$598 | tridentflyfishing.com
July 08, 2025
By George Daniel
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$598 | tridentflyfishing.com
For almost 20 years I’ve been making yearly pilgrimages to the trout streams of the American West. But this summer I wanted to stay home in Pennsylvania to focus on two aspects of my fly-fishing game: Popper fishing for smallmouth bass early and late in the day and dry-fly tactics on small mountain streams for trout during midday.
I enjoy the challenge of fishing small mountain streams—casting obstacles, narrow casting lanes, along with the physical challenge of hiking in to these coldwater gems. And the reward is a beautiful wild or native trout rarely breaking the 10" mark. But this is the environment where I learned to fly fish and is the arena where I continue to hone my casting and presentation skills. I love the fact the small streams frequently kick my ass. Tangles, fly line snagging boulders, overshooting my cast into the rhododendron, and biting insects hovering outside of my deadly atmosphere of DEET are all part of the game. It’s a game I never plan to win, but I cherish every moment I get to play.
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Like all anglers, I’ve developed a casting and presentation approach that suits my fly-fishing style, and we need the tools that complement our methods. I was excited to get a message from Orvis asking me to test their new Superfine graphite rods. I picked the 7'11" 4-weight and the 7'6" 5-weight for my home waters. I was especially excited to test the 7'6" 5-weight as many fly rod companies make short rods, but few make them for 5-weight lines. I’ve adopted this combination of short and heavy from the casting approach of my mentor Joe Humphreys . Again, the focus is on the line weight for casting and not for playing fish. Anglers tell me that a 5-weight is overkill for playing a small brook trout. I agree, but the small-stream casting approach Joe taught me is difficult to achieve with a 2- or 3-weight line. What Joe advises is a setup where just a little line outside the rod tip creates enough energy to shoot line toward the target. It’s essential when you only have 10' of backcast and need to cast 35' upstream in tight brush. I find a 5-weight (sometimes a 4-weight) to be the perfect line weight to create enough momentum to shoot distance when your “backdoor is closed.”
I don’t want fast-action rods for small streams as these rods often require a lot of line outside the rod tip in order to load them adequately. What I’m looking for is a rod/line combination that loads with little line outside the rod tip as the small streams I fish rarely allow you to carry long lengths of fly line. The rod needs to support a short casting movement to load the line. Excessive movements with your body or hand (not the color of line or clothes) are more likely to spook fish. The ability to make a short movement with your casting hand while achieving distance is a stealthy trait common to all the great small-stream anglers. These new Orvis Superfine rods give me the power, stealth, and the unmistakable feel of small brook trout on the end of my line. They make me want to head to the mountains.
