My day with the new hybrid glass/carbon fiber Dragontail FoxFIRE zx280.
Here is a full tech write up on the specs of the rod from Tom Davis. tetontenkara.blogspot.com/202...
The rod is indeed soft and full flex and like a true tenkara rod has a stiffer tip to make the bend of the rod go deeper into its length. My favorite rod the Shimano Pack Tenkara has this profile and a deeper bend but is stiffer or wants to stay straight more than this rod but it is longer. I thought from the specs of the FoxFIRE that I would love it but I did not. It was too soft for me and in tight quarters where I would want a shorter rod it turned out to not be the best option. The soft deep bend meant that bow and arrow casting was not great as it did not give the catapult action the same power as a stiffer rod. I also found hook setting to be challenging because on my small tight streams the fish are very small...and when hook setting with the Firefox if you give it too much what happens is the stiff tip causes the middle of the rod to bend...and as it straightens it imparts quite a bit of force but since it is glass it does so slowly which tends to fling a small fish. To offset that you have to use a super gently motion which means missing lots of fish. Conversely I have the Badger Rocky Creek which is 260 cm but more has a very sensitive tip and stiffer sections sooner. The flexible tip let's you do more of a hook set and still have the flex hold a bend on a smaller fish...my landing rate is much better with that rod.
Where the FoxFIRE does excel is you can indeed cast line at its shortest length...not many rods at that length in the fixed line world cast nicely short. I imagine this rod would be fun on a more open small stream where a lot of casting can be done and the fish were on average bigger than 6 inches.
One other negative factor is its nested length which is longer than I would like.
In the end...probably not the rod for me...but it did teach me that perhaps I don't like as full flexing rods as I had thought!
3 дек 2021
