"George Cleveland" wrote in message
...
I just finished reading the Lyon's reprint of J. Edson Leonard's book
"Feather in the Breeze". Leonard was a fisherman who started
flyfishing, mostly in the East, in the 1920s. In his chapter "The Long
and the Short Of It", he refers to one of his favorite bigger river
trout rods as being a 9 1/2' Phillipson cane that threw a DT8F(!)
line. He claimed that it would "place a dryfly as softly as a thistle
dropped by an upstream gust". Interesting.

My question is, other than the pleasure of experiencing the lightness
in the hand of the rod itself, do you think it is really necessary for
people to use very light lines to be able to catch trout? g.c.


That book is on my get list, how did you like it overall?

No, but the "modern" graphite rod and plastic lines make it much easier to
cast and play fish in the smaller weights. Having said that, I know a guy
(an old timer) who only fishes for trout with six and seven weights, and
that includes Wisconsin tricos.