What You Get When You Upgrade Your Fly Rod, with Shawn Combs

The Orvis Fly-Fishing Podcast

James Hathaway

Bass, Fishing, Bonefish, Wilderness, Flyfishing, Trout, How To, Steelhead, Bluegill, Fly, Orvis, Sports, Salmon, Panfish, Education, Rosenbauer

4.8 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 6 January 2025

⏱️ 87 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

What benefits do you get when you upgrade from a $40 Big Box store rod to a Clearwater or Encounter? How much better is a Recon rod, and will you see and appreciate the performance improvements? And what are you missing out on by getting a Recon instead of a Helios? This is a common podcast question, and I've asked Shawn Combs [44:53], Orvis rod and reel designer, to walk us through the various price points of Orvis rod and how the rods differ. There is a true price/value equation in Orvis rod models, but is the difference important to you? We hope to guide you through those questions.

In the Fly Box this week, we have some terrific questions. No phone calls this week so they are all e-mail questions, including:

Which river types are richer in insect life, and does that affect your success with dry flies?
Why is there so much shame about fishing around brown trout redds but not the same with brook, rainbow, and cutthroat trout?
How do you set up your leaders for striper fishing?
Why don't we go through the eye of the hook twice on every knot, as we do for the Trilene Knot?
Why is there so much spot burning with social media?
A listener who had a life-threatening experience in a kayak gives us some great tips on being safe on the water.
Any thoughts on organizing fly boxes?
A listener tells us that washing CDC feathers will not let them float properly but I respectfully beg to differ.
A tip from a listener on how to lessen line tangles when fishing from a pedal kayak.
What is meant by "nervous water"?

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hi and welcome to the Orvis Fly Fishing Podcast.
0:13.0	This is your host Tom Rosenauer.
0:15.2	And my guest this week is Orvis, Rod and Real product developer, designer, and head of fishing and hunting product
0:25.7	development, Sean Combs. And the topic that I'm interviewing Sean on is kind of the price
0:34.0	value proposition in fly rod. So Orvis and other companies have typically have a number of
0:41.7	tiers of different fly rod prices. And I get questions a lot with people wanting to know,
0:48.9	say, you know, if I'm thinking of either a clear water recon, what am I going to get in the recon rod that I
0:55.5	won't get in a clear water rod? And, you know, it goes from the lowest priced streamline rod and
1:04.2	outfit to the flagship Helios rod. And so Sean does, I think, a really good job of explaining this price
1:14.6	value equation in fly rods. And, you know, you have to decide for yourself, is it important to
1:22.6	me to go up to the next tier? I'm looking for new fly rod. Is it important to me to go to a higher price
1:28.5	rod or will I be just as happy with a rod and save a little money and spend it on some flies or
1:35.1	a fishing trip? So anyway, I hope that helps and hope that answers some of the questions
1:40.7	that I've had from a lot of you over the years on this question.
1:46.6	And a couple announcements.
1:48.5	One is that this week, because I'm recording this in early January, this week on Thursday,
1:59.1	January 9th, I'll be at the River Road Orvis store in Richmond, Virginia,
2:04.8	from 6 to 7.30 doing a presentation in the store on small stream trout fishing,
2:12.0	but should be also there earlier in the afternoon and we'll hang around and chat and answer questions or if you
2:19.5	have one of my books that you'd like to have signed bring it in be glad to do that or you can
2:25.6	probably buy a book in the store hopefully they'll have a few copies there and then the following
2:30.8	two days January 10th and 11th I'll be at the Virginia Wine and Fly Fishing Festival.
	...

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