this is what it turned out to be. Loaded up with a 7wt floater to start with the rod lifted and loaded cleanly, loop size was small and the delivery on the forward cast was precise with pinpoint accuracy.
Working back and forth between short and medium range I only needed a very short arm stroke to generate a wickedly fast line and even with a slight cross or head on wind the rod just cut the line straight through and onto target.
When it came to lifting long lines and hitting those distance marks the blank was well up to the task with plenty of reserve power and I just had to ease into the cast with a slightly longer arm stroke to produce the goods.
Handling floating lines alone doesn’t make a rod great so I moved onto midge-tips and intermediates and they were dealt with in exactly the same way. Even when it came to sunk line work with Di-3s to Di-7s I could feel the rod working that much harder but it was never out of its comfort zone.
While the rod is true to its line rating I also tried a 6wt floater for lighter dry fly fishing and it was extremely competent. It will also handle a dual rated 7/8wt line. The Tactical range goes from a 9ft 4/5wt to a 10ft 6in 3wt and there are eight rods in total.
VERDICT
I quite happily boat-fished all day with this rod with no more fatigue than normal. It falls within that exclusive category of rods that offer the sensitivity for top-of-the-water work and also has that reserve power and casting ability for sunk line work. A real treat.
This is guest post of Matthew Schade from Hunting-Tips.Net.
