I'm sure the following admission is no surprise to anyone who knows me. My favorite fly fishing brand is the R.L. Winston rod company. No doubt about it. Why? The answer has evolved through the years, but for the most part, the best I can come up with, "their rods just work for me." And the reason they do work for me is because I like to fish a stream from close in, to far out. I want a rod that can cast as effectively to 15 feet as it does to 45 feet, and that's why I like Winston rods.
The other reason? These rods manage a trout on a tight line better than other rod brands I have tried. My experience with most anglers is they tend to focus on casting...and, distance casting at that. Interestingly, I can hardly find anyone willing to have a discussion about how fly rods help in managing a trout on the end of the line. Which is weird to me. I'm sorry, but it's not all about an angler's skill. Clearly, Winston has that in mind with regard to their rods effectively handling a trout into the net. Yes, tight lines with trout are part of their design equation.
While Winston's history dates back to 1929, my interest in R. L. Winston begins in 1989, with the company's introduction of the Tom Morgan Favorite rod (TMF). Tom took his already excellent IM6 8' 4wt rod and tweaked the tip section to be a bit more flexible. And that tweak created some legendary magic. I once read an interview with Tom where he said the rod is almost a 3 1/2 weight rod. However, I still perceive it as a true 4wt and find the action as being what I call "natural", in that it just fits the trout environments in such a natural way...I don't even think about it when fishing. The rod is so good on my small streams that I often leave the stream at the end of day and say to myself, "wow!" He designed other creek rod models in various lengths and weights that give me that "wow feeling" as well.
The rod series that many Winston collectors and anglers seek out are the IM6 rods with Loomis supplied blanks. The IM6 graphite was part of a magic formula that put the Winston IM6 rod series into "cult" status. The rest of the winning formula, of course, was Tom's genius taper designs. This rod formula ran until 1996 when Winston started rolling their own blanks in house, actually using the same equipment and materials that Loomis used when they supplied blanks to Winston. These IM6 rods (with in-house blanks) were on the market up until 2001, when the rod was rebranded to become known as the Winston WT rods. WT as in Winston Traditional. So you know, I appreciate the WT rods as much as the IM6 rods by Winston, and for most of the rod models I can't discern much difference, if any at all, between the two when fishing them.
Below are the Winston IM6/WT rod models I fish on a regular basis and are favorites of mine. I am very content with having one these rods in my hand when hiking up a mountain trail to some riffles and pockets of water holding wild trout:
- IM6 6'6" 2wt (Loomis blank)
- WT 7' 2wt and 3wt
- IM6 7'6" 3wt (Loomis blank)
- WT TMF 8' 4wt
- WT 8'6" 5wt
There are many motivations for why people participate in the sport of fly fishing. My main motivation is it gets me out of the hustle and bustle of the city and into the beautiful outdoors of the Rocky Mountains. And too, when I'm on a mountain stream, I find my experiences much the same as for those who came before me many decades ago. That's comforting to me. And you know, fly fishing is the same as back in the days when Tom Morgan was fishing Montana creeks while designing his legacy fly rods. Those classic rods are just as fun to fish today as when Tom was designing and building them. Yes, these traditional rods help me to relive the good old days...when fly rods would actually bend when casting and catching the Leetle Fellers. I do believe, my favorite IM6/WT rods have the perfect tapers for the streams I regularly visit.
Click on photo for larger view
Post Note - On 3/07/24, I added another rod to the list of rods above...an IM6 8' 4wt rod (not TMF). It will get fishing time this year along with the others I've highlighted in this post.
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