T&T Exocett 88 300 Grain Rod Review By Nick Curcione

Regardless of the product, when reading a review, you expect an honest, unbiased evaluation and to provide some confidence along those lines some background information on the author can be helpful. So, let me be forthright at the outset and inform you that over the years I’ve had a close relationship with T&T. The late Tom Dorsey (one of the founders) and I were very good friends, and I served as a consultant. I don’t work for the company, there is no contract, but occasionally I am gifted with a demonstration rod.   After 50-plus years in the fly-fishing industry I have a reputation for telling it like it is and will follow suit in this review.

I am not a tech guy and when I research a fly rod that has struck my interest, I don’t get too caught up with design and construction details. The marketing folks provide that information in their advertising copy. What I want to know is how the rod actually fishes and that boils down to two basic functions: how well does it cast, and how does it perform when trying to subdue a fish that’s taken the fly. That’s what I will address here.

When you think about a fishing rod, and especially one intended for fly fishing it’s a remarkable piece of engineering because you’re asking it to perform two very different functions. First, it must be able to deliver the goods, whatever it is that we present to the fish. Secondly, once the fish has taken the offering, we want the rod to be able to apply sufficient resistance to overcome the fish’s effort to escape.

This is the compromise issue that all fishing rod manufacturers must deal with. Should the rod be designed primarily for casting effectiveness or should the emphasis be placed on its function as a fish fighting tool? In some cases, with specialty rods that are going to be used for one particular purpose like a big game trolling stick that’s intended for use in a fighting chair the design emphasis is clearly obvious. Its’ casting property is not an issue. Instead, the sole concern is its’ ability to subdue large, powerful, offshore gamefish.  In contrast, the fly-fishing realm is a different game altogether. Fly fishing is preeminently fly casting. Yes, you can use your fly rod to troll a fly and many anglers do so. But snobbery aside, the fact that fly gear was used in making the catch is only part of the story. How the gear was employed is the real issue. You can claim you were using fly tackle but if the fly was not cast, you are not fly fishing.  I have a friend who recently caught a 40-pound plus roosterfish. He readily acknowledged that he trolled the fly as did many in his group who made the trip to Baja to catch roosters. He was not very pleased when I presented him with the issue of how the fly was presented to the fish. He liked telling others how he caught this fish on the fly and for those who don’t participate in the sport, that’s all they need to know. Most fly fishers however, would not be impressed with the feat because the fly was not cast to the fish, it was simply dragged behind the boat. Were it not for that fact, the rooster would have never been caught. Fly rods, even those sticks designed for blue water brutes like T&T’s offshore series, are still intended to be cast. All the fly rod manufacturers must consider the fact that their rod lineup will be expected to accomplish this dual function. 

Given my experience with the 300-grain Exocett 88, confronting this compromise issue is where the rod really shines. In addition to some magical design elements with tweaks in complex graphite mixtures and high-tech resin bonding agents, T&T also accumulated intense fishing tested input from some very accomplished fly fishers targeting gamefish worldwide. What they came up with in the Exocett 88, hits the high mark in addressing the casting/fish fighting conundrum. On both counts this rod delivers. 

The 88 designation derives from the fact that all the rods in this series are 8’ 8’’ in length. Right off that represents a departure from conventional beliefs which dictate that the ideal length for most single hand fly rods should be nine feet long. The belief is so ingrained in the fly-fishing public that friends who either own or work in fly shops tell me that single hand rods that deviate from this standard typically do not sell as well as their nine-foot counterparts. The folks at T&T are certainly aware of this so why would they offer an entire series of rods that are four inches shorter than the ‘normal’ stick. Conventional wisdom advocates longer rods for easier casting distance. There is of course some truth to this because the rod functions as a lever and basic physics teaches that a longer lever makes the task at hand easier to accomplish. Thus, there is a certain advantage using a longer rod to cast a line. However, the compromise issue raises its ugly head again because the longer lever in this this case adversely affects the rod’s fish fighting capability. Think of the seesaw analogy.  The increased length of board across the balance has the mechanical advantage over the shorter section. Assuming their weights are roughly identical, the person sitting on the longer portion of the board will cause the person on the shorter section to be raised from the balance bar. A fish pulling at the end of your line is equivalent to the person sitting on the lengthened section of a seesaw. It has the mechanical advantage because it is pulling from the longer section of the rod. As the rod length increases so too does the disadvantage for the angler trying to subdue it from the opposite direction. 

An ideal opportunity to see firsthand how this rod performed presented itself when my long-time buddy Conway Bowman, aka the “mako man”(contact him at conwaybowman.com for the fishing experience of a lifetime) wanted to feature me for an upcoming shark fishing episode he was putting together for a YouTube documentary. It’s the beginning of April, a little early for makos, but blue sharks can show up in good numbers a short distance offshore outside San Diego.  I used several of my sinking shooting head set ups ranging from 300 to 350-grains, 24 to 28-feet in length. I also fished one of Cortland’s Compact Sink Type 6s in a 350-grain configuration. Shark fishing, at least offshore here on the west coast is not particularly suited to evaluating a rod’s casting prowess because the critters are chummed close to the boat and particularly the case with blue sharks many times you can simply flop the fly overboard. To offset this, I made it a practice to cast as soon as we spotted a fin homing in on the drifting pieces of chum which required casts in the 60 to 70-foot range. Since the sharks are chummed close to the surface you can use a floating line, but for most saltwater fly fishing in the Southern California area there isn’t much application for these lines. But I did want to see how this rod cast with one and a few days prior to the trip in a casting session with different sinking line set ups that lasted several hours I rigged it with a 9-weight, 305-grain Cortland Striped Bass floater. I could find no fault with this rod throwing any of these lines. I mark my running and integrated lines, so I have a good idea of how much line is really being cast and shots hitting the 80 and 90-foot marks with this this stick were no problem. With my custom shooting heads, I managed some ‘hero casts’ at the 100-foot range. Although it’s rated for 300-grains, it still performed well with the ones weighing in at 350-grains. For me at least, an ideal grain weight window for this rod would range from 310 to 320-grains. As for the issue of its slightly reduced length impacting casting distance, I am confident that if they weren’t advised of the fact beforehand, 99% of accomplished casters couldn’t determine that the rod is under nine feet. It casts that well. On the other hand, when you really want to pressure a fish and turn it to get it coming your way, with proper fish fighting technique you’ll be impressed with how a reduction of only four inches of rod tip significantly enhances the stick’s pulling power. The blues we got into that day took a beating with this stick. Most were in the 40 to 50-pound range, the largest that was close to 6-feet we estimated to be 60 to 70-pounds. Unlike the rotund profile of makos, blue sharks have a sleek, fighter jet-like appearance. They can’t match the speed of a mako but they can burn line off your reel and when they sound in the depths wrestling them back to the surface can be a real tug-o-war. The Exocett 88 lived up to its fish fighting reputation. For a rod with a 300-grain window, this stick did a great job of muscling these sharks to the boat.

To put a cap on this, for me the hallmark of this rod is its versatility. I can take it anywhere I want to fish and feel confident that regardless of the conditions at hand, freshwater or salt, floating or sinking line applications, it will enable me to confront whatever species I want to challenge on fly. At this stage of my fly fishing career, I have an ample number of rods for all my fishing needs but this is one I would like to add to my lineup.