Lamson E-Series (10' 2wt & 10' 3wt
I don't like nymphing for trout, though I'll admit it catches more fish than anything else I do. That was never really the appeal for me. I fish to cast, and to be somewhere worth casting — a day spent hunting tiny native trout in the Smokies is a good day whether I catch three fish or thirty. Numbers were never the point. The smaller the kit, the better the day, and that's the angler I am when I pick up these rods.
Here's the part Lamson might find useful: the E-Series is built and sold as a Euro-nymphing rod. I've never fished it that way, and I'm not going to start. What I've found instead is a rod that casts and roll casts a Wulff Triangle Taper and a hand-tied leader through overgrown, technical small-stream water as well as anything I've owned — better, in a few cases, than rods built specifically for that job.
I got here after fishing an Ultralite LL, 9'9", 4wt, for a season — the rod every online review called the one that does everything, which is exactly why I bought it. It does most things. What it doesn't do is swing the way I like. It's a heavy rod in the hand, and I was overloading the line just to feel it load properly. The 3wt E-Series, at 10 feet, has replaced it outright, and the swing weight is the difference — light, direct, nothing extra. In close, with a Triangle Taper, it does exactly what I want and nothing I don't. Balanced on a Purist II, 5+, it might be the cleanest small-stream setup I've built. When the water opens up and I need distance, a Cortland Sylk line stretches its legs without costing me any of the delicacy that makes it worth fishing in the first place — a 3wt was never built to be a distance tool, but the Sylk carries enough energy in the tip that I can still fire a line out there like a laser when the situation calls for it. The 2wt does the same trick a size down — smaller flies, smaller trout, and as much accuracy as the wind will allow me to use.
Lamson built a Euro rod. I'm using it to do the opposite, and it's the best rod in my hand for it.
