Vacation!
I will be away until June 9. Any orders received after 4 PM on Friday, May 30 will not be shipped until June 9 or later (orders will be processed in the sequence in which they are received and I won't be able to process a week's worth of orders in one day unless it is a very slow week).
Trip Report 5-10-25
Saturday was my first time out with the Tenryu Rayz Alter RZA5102S-LLT, Tenryu's latest rod designed for fishing in Areas (private, stocked, pay-to-fish ponds), which I had not seen before. I ordered it because Tenryu's description indicated that the entire blank is made from low modulus carbon. Low modulus carbon is more flexible, and I confess I have a soft spot for soft rods.
RZA5102S-LLT stands for Rayz Alter 5'10" 2-piece Spinning Light-Light (between light and ultralight) Tubular tip (Tenryu also has a rod in the Alter series that has a solid tip). The Rayz, Rayz Integral and Rayz Spectra series don't have any solid-tipped rods, so there isn't a T or S at the end of their rod names.
When the shipment containing the rod came, I put the two sections together, wiggled it and said "wow!" I had wanted a rod that would be fun for the size fish I usually catch, which range from 5-9" wild trout to maybe 13-14" holdover stocked trout. Throw in some sunfish, small bass and the odd creek chub and fallfish. I could tell from the first wiggle that the RZA5102S-LLT was not going to be overkill for the smaller fish I catch. I could also tell that it would be plenty flexible enough to make flip casts easily. Even on the smallest streams, the 5'10" length isn't too long when you're making a flip cast directly in front of you rather than to the side.
I was sure that the perfect stream for its maiden run would be a little stream north of the city that runs between two New York city water supply reservoirs and does not get stocked. The lower reservoir does get stocked and the browns run up this particular stream to spawn. There are loads of five to seven inch trout, some eight to nine inchers and a very few into the teens.
The stream flow is controlled by the dam holding the upper reservoir, and it is usually rock steady. Recently, it has been running at 11 CFS (cubic feet per second). That isn't a lot, but it is a fairly small stream. It was running right at 11 CFS when I reserved a rental car on Thursday. It rained most of the day on Friday. When I got to the stream on Saturday I was shocked at how high the water was. A fisherman who pulled in when I was leaving in the afternoon had an app on his phone and looked up the real time flow - 264 CFS.
Years ago when the flow was a consistent 32 CFS.At 11 CFS, the stream is low but easily wadable, with many places that hold fish - bank eddies, eddies behind rocks, and even just slight depressions in the stream bottom. I could usually pretty much count on catching a lot of fish, but they'd all be small. At 264 CFS all the rocks in the photo above were under water except the large one as far upstream as you can see. The stream was unwadable and very nearly unfishable.
As the photo shows, there are trees and bushes right down to the water's edge. There are very few places where you can fish from the bank. On Saturday, I did a lot more walking and searching than fishing. I had brought my hip boots, because at the level I had expected, almost no spots on the stream would be deep enough to go over my hippers. On Saturday, almost no spots on the stream were shallow enough that they wouldn't have gone over my hippers - even just a few feet from the bank.
The only reason I didn't leave and go to another stream is that the other streams in the area were already high on Thursday when I checked the flows. This particular stream is short and has no tributary of any size, so occasionally it will show virtually no rise in water level even when other streams in the area are running high. It all depends on the release from the dam. I think every stream would have been blown out on Saturday.
Only fish for the day.Sadly, I was able to catch only one fish. It came from an eddy behind one of the few midstream rocks that were still visible. Once I brought it out of the eddy, though, the force of the current was strong enough that it just slid along the surface the rest of the way in.
The RZA5102S-LLT is indeed a soft rod. I wasn't able to get much sense of what it's like playing a fish because the fish just "surfed" all the way to my feet. I could tell that a three gram Smith Niakis spinner, straight downstream in the current, put a significant bend in the rod. When the spinner was in an eddy (few and far between on Saturday), the rod handled it just fine.
I am sure the rod will be an awful lot of fun in the right conditions - which would be a lake or pond or medium to small stream with gentle to modest current. As I mentioned when I took my RZA61L-T (now the RZA612S-LT under the new naming system) to this same stream a few years ago (Trip Report 9-2-19), a customer had told me his Alter was a wonderful rod for the headwaters. I think he is right. On this stream on that day I caught lots of fish. On this stream on that day, had I had the RZA5102S-LLT it would have been a blast. As usual, the fish were 5-8 inches, and there were a lot of them. The RZA5102S-LLT would do beautifully with the 1.5 to 3.5 gram lures I used (with most fish coming on 1.5 and 2 gram lures).
Even though I spent little time fishing the rod, and the stream conditions clearly were not ideal for it, I did like it well enough to order some for the shop.
Oh, one last thing, I was able to execute the absolute best flip cast of my life. I could see this rod becoming by absolute favorite.
No, one more last thing. Tenryu describes the rod's power as between light and untralight. You must keep in mind that, at least in Japan, the power is relative to the type of rod. Rods designed for fishing in the Areas are softer than rods designed for fishing in streams. A light Area rod would be considered an ultralight rod by American rod standards. American ultralight rods are generally rated for 2-6 pound line and 1/16 to 3/16 oz lures. The RZA5102S-LLT is rated for a maximum of 4 pound line (mono or fluoro). Maximum recommended lure weight is 5 grams, which means 3/16 oz lures are too heavy. By any measure the average American angler is used to, this is a true ultralight.
Header photo: Tenryu Rayz RZ4102B-UL, Shimano Calcutta Conquest BFSHG ('17)
Warning:
The hooks are sharp.
The coffee's hot.
The fish are slippery when wet.
Whatever you do, do it with finesse!