Last week, I wrote about my close encounter with a highly-collectible rod, the Winston 8’6″ 4-weight BIIt, nicknamed “The Staff of Moses.” I’m still kicking myself for not buying it (despite the $800+ price tag), but hopefully when the next one comes along, I’ll have some extra cash laying around.
In the meantime, I thought a lot about that rod, and fly rods in general. I spent part of last week fishing the final pre-production prototype for a new 9′ 5-weight slated to hit the market in July. Retail will be around $350, and the rod was final except for a color change on the reel seat hardware.
What struck me about that rod was just how effective it was, especially with a heavy nymph rig. Roll casting some split shot, a bobber, and two tungsten-bead nymphs barely made the rod flinch. It’s light, sensitive, and powerful. About my only complaint is the rod’s extremely quick action, but that’s mostly personal preference. Despite what some folks out there claim, fast rods aren’t inherently bad. Fast rods that don’t load well with true-to-weight lines, and that don’t offer any sort of feedback, are awful. But those rods are few and far between these days. There’s a fast-action boogeyman out there, leftover from rods that more closely resembled broomsticks than fishing tools, but in my experience, it’s rare to run into a 5-weight rod that doesn’t offer enough feedback and sensitivity.
Anyways—that prototype I fished with made me really wonder just how much I need a rod like the Staff of Moses. Sure, from a collector’s standpoint, owning something like that is a no-brainer. As a diehard Winston fan, it’s almost a must-have. And having cast it side-by-side with the company’s new Pure 2, it’s still a rod I desperately want.
Fly rods have only improved since the BIIt was released. The cheapest decent rods on the market are leaps and bounds better than the cheap rods I used when learning to fish. A fly fisher today can spend $400 or so on a mid-priced rod and stay fairly happy for the rest of their lives, I reckon. Of course, most of us don’t stop at just one rod, and most anglers I know personally either own, or are saving up for, a flagship rod. Fly fishing is the sort of sport where you end up wanting the best you can get, not because you think it’ll transform how you fish, but because you appreciate what a great fishing and casting tool does for an angler who pays attention. Time your cast right, and the casting feels effortless. Keep the tip tracking straight, and you’re rewarded with uncanny accuracy. The best rods (which are usually the most expensive, but not always) enhance what you do well, and highlight where you need to improve.
It was Tom Morgan who said that a good fishing rod will always be a good rod, and I agree with him wholeheartedly. The going rate for used Winston IM6s is example enough of that. It just feels like fly rods have made such intuitive leaps forward, especially in the last 20 years, that you can find most of what you need without breaking the bank.
As much as I love my Winstons, and enjoy reviewing new rods every year, I’d happily fish with that prototype I used last week. Sure, it was a bit fast for my liking, but it’s light, responsive, powerful, and has a tip soft enough to lay down small dry flies with just the right amount of delicacy. It’s objectively a great fishing tool, even if I’d love a slower casting stroke.
I worry that, if and when I own my own Staff of Moses, I’ll revere it too much as a historical and collectible item to fish it all that often. I worry even more, though, that it won’t live up to the high price tag. My current daily driver rod—a 9′ 5-weight Winston BIIIx—was around $800 brand new, if memory serves correctly. It was the first expensive rod I owned, and I’ve fished it everywhere from Alaska to Arizona. That rod does just about everything I need it to, and I consider that money well spent.
But an $800+ collectible rod—that’s out of warranty, mind you—and really shines when throwing medium-to-small dry flies? That’s my favorite kind of fishing, but I rarely go out for a day with only a box of dries and a 4-weight. It’s too windy here in Wyoming to ever leave the 5 and 6-weights at home.
When that prototype rod I fished last week does everything the Staff of Moses does, sans the classic Winston action, at less than half the price, it’s hard to wrap my mind around why I want one so bad. In today’s era of great fly rods, at just about any price point, it’s especially hard to convince myself I’ll both need, and be happy with, yet another antique.
Then again, I’ve spent almost 2,000 words over the last two weeks about one fly rod, so I reckon that’s all the answer I need to both buying it, and the question posed in the title of this column.