What about just having a spinning rod built on a fly rod blank? Awesome combination.

I really liked the concept of spinning reel attached to the fly rod… brings back fond memories of my dad and I crappie fishing. He had a Shakespeare 2052 reel taped on his bamboo fly rod. The bend in the rod was awesome as he played the crappies into the boat. It satisfied the long Ultra Light spinning rod in that days market. I believe nowadays the manufactures has filled that gap with similar Fly rod feel rod blanks in some of their product lines.

Feeling retro a couple summers ago I taped an ultralight spinning reel on to one of my fly rods. The first thing I noticed is you lost the rod /reel balance so I had to step the reel up in weight to accommodate the lengthy weight of the fly rod. Threading the super line through the guides and making a few practice casts there is severe restriction from spinning spool to the first guide. Getting over that I took it for a test spin a small walk from the house.

Casting my high productive 2” swim jigs I managed to catch a few fish and it was fun. However the balance was still off and loss of sensitivity was significantly noticed. The difference in sensitivity between the 5.5 ft and the fly/spin with similar lines was substantial.  

Owning nearly every model of the Spinmatic rod and Celilo Ultra Lite rods I experiment a lot with combinations of rods, reels and lines and have found there is on the longer rods where the law of diminishing returns starts kicking in for me at over 6.5 to 7 ft long rods. There is a point where the longer rods lack the sensitivity and feel.

If the term “Thread lining” is to thin mono lines thru a fly rod blank then a term like “SuperLIning” should be coined to human hair diameter Super lines with 2-6lb strength thru tiny sensitive spinning rod blanks.  for the past few seasons I've been pitching tiny baits and offerings into fishy places filled with structure and pulling out quantities of panfish and significantly sized preds on super lines rated at 2-6# test with 1.5# test mono dia or less..

After much experimenting the most sensitive rigs I have now is at 5.5 – 6-0 with either fireline 2# ice braid or Nanofil 2-6#. Tiny jigs catch lots of panfish but they also catch a lot of large bass, pike and walleye. My numbers are way up fishing like this the past two seasons. just thought id share.