Rod Love the Third: Old School Sage Glass

A couple of days ago I read through a thread on one of my favorite fiberglass fly rod forums, in which people were answering the question "What one rod would you choose if you could only have one rod?" That question got me to thinking about fly rods, specifically my fly rods, and I quickly came up with an answer. It was good that my answer came quickly, because if I had thought about it for much longer I might have changed my mind about 5 or 20 times... The one rod that I own that can handle pretty much any situation I put it in is my beloved Sage 476SFL, a beautiful old school glass rod that is as sweet as can be!

Unless you have been living under a rock for the past 40 years, you should know that Sage is probably the leader in technologically advanced graphite fly rods. Their current rods probably are more technologically sound than my smartphone, and anglers across the globe love them. That's all good and fine, but I prefer their older rods, especially their LL series of graphite rods from the early 90s, and their SFL series of fiberglass rods from the 1980s.

That brings me to this edition of Rod Love. My Sage 476SFL is an awesome casting tool. 4-weight rods are probably the perfect trout fishing rod, and my 7'6" Sage glass rod is no exception. It has the finesse to cast a small fly at short distances, yet it has the power to launch streamers and big nymphs on large water. It loads and unloads smoothly, and somehow my fly always ends up right where I want it. Or at least as close as someone with my casting skill can get it... It's not noodly like some other glass rods, and not too stiff like most of the newer graphite stuff. It's pretty much perfect!

It can be hard to find old school Sage glass rods, but I would suggest you keep on the lookout. If you can find one I am sure you will love it. I also have heard rumors that Sage may be coming out with a new line of glass rods...That should be interesting, if it actually happens... As I mentioned earlier, Sage is at the forefront of graphite rod technology. It will be fun to see how they use that technology with fiberglass.

Favorite Creek

The Trout Season has been open around here in one form or another for almost 9 whole months, and in all that time I hadn't gotten over to my favorite stream yet this year. I really did not want to have to go into the winter without doing so, so I took the day off of work yesterday and hit it. My plan was to hit my fave first, and then head to a nearby brook trout stream in the afternoon. I wasn't sure what to expect since we have gotten quite a bit of rain in the past couple of weeks, but I was cautiously optimistic that the water would be in good shape. When I got to the first stream it was obvious that it had been up and out of its banks recently, but now just had a slight tinge of color in it. In other words, perfect!

My favorite stream...

Action shot!

There are not many reliable insect hatches on this stream, so I figured I would be fishing subsurface all day. The night before I had tied up a bunch of my Mushroom & Swiss Buggers and devised a new caddis pupae thingy with a CDC hackle. I love adding CDC to my nymphs, as I have written about before both here and in Fly Tyer magazine, but I had never done a caddis nymph with CDC. I was excited to see what the trouts thought of it.

CDC Caddis thingy...

A nice brown on the new caddis pupa thingy

I started the day with my new caddis imitation, and it didn't take long to see that the fish really, really liked it. I caught about a dozen in the first 45 minutes, all browns ranging in size from 6-12". After that first hour the water started to rise and get a little dirtier. The fishing turned off for a while.

A beautiful, brand new Mushroom & Swiss Bugger, ready to get chewed to bits.

This fish kept swimming up on the wet bank after I tried to release him. He should have followed the arrow, but he's a fish...

An old guy strolled by and watched me catch this modestly sized brown, then he insisted on taking my photo. At least I look good...

I was just about to call it quits and head over to the other creek to fish for brookies when I decided to switch to the Mushroom & Swiss. Right off the bat I hooked a nice brown, and then another and another and another. And a dark and fat brook trout. All the fish seemed to be in a hurry to fatten up. Maybe they were getting ready for winter or the spawning season or they hadn't eaten much when the water had been high and muddy, or maybe they have trouble pushing themselves away from the buffet, like me... Whatever the case, the fishing was so good I never did make it over to the brook trout stream. I am not much of a fish counter, which is good because that means there is no way for you to contradict my claims, but I would say I caught upwards of 60 trout throughout the day. All browns with the exception of the one brook trout and 2 chubs. And all of my Mushroom & Swiss Buggers were either lost or got completely chewed up.  I guess it's time to tie up some more!

Last fish of the day.

My last Mushroom & Swiss Bugger at the end of the day... It was a good run!

Gear Used: Unstructured Glass 804-4 fiberglass rod, Lamson LP-1.5 Lite reel, unnamed green biot-bodied CDC-hackled bead-head nymph size 12, and Mushroom & Swiss Buggers size 8.

A Tough Day

I learned about Eagle Creek a few years ago. What I had learned was that it’s a trout stream that flows through the town of Savage, MN, which is a suburb of Minneapolis. I had also learned that Eagle Creek was the site of a big brouhaha between conservationists and developers back in the day, with the conservationists coming out on top. Now there is a wide corridor along the entire length of the stream in which nothing can be built. 

Our first look at Eagle Creek.

Bryon's fly choice to start out with.

My buddy, Bryon, and I went down to Savage to check it all out. What we found was a very small trout stream flowing through a tangle of trees, weeds, and brush that didn’t look like it had seen many fishermen recently. The stream looked like it had had some habitat improvement, as it was narrow and deep in some spots and had undercut banks that looked very fishy. The problem was that it was so small. I could step across it in many spots, and where it widened out it was too shallow to hold any fish. Despite the fishy-looking spots, it was almost impossible to get into position to make an accurate cast without snagging some weeds, getting caught on the backcast, or spooking whatever fish there were. At least the water was nice and cold, because the air temperature was hot! Overall it was a pretty miserable experience, and no trouts were caught. Perhaps we will go back to Eagle Creek again in the Spring, so there won’t be as many streamside plants to deal with.

No fish yet, but at least my new floppy hat was keeping me shaded.

Since our efforts at Eagle Creek went unrewarded, we decided to check out the nearby Credit River, which supposedly supports trout in some areas, and for sure is supposed to have a healthy carp population in others. Where we stopped the river was very low and clear, and there was no sign of any piscatorial life whatsoever. Strike 2.

So we worked our way over to the Vermillion River. The Vermillion is known to hold trout; rainbows are stocked near the town of Farmington; browns reproduce naturally throughout the rest of it, although not at real high numbers. We fished right in Farmington, and in a couple of hours the only fish we saw were some big ol’ carp finning slowly in one of the deeper pools. We would have happily fished for the carp, but they were hiding out in a jumble of downed tree limbs and overhanging branches. Strike 3.

The fishing was bad, but the casting was great with my T&T Heirloom glass rod.

A fishing report without any fish is pretty weak, so we did stop at a local lake on the way home to catch some bass and/or bluegills. Bryon caught both, but my terrible luck continued, at least for a while. Finally I caught one little bluegill on an orange wooly worm. After that I figured I might as well quit while I was ahead. It was a tough day!

Bryon with a sweet backcast.

Orange Wooly Worm