So, how many times do I need to screw up and find myself miles from the truck without a functional rod? I now know that the answer is "three".

• On the Rose River last year, I walked in, fished a bit, and promptly tripped and broke my rod tip.
• On the South Branch of the Potomac near Petersburg, I did an arduous, stumbling, slipping half hour hike that involved crossing the river in fast water only to break a rod tip on the second cast
• On the Robinson River, I hiked downstream from the Rt 231 bridge over a mile and was having great luck catching everything that was swimming when my rod tip broke.

Why do these things keep breaking? I attribute it to the fact that I go places that I probably shouldn't and end up slipping and tripping with my rod slamming into rocks and boulders. But, being an aggressive fisherman who is anxious to get to unpressured water, I'm not going to stop. What I can do is mitigate the risk of early trip termination by bringing a backup. For the last year, on those occasions where I did carry a pack, I had a collapsible spin rod with a basic assortment of Panther Martins stuffed into the bottom. In the three instances above, I had decided that I wasn't going that far so did not need to shlep the heavy pack -- big mistake. The spin rod and associated lures add about 2 pounds to the rig.

What I really needed was a light weight, small fly rod that I could stuff into the day pack and head into the woods. I typically use either a 4 or 6 wt rod depending on the size of the river and the expected size of the fish. Therefore, I needed something that would work with either 4 or 6 wt line because I did not want to carry another reel (my 4 wt and 6 wt reels are different sizes) -- the likelihood of a reel breaking is remote -- and did not want to cough up the extra bucks for a high quality 5 wt line.  With that, I started to search around. I already knew about the Flyfishing Benefactors Mountain Pack Rod that retails for $159.00.  Other alternatives were the Orvis "Frequent Flyer" pack rod that retails for $198.00 or the L.L. Bean "Travel Series" that runs $185.00. Given my predilection to do things on the cheap, and the fact that I had been waved off the Travel Series by a blog reader who said the action was torturously slow and it gave him a headache after using it for only four hours, I put in my order and took delivery of my FFB pack rod two weekends ago.

The trial by fire would be on the Upper Potomac near Harpers Ferry. I wanted to simulate a tip break on my 6 wt and see how this would stand up to some tough smallies. The bottom line up front is that this thing is sweet. I know I've been a fan of FFB gear ever since I discovered them a year ago. But, there is a reason -- it's pretty dang good stuff and you can't beat the price.

I put the mountain pack rod together and kept in mind the caution to re-seat the sections every hour or so to ensure that they did not work loose and cause a break. A common mistake people make with travel rods is they assume that once they are assembled, you're good for the entire day. The very fact that they come in so many pieces means that they can work loose if you use them aggressively. Interestingly enough, when I did check to see if the sections had vibrated loose, I could not detect any change from when I first assembled them -- but better safe than sorry.

I rigged up the 6 wt line that I had been using all morning, took a few practice casts and was pleasantly surprised with the easy feel of the rod and the distance I could achieve without much effort. In fact, it almost felt better than the Sage 7 wt I had been using for bass earlier in the day. Prior to putting this in my hand, my suspicion was that overweighting the 5 wt with 6 wt line would make it a little bit awkward to cast. My few tentative practice casts put that issue out of my mind. So how would this work in real life?

I walked out onto one of the ridges in the river off of Keep Tryst Road that stretch from Maryland to Virginia and began to fish the broad pools and short runs on either side. The emerging problem of the day was that the wind had picked up and, given my skill level, that always presents a challenge. However, the mountain pack rod worked great for the long casts as well as the short flips into the tight runs and small pools that were prevalent in this section of the river. I did not feel like I had to handle this rod any differently than my full size, regular gear. If you read the description on the FFB web site, you'll see that FFB regards this as a medium fast to fast. Not being a professional, all I cared about was, "Was this thing easy to cast and did it feel good?" A resounding yes!  After about 10 minutes of fishing, I had totally forgotten that I was using a seven piece pack rod and was focused only on putting the fly in the right place and pulling in the waiting smallies.

It wasn't long before I broke the virginity of this rod as opposed to the tip. Over the course of the next couple of hours, I hauled in between 15 and 20 decent size smallmouth bass ranging in size from 10 to 13 inches and did not notice any deficiencies in hookset, handling or “fish feel”. The 5 wt rod handled the 6 wt line without any problems at all and made me wonder how it would perform if I had matched the line to the rod. I'll have to leave that as an exercise to the reader because I'm too cheap to go out and buy 5 wt line.

So what about the Orvis and L.L. Bean models? Since I've not personally tried those, I cannot express an opinion. The same person who did not like the L.L. Bean Travel Series, purchased the Orvis Frequent-Flier model and loved it. He said the Orvis model had a light touch and was very easy to cast long distances. Given that all these come with guarantees, you may want to start with the inexpensive FFB model and see if it works to your expectations and save $40. Reading the information on all of these rods from their respective web sites, here's the table that summarizes the key characteristics of each:

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My picture in a "natural setting"... the back of my truck

The official pretty picture