re Sage 5120
pcknshvl said:
Do a search of member Grampa Spey's posts. He has that rod, and some others, that he uses various Outbounds and Skagits on, as well as more traditional Spey lines.
Tom
Thanks, Tom. I sent Billy Spey a private message re this great little rod.
The best line so far is the Rio Outbound WF 10 Floater. The 5120 works well with the Mid Spey 6/7 and even the 7/8, the WC 678 and the Skagit 450. The Rio OB WF 10F basically does what all the other lines does by itself. It easily handles the three basic Skagit casts with 15' leader and a floating fly or an intermediate or a 7' or 12' Rio Sinking leaders with heavier flies. Sometimes I have to pull the head in past the rod tip to mid length or a little more to cast the sinking leaders.
I'm very pleased with my limited abilities with the OBs with the 5120 and 6126. When experienced casters like Bob Pauli and Simon use the OBs with these rods, the performance borders on the :Eyecrazy: WOW!. Of course these two gentlemen :hihi: could probably cast sewing thread with a broomstick farther than most of us can with balanced gear.
The OB lines need to be stretched out before using them, and in particuliar the green running line section. I still have to remove coils during the day when I use these lines from the green running/shooting section.
The Rio WC 5/6 was a failure in my old inexperienced hands. The Sage line for this rod was so bad, I didn't buy the rod after trying it at the Marin show for close to two years

. Neither line loaded the rod, nor did the OB WF 8F. I tried various WCer sizes without tip 2, and my performance was not good.
Finally, as Ed Ward has noted, these so called trout rods are not wimp or woosie rods. They are probably equivalent to 7-8 weight one handed rods. You can feel a 2# fish and have fun, and bring in bigger fish. I had one very large Large Mouth Bass kick my butt with this rod this summer. Things were going well until he got into about 15' from me and saw me. Then it was like trying to control a pit bull with fins. He got into some reeds and tore my gummy minnow out of his mouth. He did a catch and release on me. The farm owner and fellow fisher's estimate was the bass was somewhere from 8 to 10#'s. The rest of the fish caught were brought in with no problem re my goal of 1 minute per pound to avoid lactic acid build up in the fish.