Built for modern Nymphing: The Marryat 10ft #4/5 Tactical HX Limited Edition Fly Rod
The Marryat 10ft #4/5 Tactical HX Limited Edition Fly Rod comes in a chunky rectangular aluminium tube – large, relatively heavy, very robust, room for a couple of rods and, frankly, excellent!
The rod itself is four-piece and comes with a spare tip. Given this may well fish with tungsten beads on the line a spare tip is a first-rate idea. The Marryat 10ft #4/5 Tactical HX Limited Edition blank is reasonably slim, painted matt brown.
Quality guides, looks like a Fuji butt-guide and fine single-leg snakes – these feel like hard chrome steel guides but look like titanium alloy – Recoils? I like that the guides taper down in size to really quite fine and small for the tip section. This build looks good, but is also about making a fine fishing rod.
Marryat HX 10ft #4/5 Reel seat
Marryat have fitted a down-locking reel seat, aluminium frame over a dyed hardwood spacer. Then a firm, smooth 7in cork grip, roughly reverse half wells, the front taper seems a little longer and thinner – I can hold this grip conventionally or it also seems comfortable with my forefinger on top of the grip.
Fit a reel and this seat places the reel at the very foot of the rod, as far from my hand as possible. Balance is a thing, so to speak. The Marryat 10ft #4/5 Tactical HX Limited Edition Fly Rod is a rod built with forms of river Nymph fishing in mind, so when fishing the rod will be held out from the angler’s body, maybe with the casting arm extended, that is when the reel helps balance the rod. During casting, I’m not so sure this form helps.
I measured and weighed a couple of lines to check I had a genuine WF4 and a WF5 – I did.
Starting with the #4, this HX feels crisp, fairly quick and relatively light. The tip is soft enough so this can cast well with a #4 line, the feel is fine, with decent accuracy, even at short range. The #4 line casts well, but not very long casting, though I doubt that matters too much for this form of fishing.
With my #5 the HX feels smooth and exact. Easily out-casts the #4 line in a few ways, e.g. distance, accuracy, roll casting. In my hands, this is a 5-weight rod which can flick around a #4 for lighter casts. That said, this is a rod which will likely spend much, if not all, its working life fishing Nymphs, a form of fishing where the fly line means very little.
In fact, the Marryat 10ft #4/5 Tactical HX Limited Edition Fly Rod can be fished without a conventional fly line. In which case, the line-rating is more a measure of a rod’s ability to play fish and decide the type/size of tippet needed – this rod has the sort of backbone needed to play fish firmly and/or handle a decent fish in fairly fast water.
In conclusion, it is well specified and made. This HX clearly hints at the competition fly fishing background of it’s designer. A desirable modern fly rod for modern fishing tactics.
Price: £695
From: Marryat stockists
www.spritefishing.com
Marryat Tactical HX 10ft #4/5
Weight: 94.5g
Action angle: 72 degrees (fast)
Stiffness: 113.7g (relatively powerful)
Sections: 4 with spare tip section
Rings: One lined butt-ring, single-leg snakes
Handle: Modified reverse half wells
Fighting butt: No
Cork quality: high
Reel seat: Wood spacer, aluminium seat
Blank: Brown, satin.
Thread: Brown
Build quality: High
Rod bag: Canvas
Rod tube: Aluminium