I recently hit the road in search of some water I only fish a couple times a year. I rigged up my Scott Fibertouch six foot one weight fly rod. This particular Scott Fiberglass rod works great on the smallest of native brook trout streams in Western Maryland, and the smaller wild brown trout streams across the state. I spent the afternoon sneaking and crouching, threading casts through tight cover onto small pockets and pools. The wild browns were aggressive, taking dries on the first drift in each piece of new water. A light rod is great because most trout in these streams are a few inches bigger or smaller than the trout in the pic above. I now use the term “most” loosely, as the pic below shows a brown quite a bit larger than I expected from this stream. I switched to swinging a small streamer on my walk back out, and drew a half dozen strikes. Near the car I tried one last cast into a nice hole, and was shocked by the hard take and subsequent head shaking. When I laid eyes on the fish I never expected to bring it to hand using such a light rod and tippet. The rod was seriously overmatched, but the soft fiberglass may have helped save the 5X tippet numerous times. The brown tried every trick in the book to get off, but quickly surrendered for a picture. I never put a tape to the brown, but it was easily approaching the twenty inch mark.

Bamboo rods are certainly growing in popularity, but few anglers realize many of the fiberglass rods have similar slow actions, without the four figure price tag. Scott makes a number of models perfect for small stream brookie/brown fishing found across the state. These rods are available up to a four weight model perfect for fishing the Gunpowder, Savage or larger streams with small dry flies. A few Fibertouch rods are scheduled to arrive in the shop this Spring. These extremely soft rods are fun on trout streams of all sizes and can also handle big trout, especially when you least expect them.