From: Ken Fortenberry

There's nothing wrong with a one weight in the hands of a skilled
angler

Depends where you're fishing, and the size of the fish.

and there'e no guarantee that a klutz won't play a fish to
death with a 7 weight.

Sad, but true.

Out west on small feeders where the beast
of the stream is an 8" cutthroat, and it's my favorite rod for those
pockets behind the house-sized boulders in North Cackalacky that
are home to beautiful 6" wild brookies.

Agreed, but we were discussing sizeable fish on the Madison, IIRC. And would a
one weight be all that much less sporting than a three weight. On the
Farmington River in CT, the two weight rod seems to be the new favorite. This
is a sizeable stream where the average trout is probably 10" to 12", but there
are a considerable number of 16" to 20"+ fish as well. The same guys that have
fallen in love with the two weights also will tell you that if you are using
tippet larger than 9x you won't catch a thing. I have seen a number of good
fish played to complete exhaustion on these rigs. My outfit of choice here is
an 8-1/2 foot five weight Orvis Henry's Fork rod, and generally 6x tippet, 7x
if I'm fishing flies smaller than size 20. It is a very soft rod that protects
a light tippet, and is capable of landing a big fish without playing it till
it's gills are white. And I usually do quite well there.

I wouldn't recommend a one weight for steelhead, ;-) but for small
fish in small places it's a very fun tool and not at all unsporting.

Point taken. I wasn't really considering tiny streams and small fish, I was
taking the Madison situation as a point of reference.

BTW, does your one weight actually take a one weight line, or is it one of
these "one weights" that's actually a two or three weight?


George Adams

"All good fishermen stay young until they die, for fishing is the only dream of
youth that doth not grow stale with age."
---- J.W Muller