Like many out west, I’ve been waiting for flows & runoff to subside & finally got just plain tired of re-arranging the flies, fiddling with tackle & planning. Jeez, it’s the 4th of July weekend and I wasn’t going to let flows at 75th percentile slow me down! Plus, my brother & his friend & my son and I had an eastern slope of the cascades walk & wade day planned! We got to the river and immediately saw adult stones hatching, so we tied on big bushy dries!
For the day, I chose to bring my Dennis Stone prototype 4wt 7'9" 3pc rod. Dennis’ description of a “progressive med action light trout rod…quick loading from just out the tiptop out to about 45 to 50 ft with delicate control of the fly throughout this range” is spot on. As a bonus, this rod comes on the postal scale at just 2 3/4 oz. total rod weight & is a solid hex. I matched it up with a Kineya 301 loaded up with 4dt sharkskin and the rod felt ‘just right’ balanced & as light as the other graphite set-ups the others were fishing!
The water was high, but crystal clear and we had great dry fly action all day!
Dennis’ rod was a pleasure casting terrestrials all day & it handled fish well too. I could feel the head shakes & definitely enough backbone to handle the occasional bigger guys that seemed to come out of nowhere.
(credit to Joe who took all of the good photos - the others were off my phone camera)
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