I don’t get to do a lot of fly fishing anymore, but I have a trip coming up this spring where I’ll be along a small trout stream in North GA. Most North GA trout streams have low hanging limbs and no room for a back cast, learning to roll cast is a must. On the even smaller and tighter streams like the one where I will be, I will flip the fly parallel to the water and under the over hanging brush and under cuts, think of it as using a sling shot with a fly, it’s not artful, but it’s effective. For this type of fishing I leave my Sage and Orvis at home and take my el Cheapo, basically it’s a rod tip glued into a foam handle. I tie the line to the handle, thread it through the eye, tie on the fly and flip. I carry about 12′ of line, a 15″ leader, 24″ of tippet and small assortment of dries and nymphs flies. I catch mostly Rainbows 8-10″ and lots of keychain size. The rod and foam handle are 24″ and weigh 1.1 oz.

Even with a 24″ rod in the side pocket of my pack the tip still gets caught on low hanging limbs and vines. Now comes the MYOG rod case, I went to Home Depot and bought a fluorescent bulb tube, about $2, found in the lighting department, cut the tube to length and capped the ends. The tubes come with end caps one end I glued the cap in place with epoxy the top end I used a plastic bottle cap, it fits tight enough to carry w/o falling out. Case weighs 1.1 oz with rod 2.2 oz.

-Jason