Rod tips matter after all

I'll start with the good news, which has been been infrequent in most respects lately.  The Poudre continues to produce nice fish, like this little brown.

A few just like him entertained me on the lower Poudre yesterday.  Great fun.

The bad news?  Remember when I previously uttered this idiotic statement in Monday's post? 

After calming myself following a brief period of hyperventilating, I reached for my other fly rod.  You all know the one.  I wrote about it previously, I think.  It used to be nine feet, but it's now only about eight and a half, thanks to a broken rod tip.  How big a difference could a tip make, right?

As it turns out, quite a difference!

I knew it was coming.  A day after discovering that the top half of my one fly rod is MIA, the top half of my second rod...already tipless...suddenly got a lot shorter.  I hooked into a fish that put quite a bend in the rod, and sure enough, without the flexibility of the tip, the remainder snapped in two, like a brittle old bone. 

I'm officially flyrodless, and in my life, that is quite a catastrophe.

The hits just keep on coming.