What up with summer? Goes too fast. August already and I’ve been brutally busy taking care of kids, putting together issues of Fly Rod & Reel, keeping up with a yard, and traveling. Maybe I’ll head to South America when winter arrives and get a full summer down there, just to compensate for how little I’ve been on the water this summer. Oh, I get some time in here and there, but it hasn’t been like the old days when I’d spend almost every day fishing. But that’s the way life goes. Peaks, valleys. Fortunately, when the girls go back to school in a few weeks, my time opens up—I’m planning on a fishing-saturated fall.
Fall also means that many of you will be on the water because it’s one of the best times of the year. Big browns getting angry. Pike moving back to the shallows. Bass congregating like crazy. Steelhead stacking up in the prime pools. October caddis and Hecuba dropping out of the sky. Yes, it’s good.
If you are going to chase steelhead or pike and bass this fall, or even bonefish and permit, there’s a rod you may want to try, Redington’s Vapen, 
which I took to the Yukon’s Kluane Wilderness Lodge early this summer and put to the test on northern pike that ranged to 40 inches.
To catch northern pike you throw heavy wire leaders, big flies, and a serious weight-forward line to turn over that heavy rig. The Vapen is a serious rocket-launcher that had all the power I needed to turn over those flies and leaders, and it also allowed me to aggressively fight the 100 or more pike that I hooked in those six days in the Yuk. It spawned a new word for the fly-fishing dictionary—when I hooked and landed a good pike I said, “You just got Vapenized.”
Son, you just got Vapenized.
This rod is just becoming available, in three through 12-weights, and I think it’s worth taking a look at and casting. And it’s a good deal—it retails between $299 and $349 and it comes with a lifetime warranty.
I’m not pushing things when I say this thing launches. While fishing pike I could pick the line, leader and fly off the water at distance, make a single backcast, and re-launch the fly 80 feet out to the bank. Honestly, I was a little shocked the first time I did that. The Vapen is powerful for its light weight and uses Redington’s new X-Wrap technology, which is a construction method that layers super high-density carbone ribbon inside the blank and another counter-wrapped on the exterior surface. It’s touted to provide “surprising power with little effort” and I don’t think that’s an overstatement.
Backwater bay on Wellesley Lake, Yukon Territory. Redington’s new Vapen rod was a huckmaster, allowing me to cover 80 to 100 feet or more of water while casting from shore or a boat. And it handled pike quickly once hooked, even the 40-inchers that we bumped into on occasion while fishing this great lake.
You can get this rod with a standard cork grip or with the new Powergrip handle. If you get the Vapen red model, which is what I threw in the Yukon, you’ll get the Powergrip handle and it will be bright red. I’m not a big fan of a red handle, but I sure like the way the grip felt. It may be an improvement on cork. It’s super sticky, like the handle of a golf club and, in fact, that’s where the technology comes from—Redington partnered with the golf-club company Winn Grips to develop an advanced polymer grip that doesn’t slip when it’s wet. It cleans easily and doesn’t chip, which is often a complaint about cork grips.
Am I being too gratuitous? I don’t think so. I really was amazed when I hucked this during the that pike trip in June. I think this rod would be an awesome stick for all sorts of applications, ranging from northerns, to silvers, to bones, big lake-run browns, and even small tarpon. Great lakes steelhead? Sure.
Get to a shop and throw this stick and let me know what your impressions of it are. I’d love to hear you comments. Eager to know if all of you are as impressed as me.
NOTE: This rod won the Best Saltwater Rod category at The ICAST/IFTD trade show held in Vegas in early July.