Rod Design - Tom Morgan

I have discovered while fishing my home waters there are certain rod characteristics that work better than others. And through a great deal of trial and error, I have settled on classic Winston fly rods that work best for me in the fishing environments I love to splash through.

Below is an excerpt, from an interview Andy Dear did with Tom Morgan for RodMaker magazine, back in 2003. It explains much of why I prefer Winston fly rods for my home waters...this guy, Tom Morgan, has fished my kind of trout streams. I had a mentor early in my working days who said, "you can't come from where you haven't been." Winston rods work for me because Tome Morgan had actually fished in Rocky Mountain creeks and knew what rod taper was best for those environments.

Andy Dear: One of the things that I have noticed in talking to various Rod Designers is that they have spent a lot of time in their lives doing one of two things: Guiding and/or spending a lot of time becoming a very proficient caster. How do you feel that your experience as guide influenced the way that you feel that a rod should be designed?

Tom Morgan: Well Guiding and fishing I would say are both important. Fishing in Montana, the Pacific Northwest and British Columbia as I did, I really feel that I am only an authority on Trout and Steelhead. The saltwater I have done some of and I do feel that I have a concept of what is necessary, but the Trout is where I have done the most. So in southwestern Montana I have fished everything from small little streams to the Missouri and Madison. You really have to be in my opinion an avid fisherman and rods have to be your passion in order to have that experience of fishing in all kinds of conditions to know what kind of rod it is going to take to satisfy those circumstances. I have tremendous experience like that. Also, so much of my guiding was done on streams like the Beaverhead, the Gallatin and the Madison or O'Dell creek where you walk along with the angler and watch them fish. You really learn more from watching people than you do fishing yourself, and you just see that hardly ever do they make a cast over 50 feet. A lot of people can't cast very well at 50 feet anyway so almost all of the fish are caught in that 25-50 foot range. If the rod doesn't bend in that range and work easily and protect the tippet, then it is not doing the job that it should. What I think is that so many of the rods are being designed by tournament casters or to show off in the casting pond at the fly-fishing shows. They are not really designed by people who have a long background actually fishing.

- Andy Dear, RodMaker Magazine

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