Ask Matt Labash Vol XXIV: Obama vs. Rangel smackdown, show business for ugly people, and a fly rod buyer’s guide

What is my favorite weight and brand of fly rod?

Though I don’t have as many rods as most typically obsessive fly fishermen, I still have enough for every occasion, about a half-dozen — everything from my 3 weight for throwing dry flies to trout on small streams, to my overpowering Sage Bass Rod (the equivalent of an 8 weight with an 11-weight line) for throwing heavy hopper/dropper combinations long distances and to pull feisty bucketmouth out of thick hydrilla beds in the summer without snapping them off. But my one-gun solution is the 6 weight. I can go heavy or light, flies-wise. It allows me to roll-cast and mend line with ease. It feels at home on nearly all water, be it still farm ponds or fast-flowing rivers. I go through stages where I use the others, depending on conditions and season, but my 6 weight is the Labrador Retriever of rods, trusty, true, and always reciprocatory when I scratch its belly.

Brands? I couldn’t care less about them. I catch over 1,000 fish a year on a fly rod — every year — and the one thing I’ve learned is that fish are not  impressed by what you catch them with, only other fishermen are. And I don’t fish for other fishermen. I fish to catch fish. Consequently, I fish almost cartoonishly low-tech. Other than for my saltwater rods, where bigger fish mean reels come into play as something other than a place to store line, I buy cheap Pflueger Medalist reels, which I turn backwards because I’m too lazy to convert them to left-hand retrieve. I like the dull black design, and feeling the vibration of its hard clicks when I reel up. As my fishing sensei/life coach, the Cool Refresher says (a name he insists I use in public to keep his true identity secret so he can continue fighting crime), a Pflueger Medalist looks like what your grandfather fished with, something he could strike a match off of to toast up a Lucky Strike after coming home from whipping the Nazis. If you don’t see the beauty of it, then you don’t see the beauty of America.

Rods-wise, I generally subscribe to fly fishing great Lefty Kreh’s admonition that with the uniformity of quality in modern fly rods, any rod much over one hundreds bucks is probably more rod than most fly fishermen can take advantage of. Which is why my favorite is a beat-up L.L. Bean rod with plumber’s tape around a cracked ferrule, and a reel-fastener that I had to Gorilla-glue after it came loose from overuse. I’ve caught more fish on that thing than I have on “better” rods that cost four times as much. The Cool Refresher outlined the simplicity ethos in an email to me once, which I periodically consult like the Proverbs, since it contains just about as much wisdom. His missive was composed in praise of a cheap Cabela’s Stowaway travel rod:

I like the Stowaway because it’s egalitarian and a
good hunka plastic. I like things that the Army would
dispense to suit a particular purpose; government issue, if
you will. If the US Army had to give all their
soldiers a fly rod, for some reason, they would give
them a Pflueger Medalist and a Cabela’s Stowaway. If
they had to give soldiers a shotgun, it would be a
Remington 870. For golf, a set of Wilson Irons. The
point is that this object meets 100% of the required
functionality with no frills. Any follower of Thoreau
would know that you simplify so that you can
experience. Anything beyond required functionality is
a distraction and is probably deeply tied to your ego.
I have a couple of high-end fly rods and really like
them (they’re good, they’re legit), but they make me a
little nervous.

Also, I tend to think that manufacturers have made
plastic fly rods about as good as they’re gonna get
(like the #2 pencil) and it’s all marketing at this
point. Instead of saying that you like Sage rods,
perhaps you should say that you prefer Sage’s posters
about bonefishing. Or the Loomis font and branding is
cool, so you buy their rods. Capiche? Motor oil is
motor oil.

Learn it. Live it. As the fishing sages say, flies are for catching fish. Overpriced  gear is for catching fishermen. Though if Orvis wants to send me their $1,400 Teton River Helios just to prove me wrong (hint), I’ll think hard about retracting this column.

Matt Labash is a senior writer with the Weekly Standard magazine. His book, “Fly Fishing With Darth Vader: And Other Adventures with Evangelical Wrestlers, Political Hitmen, and Jewish Cowboys,” was published this spring by Simon and Schuster. Have a question for Matt Labash? Submit it here.