I was out last week on a favorite tailwater, where I expected the streamer fishing to be excellent, and the nymphing to provide midday action if the sun was high and the sky devoid of clouds. Instead, the river was full of moss, off-color, and the only bugs the fish seemed interested in were the small blue-winged olives.
The 6-weight and sink-tip line were stowed away, and instead of my usual 9′ 5-weight Winston B3x (the go-to dry fly rod for fishing larger rivers) I pulled an unmarked 9′ 5-weight from the boat’s quiver. This was a rod I’m testing ahead of its release in 2026, and the only thing I’d been asked to judge was how it cast. The components and finish weren’t final, but the blank was.
I’ve thrown this rod around for a bit in 2025, but I haven’t stretched it out with small dry flies. This was fall fishing on a tailwater on a bluebird day. The fish were pickier than I am about my buffalo wings, which meant 6x tippet, long leaders, and flies that only got smaller from a size 20.
The fishing was slow, the hatch never started in earnest, and I was left feeling not so much that I’d messed anything up, but that the river didn’t put its best foot forward. Instead of judging this new fly rod on its ability to fight and land fish, I instead got to throw 60-foot casts with long leaders. As the day wore on and the hatch grew sparser, we couldn’t get the boat too close to rising fish without them spooking. It was long casts or bust.
I’m a middling caster, at best, but I was impressed with this rod’s ability to throw tight loops, deliver them accurately, and do it all without sacrificing feel. It’s a fast stick, but with enough feedback that I never felt disconnected from the art of casting. All that is to say, it’s a good fly rod, and I’m excited to see its reception once it releases next year.
I have to be intentionally coy about the rod, by the way. The company producing it wants the details hush-hush until closer to the release date. Speaking of—this rod is slated to retail at $350, a number that surprised me. It doesn’t have the pleasant action, history, nostalgia, or soul of my Winston, but objectively, it’s every bit as good a dry fly rod. In fact, it’s probably a better all-purpose rod since it’s a bit stiffer and roll casts nicely, and has the backbone for larger nymph rigs.
That rod’s performance brought to mind something Tom Morgan was famous for saying, and which I heard from him when I picked up my 8’6″ 5-weight rod from his shop outside Bozeman a year before he died.
“A good fly rod is always a good fly rod.”
That’s why vintage Winstons and old Sage XPs still go for serious money on eBay, and why Scott hasn’t messed with the G Series for years. Good rods are always good, and I’d argue the only thing that changes is a company’s need to market and sell something else as the next best thing.
Advancements have been made in rod design. There’s no doubt there. Our rods are lighter, stronger, and inherently more accurate than the rods from 20 years ago. But are they really that much better? And for that matter, what if you took the same tapers that made the XPs such great rods, but rebuilt them with modern materials?
All this is to say that it doesn’t take much for a fly rod to be great. The only thing separating my Winston B3x and that $350 rod I tested last week is about $500 and more than a decade of fishing memories. The Winston is sweeter, softer, and I’ll always have a spot for it, but when I look at both rods objectively, it’s almost a toss up.
We’ll still debate and argue the merits of faster and slower-action rods, of one company over another. But there’s no getting around the fact that there’s an awful lot of great fly rods out there these days, and often in places you don’t expect.