ROFFians,

I've had too little time to fish recently, what with Carol's
gallery (see: http://www.lostcanuck.com/studio/ind...past_exhibits/
for the latest exhibition). However, I recently treated myself to a
new toy, and finally got it out on the water the other day.

The toy is a Diamondglass 7' 3-wt. that I thought would be fun to
fish on my trips to the Smokies, and on a gorgeous little creek about
45 minutes from my house (see http://www.cibolo.org/ for more info on
the stretch of the stream that I fish). I paired it up with a "Sylk"
line, and put a 9' 5X tapered leader on it with about 24" of 6X
tippet. (The creek is crystal clear, and the fish are very leader-
shy.)

I spent a glorious 4+ hours on this little stretch of water, and
while the big boys (surprisingly large bass for this water) weren't
playing, I caught a lot of sunfish. Best of all, I caught them on
dries. I tried a few different flies, including my "pseudo
pstimulator", and while it got me a couple of small sunnies, I had
better luck with a #12 EHC with a bleached elk wing, tan body and
brown hackle.

Casting in this tiny creek consisted of trying to get just enough
of the flyline out past the rod tip to be able to turn the leader
over, and when I did, the glass rod was a joy to fish. As per the
thread on long leaders, I was throwing lots of slack line casts, but
that seemed to be the ticket for these fish.

Also, the rod rollcasts like a mofo; I'm normally horrible at
rollcasting, but I was able to flick out gentle casts under pretty
tight brush, and put them where I wanted.

Finally, it appears to have enough backbone to handle decent
fish. I was catching sunnies in the 6-8" range, and I could feel
their every move, but it felt like it had plenty in reserve.

So, make fun of me for being a Luddite if you wish (shut up,
Claspy), but with this and my TFO Finesse 7'6" 4-wt., I think I've got
a couple of great rods for the Smokies.


Chuck Vance