The Winston Cup

My focus and interest in Winston has always been with their classic rods built in 1989 and after. The reason? The IM6 rods and the later WT fly rods fit my style of fishing perfectly. They are my favorite rods both during the Loomis IM6 sourced years, and the later in-house builds with the IM6 and WT series. 

I've had many conversations with Winston pre-IM6 fans and collectors regarding Trophy Cup fly rods, and that fabulous era of Winston's history. They swore by them. Lots of talk on whether the cup decal was originally silver or gold. Well, Tom Morgan addressed that himself and shared with us the original decals were silver, and the coating on the blank turned the cup decal gold after many years of exposure to the sun...he was mostly talking about the glass rods built during the San Francisco years. There are always many interesting conversations regarding pre-IM6 cup rods among Winston fans, and they are very passionate about them. However, for some reason, I was never motivated to own one of these rods. Why? Well, the IM6 and WT series are just so darn good!

Even though I don't own a pre-IM6 rod, I do have three Winstons with the trophy cup decal on their blanks. Yeah, I know. However, each are special models that I enjoy fishing very much! They are as follows: Glass Retro 6'6" 3wt; Legendary BIIt 8'6" 4wt; and Legendary WT 8'6" 5wt. These are about as "Trophy Cup" as I'll ever get, and I'm not complaining...not one bit!