Lefty Kreh on the TFO Impact Fly Rod

Making an Impact: My Favorite TFO Rod by Lefty Kreh

Since I joined the sport in 1949, TFO’s Impact has become my favorite fly rod for general fly fishing. I’d like to explain why.

First, it’s important to realize the amount of bend put in the rod when it stops at the end of the stroke is what unrolls line to target.

A stroke is a movement to deliver something from the starting point to the target. The proper stroke makes it possible for the baseball player to make a bunt or hit a home run or to throw the Frisbee a short or long distance.  A proper stroke can be short or long but it must continue to smoothly accelerate or go faster and faster, ending in the direction you want to deliver an object. The stroke can start slow or fast but must accelerate to the end.  I believe understanding a good stroke is the most important factor when fly-casting.

Conventional fly-casting techniques suggest stopping the backcast a little past vertical. If the forward cast begins from this position, it allows the angler only a relatively short stroke. However, the rod needs to bend more to deliver a forward cast with heavier lines and flies, into the wind or for more distance. Such a short stroke requires more effort to bend the rod to do job. Experienced casters have learned to drift the rod hand well back allowing a longer stroke (forward cast) with less effort.

I think the Impact series that TFO designed is a revolutionary rod that can help fly fisherman improve and appreciate a proper casting stroke. Almost all modern fly rods are flexible near the tip but increase in diameter and stiffness toward the rod handle, requiring more effort to bend the lower portion. The Impact is different. From the tip the rod tapers slowly in diameter to the reel seat without lacking in power or strength. This design offers many advantages.

Range of Power – Modern fly rods usually cast well the line designed for it and one lighter or one heavier in size. The Impact rod bends easily from tip to the butt so it handles a number of line sizes.  For example I can fish effectively with my 8-weight Impact with lines from 5 to 9 weight. I’ve never cast another rod so versatile that it would handle five different line-weights. It also is not as critical to have just the right amount of line outside before the backcast.

Rod Recovery – Watch the rod tip of a great caster. The tips stops smoothly and doesn’t bounce up and down. For most fly fishermen the tip vibrates on the stop because the lower portion of the rod is so much stiffer. The vibrating tip produces undesirable shock waves in the line. Because Impact rods taper smoothly throughout, the tip stabilizes quickly – eliminating any bounce at the end of the cast.

Roll Casting – During roll casting a greater portion of the Impact bends allowing most anglers to roll cast so much better.

Durability – It is one of the toughest rods I’ve ever fished. Using a 20-pound tippet on an 8-weight rod I hooked a redfish of almost 20 pounds in the Louisiana swamp and fully expected to break the rod but didn’t.  Unlike a fast action rod, the extreme load in the fight with this fish was spread throughout the rod – reducing the “high stick” break risk.

In summary, the generally accepted casting stroke is rather short which requires much more effort to load the rod deeply. Casters who use this method who have tried an Impact rod do not like it all. The Impact rod requires a longer than normal strokes so the rod bends more and less effort is needed by the caster.  Keep this in mind and give an Impact rod a try – I believe you’ll appreciate the Impact design as much as I do.

Lefty Kreh

* Reprinted from the TFO Blog- Check it out HERE

Check out the revolutionary new TFO Impact Fly Rods HERE!

Mad River Outfitters

TFO Flagship Dealer

813 Bethel Rd.

Columbus, Ohio 43214

admin@madriveroutfitters.com

614-451-0363

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: TFO’S NEW “IMPACT” FLY ROD REDEFINES HIGH PERFORMANCE

Incredibly light and incredibly strong, the Impact feels like nothing you’ve ever cast. At first glance, it seems shockingly slow for a high-end rod – and then your cast doesn't fall apart as you overpower it.....your loops actually get tighter!!! And then it dawns on you, like a very subtle joke, that this rod is DIFFERENT…

The culmination of several years’ worth of development and some of the top minds in the industry, Temple Fork Outfitters’ new high-end rod has been one of the most anticipated sticks of recent history.  Versions of the Impact have been in the hands of some of the country’s top anglers and guides for over a year, as TFO continued to tweak their new flagship. 

Now the Impact is hitting racks across the country, and anglers ought to prepare themselves to be astonished. 

In an era where performance is equated almost solely with blisteringly fast rods, the Impact approaches the concept from a different direction. The Impact isn’t a slow rod – in fact, it’s one of the most powerful pieces of graphite available. 

It’s just different.

“If we can equate high-end fly rods with muscle cars, then it’s easy to see the Corvettes out there, and the Camaros – as well as the Mazda Miadas,” said guide and outfitter Brian Flechsig, of Mad River Outfitters, one of the first dealers to get their hands on the new rod. “If that’s the case, then the Impact might be more like a Tesla Roadster. It doesn’t look like a Corvette, it doesn’t sound like a Corvette, it doesn’t even drive like a Corvette…but there’s no doubt in anyone’s mind that it performs like a Corvette, or even better.

“It’s just that different,” he said. 

Flechsig first took up the Impact as an experimental version in an 8 weight while fishing for bones off Andros Island. He immediately noted the rod’s slim profile – almost half of the blank diameter of other 8 weights, and one of the lightest on the market. 

“I fished it for five days straight,” he said. “I didn’t even take another rod out of my quiver.”

Blane Chocklett, Virginia’s musky hunter extraordinaire and originator of such pivotal recent flies as the Gamechanger, was on the team that advised rod designers working on the Impact. He’s been fishing the rod for around a year, in both his home waters and around the world.

“Usually, to get something out of a rod, you have to give up something else,” he said. “That wasn’t the case here. The new technology being developed [at TFO] let’s you get everything you want in a rod without making sacrifices.”

Chocklett acknowledges that the rod feels different but says that, once the caster stops trying to overpower and lets it work as it was designed, it’s a dream, turning over large flies and casting into the wind with ease. He notes that, like most rods, finding a line that properly complements the Impact is important; he said he’s found Scientific Angler’s Titan Taper to be a great fit.

And the elasticity of the rod, coupled with its strength, means that when you transfer the energy of the fight where it belongs – to the butt – the rod continues to earn its keep. With a traditional fast rod, the extreme stiffness of the butt means the fighting energy of the fish is transferred to the angler, and the emperor’s new clothes are suddenly revealed: most expensive rods are exclusively casting machines that offer precious little in the way of fish-fighting power – not the best thing when wrestling a powerful saltwater gamefish, and not the best thing for protecting class tippet, either. 

“I took a 34-inch false albacore on an 8-weight Impact, in the 20 pound range,” he said. “It was going crazy and I was really putting the wood to it. You’re able to feel everything – almost like fiberglass, which allows you to fight the fish way back on the grip, how you’re supposed to.”

“This rod is just stronger,” he continued. “It’s not going to break or fail nearly as often as other rods. That’s even more incredible when you consider its weight and the diameter of the blank.”

Chocklett believes the rod could revolutionize angling for hard-fighting species such as carp, redfish, and bonefish – but, in the hands of the right angler, the Impact could end up being the go-to rod for even bigger quarry: he recounted a battle between the Impact and a monster 40-inch flathead catfish last summer. 

He also thinks TFO is onto something significant with the new ultra-high modulus carbon fiber debuted in the Impact.

“They’re going to do all kinds of different things with this new technology,” he said. “This is only the beginning.”

View the Impact Fly Rods on www.madriveroutfitters.com

Press Release:

July 1, 2015

Temple Fork Outfitters New Impact™ Series Fly Rods

Rod design has always been a game of compromises…until now.  Several years ago we introduced our RPM™ (Rod Performance Matrix) to better define what a rod – or rod series – has been designed to do.  Presentation, distance and lifting are the three attributes by which all rods can be measured.  Emphasis in one of these has always meant a deficiency in another.  The new Impact™ rods by Temple Fork Outfitters, through an innovative fusion of fly rod functions designed to achieve the pinnacle of performance, have made this compromise a thing of the past.

Impact™ rods are unbelievably smooth and powerful, loading and unloading with maximum efficiency affording an effortless feel and level of performance that will impress the most accomplished angler along with the easy loading fish-ability newer fly casters need. Their action, in conjunction with a unique combination of the latest materials, merges the attributes of all your favorite rods in such a way that there’s no trace of any of the familiar limitations you’ve had to put up with.  Impact™ rods are designed to exceed every angler’s expectations with a level of excellence that will set new industry standards.  That’s making an Impact.

Each blank offers a very slim profile finished with our exclusive Tactical Series Stripping Guides and ultra-lightweight chromium-impregnated stainless snake guides.  Their reduced profile burl cork handles are both handsome and durable - plus they retain their superb feel under all fishing conditions.  The handsome blanks are matte black with black thread wraps and emerald trim.  Smoke-gray machined aluminum reel seats with gray carbon fiber inserts adorn the larger models with beautiful rosewood inserts on the smaller models.  Starting at $324.95, the Impact rods are available through a limited selection of our best dealers in line weights four through ten.

For more information on the Impact Series, or any other TFO products contact your local TFO dealer or visit, www.tforods.com.  

Contact:

Brandon Powers

Temple Fork Outfitters

8115 Sovereign Row

Dallas, TX 75247

***Watch HERE and Mad River Outfitters Social Media Channels for a link to the new Impact Fly Rods as soon as they become available for sale.

Back in February, the folks at TFO sent MRO's Brian Flechsig one of the new "Experimental" fly rods which we now know will be called the Impact. He took the rod with him on the annual Andros Island Bonefish trip and here is what he and Andros Island Bonefish Club owner Shawn Leadon had to say about the rod:

Mad River Outfitters expects to have the new Temple Fork Outfitters Impact fly rods available for Sale in late July or early August.

Stay Tuned!

Click Here to view the new Impact Fly Rods from TFO!

Mad River Outfitters

"Flagship" Temple Fork Outfitters Dealer

813 Bethel Rd.

Columbus, Ohio 43214

614-451-0363

admin@madriveroutfitters.com