We took two rods to the Guadalupe, the 5 weight Orvis Helios 3 I gave Kris for Christmas and my Winston 6 weight. This was my year for buying rods, and I bought the 6 weight Winston in June before a trip to Arkansas, and put a Hardy Duchess reel on it. You want aesthetics? Match a Winston with a Hardy reel and it’s a thing of beauty. I’ve fished with an older Winston 5 weight for a while now, and I like Winstons. I like that green. I like the nickel hardware and the burled wood reel seats. They’re just pretty, and they feel right to me: they have substance.
Kris though has this thing for Orvis rods, and the lighter the better. She wanted the 8 weight, but we have a lot of 8 weights ’round here, ranging from an old Orvis Rocky Mountain on which the 25-year warranty has expired through a Helios 2. Eight weights are really the rod of choice on the Coastal Plain, and we’ve got Sages and a Thomas & Thomas and some Orvis. They’ll catch most things we see in saltwater, and they’ll throw big bass flies. They’re good in wind, and there’s always wind. Anyone needs an 8 weight, I’ve got a store full. Plus I’d just bought a new Loomis 7.
But at the Orvis store the 8 weight Helios 3 did cast great, and I was tempted. After all, I’d get to fish it. But I got her the 5 weight, even though when I cast it at the store I thought it felt whispy and rattly. She doesn’t have a 5 weight, she would only be happy with the Helios 3D, and I thought it would be a great deal because I have lots of old 5 weight reels sitting around. I went to Bayou Cithy Angler and got her the Amplitude 5 weight mpx line. Christmas morning she was thrilled. I also gave her a new Astros jersey. She was thrilled with that too.
I put the line on a Ross Cimarron reel, circa 1995, and the day after Christmas we went to the Guadalupe. The reel was unacceptable. Too large. Too bulky. Not sufficiently . . . matched. Not that aesthetics matter to me.
The day after the day after Christmas we were back at Bayou City Anglers, and she picked the Ross Colorado Light reel, the one with nothing to it but a bit of click and pawl. I told her that she could get a much friendlier drag system–of course I didn’t tell her that every trout reel I own is click and pawl. But why would my opinion matter? I never catch fish anyway. And it did make a beautiful combination with that rod. Did you know that reel has heart cut-outs, just like a circa-1973 DeRosa?
So yesterday on the Guadalupe I tried out her rod for the second time. I’m not a bad caster, but I’ve got a tendency to get tailing loops by overpowering my forward cast, and unless I think about it I get a bit of a wrist twirl that leaves my fly five feet to the left of the fly line. But at a reasonable distance with enough concentration I can get within a yard or so of my target. All I can say is that the Orvis casts true. You send the fly somewhere, and it goes there. At the store I thought it whispy. On the water I thought it telegraphic. Or digital. Or something.
As for the aesthetics, it’s not as pretty as my Winston, but it’s a handsome rod, especially with that Ross reel. And when you go to pick it out of a pile of rods, it’s the easiest thing in the world to spot.