The Yellow Dog 5-Weight Fly Rod Invitational

The Yellow Dog 5-Weight Fly Rod Invitational

Yellow Dog Flyfishing rolls out what is easily the most comprehensive fly rod review done to date in the industry: “We brought in three of the most respected and completely independent fly casters in the world–John Juracek, Whitney Gould, and John Hudgens–to test the best rods in the industry across dry fly, nymph, and streamer courses.”

In terms of depth, coverage and data tracking, it sets a new bar and industry standard for objective fly rod comparison and analysis.

Excellent, high-end work by their team.

Deeter’s four key takeaways from the roundup and results:

1. Put fly rods in the hands of people who really know how to cast, and the super-fast-action rods aren’t all that. That’s because people who actually know how to feel a fly rod perform prefer the feedback. It’s a lot like skilled golfers preferring blade irons, because they know they can shape their shots. The average duffer just wants to hit the ball straight and far. The popularity of fast-action fly rods over the years has been rooted in the fact that they are like player improvement irons in that they work if you don’t have an “A” game. These A-game casters cut through all that. Kudos.

2. You don’t have to spend an arm and a leg to find a perfectly good fly rod. Most serious aficionados have known this for years, of course, but it’s good to see that articulated again in a different format. Of course, the pending tariff discussion may or may not significantly affect the price of imported fly rods in the future. But some of the slightly lower-priced domestics tend to do just fine and I’m happy for that, because I’m not sure anyone is ever going to spend $2000 for a graphite fly rod.

3. The perfect “do everything” 5-weight rod is a unicorn. For better or worse, the rod companies have conditioned anglers like myself to think I don’t just need a 5-weight; I need a dry fly 5-weight, a streamer 5-weight and so on. Which may or may not be baloney. Some of my favorite rods scored poorly in this test, but usually in aspects I don’t care much about, and where they did score well, it tended to be in aspects I like. I think this was a good way to go about the testing because it will trigger smart consumers to test for themselves and rely on the only opinion that matters: their own. And a little dissent in the discussion is fun. I don’t always agree with the three judges on “The Voice” or at the local chili cook-off either.

4. I think this is a step to put casting back in trout fishing, and I’m grateful for that. After spending decades perfecting ways for people to experience trout fishing (and pressure the resources) without actually knowing how to cast, I think things are swinging back to putting a dash of cast back into the trout game. People gravitate to the salt because you need a cast there, and that’s fun.

From Yellow Dog Flyfishing: “With nearly every major manufacturer participating in this event, we set out to create something that was considerably more detailed and precise than traditional rod reviews that have, in the past, simply ranked rods based on pure distance and the opinions or preferences of one or two evaluators.”