You sir nailed it. The rod is where its at.
Not to mention in the past two weeks 3 trout over 20" have been caught and released one bow was 24"
Until you have a steelhead at the other end. Then you def need a good reel. The drag on my Orvis Encounter is not that smooth and it was a pain fighting a steelhead on a low end reel.
That sounds like a nice fight! Got a pic of the bow, or any of the other holdovers?Funny how, especially in the northeast, the big rainbows always seem to be in the rivers...
Ya if I palmed a fish at this stage in the game I'd just be leaving it with jewlery. I'm not that good...heck I was happy enough just to hook a few.I think Lance is going to come down and pin some soon.
Back in the day we used Palm reels , mostly scientific angler for salmon and steelhead, some of us even used the martin 72s and did ok and if we needed a little more drag we taped our fingers on the other hand , I still use a palm reel to this day , and I still have a Martin 72 with the solid spool in perfect working order and somewhere a SA new in box lol
Seriously though Ive been using 5x because I dont have the finesse to hook a big one on 3x. I just break off.