I met a guy on the river a couple of years ago and I remember him having a strange looking setup where the rod appeared to emerge from the upper section of the reel. I never saw it since......

While I was leafing through an old Sportfish brochure last night - around 1998 I think - I found something similar. It was a Sage SPL 'Centre axis' rod and reel combination retailing at £695.

Has anyone ever used one of these? Does anyone still own one? What the hell are they all about??

Matt

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The sun pushed dark spokes of melt and sparkle
Across the fields of hoar. And the river steamed -
Flint-olive.


http://northcountryangler.blogspot.com

Certainly a strange looking combination outfit. I gues one of the problems would be if any one bit has a problem you've lost the whole outfit.

Bill

It was an attempt by Sage to improve the balance of reel and rod. I'm not sure how much difference it makes, probably little, but it was a lovely combination.

Still available in some places

4 wt for $625
http://estore.anglers-pro.com/cgi-bin/cat/08632.html

Nice rods to use, an ex forum member has them on 0#, 1# & 3# lovely combos.

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Turned out nice again!!

Sage made the SPL in tradional reel seat as well, I use an 8ft. 2 ins. 2 wt. coupled with a sage quiet taper line, they are absolutely super rods for small streams the 0,1 and 2 weight were all 8ft. 2 ins. and the 3 wt. as far as i remember was 7ft. 6 ins. all really good small stream rods.

used to have the 8ft 0 wt till acouple of years ago then sold it