For my 65th birthday, I decided I wanted a new fly rod. My go-to rod celebrated it’s 30th anniversary last year, and while it has earned a section of my soul all its own, I thought it would understand. I also decided I wanted a “tailor-made” rod. I’ve always pretty much rolled my own, figuring I could buy and assemble better components than I could afford otherwise. This time, I went for the factory built.
I did a bunch of research and test-casting, there's a lot of nice 4-weights out there in the 9-10 foot range. I ultimately settled on the Edge Archetype 904-4. It’s Gary Loomis’ company, I think it’s on a an LMX blank, a relatively popular taper he’s had available through North Fork Composites for some time and the blank I test-casted from a friend. I ordered it just before Christmas last year, and it was described as “on-backorder”, I figured it’d be a while, but I can wait. Especially as the price point is pretty nice.
First part of February it shows up. Nice tube, big, to accommodate the oversize guides they use for the stripping and first guide, a trick shown me by the man who taught me to build my own rods years ago. Nice quality guides, and enough of them. Wrapped very well, nearly flawless, in light blue, with a hook keeper! Yay! The blank is naked unsanded graphite. The operator end: an uplocking reel seat of what looks to be stainlesss, nicely machined. A reel seat insert of exquisitely figured wood (I don’t know the species, but it’s like a finely figured maple) and a really beautiful grip, with a very proper taper,
So, it’s a thaw time around here, and I line it up to cast on the snow covered lawn, tying on a bit of yarn on the end of the tippet. First cast the rod snaps just above the second ferrule. Inspection reveals it is split longitudinally about an inch or so. I get hold of Edge, they send me a shipping label. Back in the tube, back in the mailer, and back to Edge for repair/replacement it goes. I hadn’t cared much about the warranty but there is one. This clearly was a manufacturing defect, we all agreed.
Along about April, here it comes again. I open the package and it is just as before…gorgeous. I line it up and cast it, and it’s good….different than I’m familiar with, but good.
Since then, we’ve fished panfish, smallies, and trout in lakes, and trout in fairly large and relatively small rivers. It balances well with my Snowbee Spectre 5-6 cassette reel. I use a Rio Gold WF4 line but I’ve also intermediate and sinking lines. Casting, the rod has enough power for #8 streamers or leeches under indicators. I’ve swung buggers in the current of the Spokane. It is best of course with small flies, and is smooth enough to deliver a dry fly nicely over quite a distance. The tip is flexy and sensitive which sets a hook nicely, smooth, not jerking the tippet. That being said, it seems to carries power up high into the rod, which makes it so you just don’t feel out gunned when you hook into a nice smallie or a larger trout in current. I find that a pleasant blend of rod actions.
Of course it is a 4-weight, so the heavier roles I ask it to play are likely better played by heavier rods. But this rod seems game for the tasks assigned to an all-rounder.
The naked graphite gives me a bit of the willies, here in the northern Rockies stream fishing often involves some scree scramblin’ and bushwhackin’, and a nick or two could prove fatal to this rod. I don’t know how the warranty would treat that, but I’d probably not find out, I assume responsibility when I take stuff in harms’ way. And one thing I don’t like much about 4 piece rods is it always seems one section or another turns just a bit so a few times you’ve gotta realign stuff. Maybe that just happens to me.
Anyway, I’m not quite in love, yet. I am in pretty heavy like, and I feel like the rod has me in the entrapment stage of this relationship. It’s working so far.
I did a bunch of research and test-casting, there's a lot of nice 4-weights out there in the 9-10 foot range. I ultimately settled on the Edge Archetype 904-4. It’s Gary Loomis’ company, I think it’s on a an LMX blank, a relatively popular taper he’s had available through North Fork Composites for some time and the blank I test-casted from a friend. I ordered it just before Christmas last year, and it was described as “on-backorder”, I figured it’d be a while, but I can wait. Especially as the price point is pretty nice.
First part of February it shows up. Nice tube, big, to accommodate the oversize guides they use for the stripping and first guide, a trick shown me by the man who taught me to build my own rods years ago. Nice quality guides, and enough of them. Wrapped very well, nearly flawless, in light blue, with a hook keeper! Yay! The blank is naked unsanded graphite. The operator end: an uplocking reel seat of what looks to be stainlesss, nicely machined. A reel seat insert of exquisitely figured wood (I don’t know the species, but it’s like a finely figured maple) and a really beautiful grip, with a very proper taper,
So, it’s a thaw time around here, and I line it up to cast on the snow covered lawn, tying on a bit of yarn on the end of the tippet. First cast the rod snaps just above the second ferrule. Inspection reveals it is split longitudinally about an inch or so. I get hold of Edge, they send me a shipping label. Back in the tube, back in the mailer, and back to Edge for repair/replacement it goes. I hadn’t cared much about the warranty but there is one. This clearly was a manufacturing defect, we all agreed.
Along about April, here it comes again. I open the package and it is just as before…gorgeous. I line it up and cast it, and it’s good….different than I’m familiar with, but good.
Since then, we’ve fished panfish, smallies, and trout in lakes, and trout in fairly large and relatively small rivers. It balances well with my Snowbee Spectre 5-6 cassette reel. I use a Rio Gold WF4 line but I’ve also intermediate and sinking lines. Casting, the rod has enough power for #8 streamers or leeches under indicators. I’ve swung buggers in the current of the Spokane. It is best of course with small flies, and is smooth enough to deliver a dry fly nicely over quite a distance. The tip is flexy and sensitive which sets a hook nicely, smooth, not jerking the tippet. That being said, it seems to carries power up high into the rod, which makes it so you just don’t feel out gunned when you hook into a nice smallie or a larger trout in current. I find that a pleasant blend of rod actions.
Of course it is a 4-weight, so the heavier roles I ask it to play are likely better played by heavier rods. But this rod seems game for the tasks assigned to an all-rounder.
The naked graphite gives me a bit of the willies, here in the northern Rockies stream fishing often involves some scree scramblin’ and bushwhackin’, and a nick or two could prove fatal to this rod. I don’t know how the warranty would treat that, but I’d probably not find out, I assume responsibility when I take stuff in harms’ way. And one thing I don’t like much about 4 piece rods is it always seems one section or another turns just a bit so a few times you’ve gotta realign stuff. Maybe that just happens to me.
Anyway, I’m not quite in love, yet. I am in pretty heavy like, and I feel like the rod has me in the entrapment stage of this relationship. It’s working so far.
