Gear for Fly-Fishing can become very complicated for someone new. Personally I stick with a 9ft. rod in the range of #6-#9 weight for most of my Steelhead fishing in the NW. In buying a new setup do you research first, make sure you know what rivers you are going to be fishing. Think about what your going to have to pack around while hiking up and down the rivers. I see allot of people using spey rods these day, they are great and one of my favorite rods is a Hardy Gem two handed rod. The problem I see is that most people use them on water that they are not intended for. High up on the NF stilly is not a good place to be spey casting a 15ft. rod just to cast across stretch maybe 50ft. wide. Nor do you want to be walking through the woods with a 15ft spey rod that you just spent you month salary on. So look at what you will be fishing and go from there. Big water big rod. Small water and pocket water 9ft rod. Buy first what you will need the most and then collect the rest over time.

I am a huge supporter of Lamiglas rods. They are little stiff then most rods on the market but there over all performance is superb. Of course you have other great choices; Sage, Loomis, Redington, Scott, T&T, Hardy bros., FishLogic and so on down the list. but you will find better performance out of a $200 Lamiglas then a $200 Super Brand, in my opinion of course. So try out some rods before you buy, it is a must, the worst thing is buying a rod that you end up hating because of its small faults that show up in your casting.

You will end up buying a couple different outfits for situation I have a; Dry Fly #6 and #7, Wet/Nymph #7/8 and #9, Nymph #9, all around #8 and a Bamboo #8. I have use them all in different ways then I intended but when I leave my home I mostly know what I am going to be doing.

Well soon as you have your rod you must buy a reel. Well don't get to fancy I say, but try to buy large arbor, with a good disc drag. As you can see above I own a Medallist which was the reel to have 20-30 years ago. And in my opinion it still is a great reel. The drag works good enough for Steelhead because you end up palming it anyway. The price is only around $35.00 and you buy spools cheap. Yet I also own a Pflueger Trion that has a outstanding drag that can stop a horse if needed and a large arbor and nice handle and light design, price $130.00. I would shop around and look for something that is going to balance out your rod and not tier you out. STH reels are great for the reason they have pop out cassettes so you can change line and the cassettes are $5.00 compared to $60.00 and up for the Trion and other higher priced reels (Abel, FlyLogic, Lamson, Tioga and etc.). Another great low price reel is Okuma for about $80.00 you can pick a i7/8 or i8/9 and they are great. The spools a are cheap and the drag in awesome. I use Okuma for all my Salmon rods, in one day I landed 15 Chums on a 9ft #9 Lamiglas w/ a Okuma i8/9 with out one problem. I was using 12lb. test and they never got fatter then 20-30yards from me. Take you rod with you when shopping for a reel so you can try it on for size and weight. The people at any established fly shop are going to give great answers to any questions.

Next thing is line. ahhh to many choices to even discuss. I suggest finding a line you like by first understand how you will be fishing it. I prefer Full Floating line because of their mending capabilities and I can see what the water is doing. There is a brand of fly line called Olympic fly line which nobody really like because it cost only $13.00 compared to the $59.99 that all other fly line cost. Well Olympic gets their line from Cortlands (or another good brand) mess ups, like it was cut to short, the paint was sprayed wrong or there is a small defect in the out side coating. Buy floating, sink tip and full sink line in this brand for less then it would cost you to buy a Name brand and try them out for yourself. Of course everyone will disagree with that logic (because most think that if you don't have the money to spend then you should be with the rest of the poor bait casting people and not fly fishing), but that's fine, save yourself a couple bucks at first and try one line each week at stretches of water you will be fishing and see how each one fishes and the difference between them. You will learn more about fly fishing in those three weeks then any other three weeks, as long as you questions yourself. Try to take some one with you and watch how you line reacts in the water, at all depths and speeds. When you find a line that is going to provide you with a good presentation to the fish, then spend the money on the Cortland, Rio or SA line.

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