Vivid green, very bendy: Reviewing Vision’s Glass Streamer rod
This year I’ve been spending a bit of time with the Vision Glass Streamer 7ft 6in 6wt rod, assigning it the very specific role of firing small streamers into nooks and crannies in tiny brooks here in Somerset.
Admittedly, for the vast majority of my streamer fishing this season, I’ve been using either 10ft 5wt or (arguably even more specialist, yet weirdly super-versatile) 10ft 6in 3wt Helios 3’s from Orvis…
… but some of my real close-to-home water is so narrow and tunnelled with trees that neither of those long rods will physically fit, and temporarily splitting them down into sections, Neil Patterson style, tends to raise fatal doubts when there’s always a chance of striking into something out of all proportion to the diminutive size of the stream.
So, what of the Glass Streamer? As I mostly expected from fibreglass, even six-inch fish will bend it into quite a satisfying curve, and I’m looking forward to finding some of the real lunkers in 2025.
Vision’s own recommendation seems to be for using the Glass Streamer on ‘smaller to medium size rivers’, though I still can’t quite imagine loading it up with a full WF6 line and corresponding leader (perhaps that’ll come later). But it’s been good fun flicking a kind of euro-nymphing / mono rig set up, which is often all you need at small stream ranges with a fly that’s just weighted enough to carry itself to the target, towing line behind it like a harpoon.
(I think I saw ‘Elliezium’ using her Glass Streamer in mayfly time, so that might be another excuse to bring it out?)
Other points: I love the vivid lime green colour, and I’m still conflicted on the unconventional two-piece blank: quick and easy to set up, yet not quite optimised for travel.
And… confession time… my inner design freak tackle tart absolutely yearns for colourful agate in that bare chrome stripping ring. But maybe that’s for when I slip further down the glassy slope and commission something custom built and crazy beautiful from Sandy Nelson or Warren McCarthy… stranger things could happen!
