Leif Stävmo, former casting world champion and Guideline's head of design for the past 10 years, started fly fishing when he was 13 years old. His collected experience in rod design is second to none. When he decided to create the Reaction Series he put all his experience to the test. After hundreds of rejected blanks, countless hours of testing, numerous sleepless nights and some very sore shoulders, we are proud to present the most advanced rods he has ever designed.

Made in USA – with pride

After two years and the most exciting and challenging effort ever, our Reaction flyrods are on the market.

By being given the privilege of using one of the world’s premier and most advanced rod building facilities, we have merged true American rod building tradition with engineering excellence and Guideline rod action philosophy in the development and creation of these state of the art rods.

Reaction is a modern, yet timeless rod that is more “Stealthy” in the looks. No flashy, glossy paint jobs, no fancy space-age cut out reel seats, no super customized cork grips.. These rods may be a little more subtle in design, but they are equipped with the best cork we could find, the most High-Tec guides and reel seat components from REC and a blank that has been developed and built with well proven manufacturing methods and the very best graphite materials available.

We take advantage of a unique, very advanced reinforcement technology in a very thin special carbon cloth, that ads 10x the strength to a rod blank and also helps in creating a slim-profile ferrule and increased hoop strength. The ferrule areas also integrate a technology that makes the transition points between reinforced areas and the rest of the blank much smoother and without any significant differences in wall thickness. This eliminates many of today’s common ferrule breakages in rods. We use a combination of the very best Japanese and US made graphite cloths from the most well known and respected manufacturers. There are 4 different materials used in the rods, ranging from 35 up to a very high 60 MSI in modulus.

As for the rod actions, we wanted to use some of the best from our very popular Le Cie rods, but go one step further in trying to give them a feeling of being more alive and responding with a more pronounced “sling-shot” effect noticeable in the middle and lower areas of the rod. These rods are not slow, they react fast and very accurate and the tip sections in general are quite powerful, which helps loop control and also enhances the loaded feeling in the lower half of the rod. The tips will also stand up well when pulling both heavy sinking tips and larger flies out of the water for the next cast.

These rods will be easy to get to know. They are forgiving in terms of the casting stroke and they will appeal to a broad majority of intermediate to advanced casters. If high-performing rods with the potential of throwing a long cast whilst maintaining an excellent “harmonic” feeling are your game, then you should give them a try.