I've been following guide Dagur Árni Guðmundsson for awhile online as he splits his time between Iceland (a place I'd like to get to) and California posting up images of unbelievable fish caught on glass, including quite a few in this post on his Moonlit Fly Fishing Nirvana PhoenixGlass 6-weight.
I asked Dagur if he'd mind sharing some thoughts on why he enjoys fly fishing with fiberglass fly rods and he sent a great read along with a few of his favorite photographs.
I have a feeling this won't be the last we'll see from Dagur on The Fiberglass Manifesto. Enjoy...
Dagur wrote... "I used to be kind of a skeptic when it came to glass rods, or maybe not a skeptic but I wasn’t fully sold on the idea of glass rods being great in a lot of circumstances. I’ve always had a few lying around, a 3-weight for small streams, and a 6-weight for bass bugs and carpin’, but the rods I had were like wiggly noodles, and I basically used them for fun scenarios when I didn’t expect to need a rod that had to deliver in tough conditions, they were never my go to rods, but I always had fun with them.
I’m no engineer, so I’m not all clued in on the e-glass, s-glass, and all the alphabet of glass rods, but I can tell a faster action from a slower action rod, and most of the glass I was used to was slower than a drunk Jeopardy contestant. On a whim, I decided to grab myself a faster action glass rod, the Moonlit Nirvana 6 weight, mostly because of that beautiful blue translucent color and the shape of the grip, thinking it would be a fun carpin’ stick for calm days and specific scenarios. Lo and behold, there is more than one way to , and not all glass rods are created equal. I love this thing and find myself grabbing it more than any of my other rods, especially for carp and when throwing big streamers on sinking lines. Those are very different techniques and styles of fishing, carp require delicate casts and smaller flies, whereas for big streamers for trout and bass you’re tossing a heavier line and fishing in a completely different way, all of which shows the versatility of the modern glass rods.
Carp are spooky fish, but they’re also really strong. With a glass rod I am able to lay the line down softly, but also put the wood to the fish when they are starting to kick my ass. With a “normal” graphite six weight, there are definitely limits to how much pressure you can put on a fish during a fight. With glass, come to find out, you can do the ass kicking, as I discovered unexpectedly this summer while throwing streamers to brown trout in Iceland. I was tossing a sink tip line, big 6-8 inch flies, which the fast glass actually handles beautifully in the crazy wind of 50-75 mph winds that can gust through the southern Icelandic flatlands, when a 40 inch Atlantic salmon comes out of nowhere and slams the fly. Somehow I was able to land this thing with the rod bent through the cork, which must have looked hilarious to anyone watching, and I got the thing in after only a 20-30 minute fight, which is a pretty respectable time for these hard fighting fish. After that, there’s nothing I don’t think I can handle with the glass.
I spend my fall, winter and spring seasons mainly chasing carp on the Central Coast of California, in some pretty diverse fisheries. On any given day, I may need to accurately cast 20 feet or less to tailing fish, or launch 50-90 foot casts at dry fly eating carp cruising the wind lines. I need to be able to accurately deliver a fly in often high winds in big lakes, and throw single hand spey casts accurately with little backcasting room. All of this I can do, well, with the glass, all while protecting the often light tippets (for the size of fish) we use on spooky carp in the fall or winter.
All that being said, fishing should be fun. That’s why most of us are doing it, and at the end of the day, glass rods are just a blast. I love a beautiful color on my rods, it makes me happy for some reason to see that translucent glow bent on a fish in the sunshine, and it puts a smile on my face when I’m launching flies into a heavy headwind and the rod flexes like a spaghetti noodle in the back but then just shoots a bullet into the wind and most of the fly line shoots out and lays down perfectly. Even when it’s not the best tool for the job, as when a 9 foot graphite rod would help me carry more line over the brushes and trees behind me, I still find myself grabbing the 8 foot glass rod, just for the fun of it all. You can get all technical as you like with fishing, but I find the glass just reminds me to have fun. That’s why I’m out here after all."
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