Beginner fly rod

[thinhorn_AK]

Skip the beginner rods and get a mid-price rod from a top of the line company or find a used high end rod. Sage, Scott, g loomis and T&T all make a solid “mid price”rod that you can not only grow into but not grow out of.

Reels aren’t that important for trout fishing, they mostly just hold your line BUT the cheaper ones are made from cast metal and can easily crack if you drop them. Get a nice machined reel from a good company like a Galvan rush light or a Ross animas.

You’ll pay a bit more up front but you won’t feel the need to upgrade nearly as fast as if you buy some bullshit echo or a redington and then actually get into fly fishing.

 

[IdahoBeav]

Mid level rods are risky IMO. Aside from a Scott Flex and maybe a few others, I’d say they’re on par with Echo, Redington, TFO, etc. they just cost twice as much.

 

[thinhorn_AK]

Mid level rods are risky IMO. Aside from a Scott Flex and maybe a few others, I’d say they’re on par with Echo, Redington, TFO, etc. they just cost twice as much.

The Scott flex isn’t even made anymore. Hasn’t been for years. Their current mid price rod is the session which is basically a rebadged radian which is a cult classic flyrod. The mid price rods form sage are their former top of the line models. The T&T zone is also a rebadged former model and the cheaper out a bit on hardware to provide a high end blank for the price (Scott does the same thing with their wave saltwater rods, great blank, money saved on hardware gets the cost down).

With that in mind, I’d have to 100% disagree with you EXCEPT in the case of g loomis rods, those imx v2 rods are broomsticks even in the smaller freshwater versions. I’d say TFO is better than echo but I’ve found TGO rods to be delicate, the only echo rod I ever had was pretty shitty, it was an ion xl 6wt, talk about a clunky, chunky, flimsy rod.

With that in mind, if you look around I’ve been able to score lots of high end rods for ~ 50-60% or retail.

 

[Yoder]

I started with a cheap Chinese Maxcatch rod from Amazon. It was actually a decent rod.