I was walking through BassPro down the aisles of spinning rods to get some hooks, some bright yellow rods caught my eye, thought they were Eagle Claws. The short ones on the end were sagging in the rack with a belly, I picked it up, a BassPro MicroLite Glass 5 foot spinning rod with an amazing action.
At 20 bucks I took one home and straight to the creek with a spinning reel loaded with two pound line and a JA Forbes loaded with a two weight line. The rod did just mediocre with the spinning reel, and my first hand sized bluegill was easily controlled with the butt of the rod. I expected the fish to have it's way with the whippy rod, but such was not the case.
I switched reels and it was a bit awkward where to put my hand with the fly reel mounted on it, ended up behind the reel. I peeled off a bunch of line and began casting. I was dumbfounded at the ease with which this rod threw such tight loops and wrangled the two weight line with such a magic touch, soft or hard, fast or slow, I had so much control, so accurate. Roll casting with the rod made me look like a pro.
I just had to know if this was a fluke, so I stripped the spinning guides off, gave it a light sanding and painted it a Ijuin lime green, used some wine bottle corks for the grip, borrowed the snake guides and reel seat from a rod I found in someones trashcan. Currently I have the guides taped on to figure out the spacing. I have not done an ERN on the rod, but lawn casting it this evening again with the 2 wt line it was even better than as tested before.
This is the first attempt at a rod build I have made, and I am very pleased with my results so far.
I challenge some you more proficient builders to get a hold of one of these blanks or pick up the spinning rod and make a top quality UL flyrod to see if you get the same results.
I have the 5 foot one piece, the two piece longer rods seemed a hair stiffer.