Nam Original 990-4 Review By Mike Rice

Review: Nam Original 990-4

By: Mike Rice

I rigged the rod with an Airflo Cold Salt WF-9 Intermediate line. The first few times I cast this rod I did not like it. At all. I spent a half hour throwing it on the lawn and could not get the rod to load or deliver line past forty feet. I took it out on a flat to sight cast at stripers and was again disappointed with its performance. It just did not seem to load or generate any line speed. I was going to send it back to Josh with no review, but I had questions. So, to do my due diligence, I fired up the Google machine and did some research.

At the bottom of the Nam website is a link titled “NAM LINE WEIGHTS EXPLAINED.” Here, I found the answers I was looking for. Nam says, “The more people we meet around the globe the more we see that the perfect line weight for a specific rod is very individual…” They conclude, “So, what line weight is the best line weight on our rods? We don’t know…”

With that information, I went back to the flats the next day and unleashed chaos. I kept the WF-9 Intermediate on just to see what I could do with it. I threw out every piece of casting “instruction” I’ve ever received, read about or watched on the Tube. I underpowered the rod, overpowered it, threw wide open loops and tried to form tight loops. I spent two hours casting and adjusting until I really found where and when in the casting stroke the rod would load, and I could start hitting sixty feet with accuracy. I had a lot of fun figuring it out. Then I started fishing. I spent another two hours sight-casting to stripers in skinny water and put several on the rod. At the end of the day I switched over to an Airflo Superflo Flats Universal WF-10 Floating line. The added weight improved the rod’s performance. I would probably move up to an 11-weight line.

 All said, despite my first impressions, this is a fun rod to throw. And I applaud Nam for saying what most won’t say, perfect line weight is very individual.