One of my friends is thinking about having a fly rod made. He wants to go fishing for large tarpon, 100 lb. class. He is thinking in terms of a 10 weight rod with two grips. Would a 9 weight with a regular grip be enough? That way he could still use the same rod for stripper fishing or other smaller fish. As always, any help will be appreciated.

Hi Ellis,

Your best bet would be to ask your question at this following adress

[www.danblanton.com]

This is a salt water flyfishing site with serious Saltwater Fly guys, they will be happy to give you any info needed.

The board is moderated by Dan Blanton a well known fishing writer and saltwater fly fisherman. he answers many posts himself like Tom does here.

my personal feeling is that for tarpon that big I think a nine wt is a bit light. a 11 or 12 wt would be better.

A 9 is very, very light tackle for most any tarpon save the really small ones. 10 would be the minimum I would want to arm myself with and an 11 or 12 would be the preferred choice.

Be careful when you add a forward fighting grip to any fly rod. Putting it too far forward means that the real meat, or power, of the rod, will be begind the grip. The angler reaches forward trying to negate some of the leverage the fish has on him and puts the stress of the fight on an area of the rod that was not designed to take it. Breakage is a common result.

After some problems with this, I began simply building a slightly longer fighting butt and extending my usual full wells grip with an additional 4 to 5 inch cigar type fighting grip right onto the front of the full wells. This made for about an 11 or 12 inch grip which offered the angler some help but tended to keep him from reaching so far up the rod. I never had one of these rods returned due to breakage. Knock on wood.

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A 10 weight is a bit light for tarpon that size, but it should do well for stripers, blues, mackeral & so forth. I myself prefer the 8 wieght for these type of fish but a 10 would suffice.