Best Fly Fishing Combos Under $100

On a beginner outfit the fly line matters more than the rod, and almost nobody tells beginners that. The line is what you are actually casting — the rod only transfers energy into it. A cheap, stiff, poorly tapered line will make a good rod feel terrible, and most sub-$150 kits save money exactly there. Redington does not: the Crosswater ships with RIO Mainstream, a real production trout line.

The rod is a medium-fast 9-foot 5-weight with an anodized aluminum reel seat, a cork handle and alignment dots on the blank so the four sections line up without squinting. Medium-fast is slightly less forgiving than the Encounter's moderate action — you will feel the loop break down if you rush the stroke — but it is far from a stiff rod, and it has more reach when you need to pick line up off the water.

The reel has a carbon disc drag and does its job for trout. The honest limitation of the whole package is the one-year warranty. If you are the sort of person who closes a car door on a rod tip, factor that in.

The Maxcatch Extreme exists to be the lowest number on the page, and it does that without the usual plastic reel: you get a large-arbor aluminum reel, pre-loaded with line, backing and a leader, plus twelve hand-tied flies in a waterproof box, a neoprene reel cover, a retractor, a nipper, a cap and a travel case. For a first outfit, the completeness is real.

The rod is a 9-foot 5-weight, 4-piece, built on IM7 24T plus 30T carbon, and Maxcatch describes the action as fast. We would steer a self-taught beginner away from a fast action on principle. A fast rod needs a crisp stop and a well-timed pause; a slower rod tells you when it is loaded by bending. If you are learning from videos on a lawn, you want the rod that talks back.

Where it does make sense: as a second rod, a travel rod you would not cry over, or a first rod for someone with casting experience in another discipline who already understands loading a blank.

Most starter kits are a rod, a reel and a line. The Wild Water Deluxe is a rod, a reel, a line, flies, a 372-fly waterproof floating fly box, two retractors, a nipper with a nail-knot tool, six-inch forceps, a cloth rod bag and a 32-inch hard tube with a reel pouch. If you own nothing, that is the difference between fishing on Saturday and realizing on Saturday that you cannot cut tippet.

The rod is a 9-foot 5/6-weight, 4-piece, medium-fast, with a machined aluminum reel seat, double lock rings, a 7-inch western cork handle and a stainless stripping guide with a silicon carbide ring. That is a better-specified reel seat and stripping guide than you have any right to expect at this price. The reel is die-cast aluminum with an 85 mm spool and an adjustable disc drag, and it arrives pre-spooled.

The 5/6 designation is the honest weak point. A rod built to do both is slightly over-powered for a 5-weight line and slightly under-powered for a 6-weight. It casts fine. It just is not a rod you will keep once you know which one you actually wanted.