West Coast gear meets East Coast tunes

Time/Date: 0135 PST, 09-Jul-11
Location: Somewhere in northern BC, next to a bunch of glaciers

My roommate did me a solid & picked up a package for me at the courier yesterday.

This might not seem like a big deal to most folks, but this particular courier allows parcel pickup for approximately 17 minutes, split into uneven intervals, each day between the hours of 5PM-5:45PM.

I'm sure it wasn't convenient for him.

But this post isn't about foolish parcel pickup counter hours.

It's about the package waiting for my inglorious return to the right coast (as opposed to the left coast. I'm not implying which coast is correct).

The package, shipped from Bainbridge Island, Washington, is...

...my new Redington Predator rod & Rise reel.

Matched with Rio's smallmouth taper fly line (6wt), this will be seven feet & ten inches of popper-, diver- & Clouser-chucking, bass-fighting goodness.

Why does this particular rod belong in the quiver?

After catching a decent number of smallies on both my 9' 5wt (TFO TiCr) and 9' 8wt (Redington CPX), I came to the following conclusions:

• The 5-weight is a blast once smallies are hooked, but casting big deerhair poppers & weighted flies with it are a challenge.
• The 8-weight definitely handles casting those bigger flies, but overpowers the fish (which wouldn't be an issue if I was a tournament angler but...I'm not).
• Nine feet of fly rod is tough to deal with on overgrown banks of rivers & streams in town.

Combining a fast action tip in a 7'10", 6-weight rod with the aggressive taper of Rio's smallmouth line, the Predator rod should be the ticket for casting those bigger flies in confined spaces.

Of course, with this setup being more for city than country, I decided to forego the typical gunmetal grey & smoke finishes of my Lamson & Redington reels. This called for some flash. A little bling-bling. I wanted a reel that shouted, "Here I am, fishy, and damn, I look fly! Now get on my hook!"

Enter the Rise reel. Can you say P-I-M-P?

I can't wait to get home & try it out...once I come down from this mountain...

Here's a fun summertime song for y'all. I'm sure my singing of it last night kept our curious grizzly bear a little further away from the project site than he's normally been.

(Don't forget, Joel Plaskett will be playing FredRock 2011 later this summer. Ticket info here.)

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