Salmon Fishing Scotland G Loomis NRX Fly Rod.

This was a recent article in the Daily Record written by Silver Wilkie.

BY ARNOT MCWHINNIE

After 50 years of fly fishing for salmon I’ve seen numerous developments in rod and line technology.

In the early days my rod of choice for fishing the wide stretches of the River Tay was a truly powerful kit … a spliced greenheart 18 foot Grant Vibration with a number 7 Kingfisher silk line, and a four and a half inch Hardy Perfect reel.

While the rod had a one piece action from butt to tip, cast a great line, and played salmon well, it was a brute of thing which left me with an aching back at the end of the day.

Then came glass fibre which revolutionised salmon fishing. Still bitten by the big rod cult, I bought the longest rod available at that time, a 16 foot grey coloured rod manufactured by Barry Bucknell.

It was lovely and light compared to greenheart, but because it had an extension glued into the butt to make it longer, it was prone to splitting under the handle if put under pressure.

The next technology to arrive was made with the new wonder material, carbon fibre. My first was a 17 foot Bruce and Walker Cairngorm, and the next, an 18 foot Mackenzie-Philps made from Fiba-tube blanks, a great rod which I used for years.

Rods from Daiwa made from carbon wrapped with Whisker Kevlar and then Amorphous Whisker Kevlar hit the scene. They were lighter and I had the pleasure of fishing them for years. At 15 feet long they cast like 18 footers.

My current rod is even lighter and stronger, a 15 foot Guideline LXPE, which I’ve had for five seasons and consider to be the best rod I’ve ever owned.

Then, out of the blue, I was asked if I would like to have a cast with an American rod, made with nano technology and not yet on the market in the UK.

The technology jump ending in the manufacture of the Loomis NRX 15 footer is similar to the one from fibre glass to carbon fibre.

Under the watchful eye of its designer,Steve Rajeff, one of only a handful of anglers to be able to cast a salmon fly almost 100 yards, I tried the 15 foot NRX kitted out with my favourite line, the Carron Jetstream.

I kept on pulling line off the reel and a few minutes later was producing a single Spey casts of well in excess of the 40 yard casts I can normally produce. Given some extra practice I reckon I could do more.

Loomis claims the NRX to be 15 per cent lighter and 20 per cent stronger than most rods. I don’t disbelieve this because it was as light as a feather and I felt it lifting a lot more line than normal with less effort to cast 40 yards plus.

I don’t pretend to understand the complicated technology which goes into this rod’s manufacture, save to say the makers utilise stiffer and lighter density carbon fibre married to nano silica resins.

Steve boasts it’s simply the best rod in the world, and I reckon he’s not far off the mark.




NRX awarded Best New Fly Rod at EFTTEX 2010
Valencia, Spain - June 12th 2010
From the 11th until the 13th of June EFTTEX, the annual trade show organized by the European Fishing Tackle Trade Association (EFTTA), took place in Valencia (Spain).

Exclusive to EFTTEX 2010 is the Best New Product competition. This competition aims to highlight the developments in fishing tackle over the past year. Each entry must be innovative and brand new to the tackle industry. This year’s competition was designed to give all companies entering a fair chance. Therefore each company was entitled to enter a maximum of 4 different products into the competition.
The competition was judged by a panel of independent experts during EFTTEX 2010.

I have tried the rod and found it unbelievable. It is incredible how technology advances.
These rods will appear in your local retailer soon and there will be casting demos soon to try the rods.

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