Right out of the tube, the rod was something of a revelation - it felt like the love child of a toothpick and my bendy, you'll pry-it-from-my-cold-dead-hands 8.5' 4wt Diamondglass fly rod. While I was still in the shopping phase (I'm a slow buyer), the Superfine Touch in the 8.5' 3wt or 8' 2wt formats represented real temptations, but I'm a gruff, slightly crazy, 'hey you kids get offa my lawn' kind of guy, and to me, that says 4wt. When I fish small streams, I vacillate between an 8' 5wt Phillipson and an 8.5' 4wt Diamondglass, so you can see how the 8' 4wt was right in my wheelhouse. In fact, when Chris Raine and I sat down and invested an hour discussing the ultimate small stream bamboo fly rod, we decided it looked like a 7'9'-8' hollowbuilt, light-actioned 4wt with a tip light enough to curl a leader and a couple feet of line under that overhanging brush. Ian Rutter fishes his 8' 4wt Scott G2 all over the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, John Gierach's fave small stream rod is his 7'9' 4wt Walter Babb bamboo, and the 8' 4wt Winston TMF (Tom Morgan Favorite) is still around after a bazillion years. The 8' 4wt is the classic small stream fly rod. When I had to choose the rod (disclosure: I did an ad trade-out), I tumbled for the 8' 4wt instead of one of the more exotic lengths or weights, and for good reason. Still, because I'm a benevolent rod snob, I agreed to test the Superfine Touch, especially once Orvis' Tom Rosenbauer said many modern fly rods are designed to load well at 30'-40' ranges (which neatly explains all the overlined rods we see on the river), while these rods were designed to load at normal small stream ranges (15'-30'). We all have our hangups, and mine involves marrying the latest high-modulus technology to supposedly smooth, bendy small-stream fly rods, the idea being the two rarely play nicely together.Ī lot of today's fly rod marketing involves words like 'power' and 'performance,' and neither is much in demand on a stream you can jump across. I'll be honest I was prepared to *not* like the Orvis Superfine Touch fly rod. Can A Modern, High-Tech Fly Rod Really Turn The Head Of A Cranky, Low Modulus Small Stream Fly Fisherman?

Orvis superfine touch review