My favorite fly rod for the last twenty years has been a Graphite II Sage Light Line nine foot four weight. My brother, Dan, got it for me when he was working at a fly shop in Stockton, California. It wasn’t my most expensive rod and certainly not my newest one. It has been my constant companion for two decades and I have caught literally thousands of trout with it. My beloved Sage had a tip delicate enough to deliver size twenty four dry flies on 8X tippet but had enough backbone to cast woolly buggers or land twenty seven inch Brown trout. It had a reversed half wells grip with superfine front taper that fit my hand like a glove.
I had paired the rod with an Orvis CFO 123 reel and a Cortland 444SL fly line. It cast like a dream and with its light weight I could fish it all day with no fatigue. When I had owned it for about four years, the butt cap came off and I had my initials engraved on it before I epoxied it back on. I applied a decal that was a ruler on the blank so I could measure my fish.
A couple of months ago my wife, Lori, and I drove over to the Norfork River. We went for the sole purpose of catching trophy trout and we were not disappointed. It was sunny with mild temperatures. Since it was a Wednesday, we were the only anglers there. Lori did well and I caught several nice fish on nymphs early and finished the day fishing grasshoppers. My best fish was a fat twenty-one inch cutthroat. Lori’s was a twenty inch rainbow. At the end of the day, we stored our rods in my D. B. Dunn double case.
When we got home, Lori carried the case into the house and put it down. She heard a snap and she realized that the tip of the Light Line had slipped out and when she set the case down the tip broke. I was devastated. Since I had been the one to put the rod into the case, it was obvious that I had not closed it securely. I had inadvertently put in motion a series of events that would destroy my favorite fly rod.
I went online and visited the Sage website. I downloaded the document to send in my rod for repair. I filled it out, wrote a forty dollar check, carefully packed my rod and mailed it to Sage. The website said that the process could take a while.
In the interim, I needed a fly rod. I tried my ancient Winston. I have fished the eight foot four weight for over twenty five years. It is a first generation graphite and very soft. It does a great job protecting light tippets but cannot handle the big fish we have around here. I decided to reserve it for the Smokies. I therefore opted to order a Temple Fork Outfitters Finesse eight foot nine inch four weight to fill the void. It arrived in three days, I immediately took it fishing. The first day we had high water and I was fishing woolly buggers. It seemed like a lot of work to cast the woollies with the TFO. The next day we went to the Norfork with low water and it cast like a dream. I fished very small flies (size twenty-two) and it handled them well even with a fat twenty-two inch cutt on. I also cast size ten grasshoppers and had no problems. It was near the equal of my beloved Light Line.
A month passed. I was fishing the TFO and catching fish but I had not heard from Sage and decided to give them a call. I talked to Tammy. She told me that there was some good news and some bad news. I asked for the bad news. She said that my rod predated the lifetime guarantee and they no longer made repair parts for that model. The good news was that for one hundred twenty dollars Sage would make me a two piece Graphite III Light Line rod. It was good news. I told them to go ahead and make the rod. I received it in three weeks and immediately strung it up and took it to the side yard to give it a cast. It is a bit heavier but it casts like a dream. The grip is a bit larger but a little judicious sanding will straighten that out. It is not my beloved rod but a new generation based on the best characteristics of the original.
The only way to complete the circle was to christen it in the holy waters of the Norfork River at McClellan’s. I went there on a Friday and there was only one other angler there. I waded down in the catch and release area to my favorite hole. I tied on a small midge nymph and felt the comforting pull of a good fish on my first cast. I stayed there for a long time catching trout after trout. The familiar feel of the rod convinced me that all was right with the world and this Light Line was a suitable replacement for my old friend. I look forward to fishing with it for the next twenty years!
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