Decathlon Fly Rods

Tom and I have 3 Decathlon Fly Rods. These are relatively inexpensive and do the job of casting and landing fish very well. I'm not too fussed about spending a lot on a rod as long at it is very special or vintage cane, but why pay a fortune for a casual river rod - something that can be pulled out when are on the way home from the lake and you see a couple of brownies in the stream. You don't need a $700 G-Loomis for that.

It is obvious that one should have longer rods for casting further on large rivers and open water and shorter, lighter rods for precise casting in smaller rivers and brooks. It is not just the rod length, but the capacity to carry a certain weigh of line. You don't want a heavy #5 or #6 weight line in a small stream only a couple of meters across, rather you want a light line with a delicate touch.

So looking for lightness and precision, our most recent rod is a small 7'5" Geologic Fly 500 #4 rod. It comes in a nice cordura covered tube. Very light indeed, it will be used with the very light Pflueger President reel that will be arriving soon and 4 weight line - more on both reel and line later.

My personal large river or lake rod is the 8'6" Caperlan Fly 300 #5 rod. I use this with WF6 line on the Vision Koma reels.

Tom mainly uses the older Decathlon Set Fly 8'5" DT4-WF5 rod. We bought this in about 1999 when we first embarked on fly fishing in France. It works really well and is the perfect rod to chuck into the back of the car with the casting rods just in case we get some fly action.

Decathlon have continued to produce good rods over the years. The sub-brand names have changed, but the quality has remained. They reels unfortunately are not up to standard. Their current range of plastic reels are so cheap that they are not locked away in a glass cabinet as the older better quality and more expensive reels used to be.