The Mouching testers team grows bigger!! Complete and accomplished fly fisherman, lover of the river, great mentor, David Maillard takes us fishing in small streams, for a delightful dry fly fishing, with the small JMC Competition 7’6” #3.

One of my favorites fly fishing practice is fishing small streams and other littered tributaries with a very small rod. That’s an unusual way of fishing around my place and that’s great for me because this style of fly fishing is very interesting and efficient !
At the beginning of this fishing season, Jérôme told me « JMC offers me to make a rod test, and that could fits you… A JMC Competition, 7’6”… » I couldn’t refuse !!
Since then, I fish with it, and honestly, it’s awesome!

General Presentation : lightness, discretion and accuracy

In the JMC Competition series, this short 7’6” could be seen as an outsider, among the 10′ and 11′ that competitors care for, with #4 line for nymph on line or #7 line for reservoir fishing. This 7’6” is made for delicate dry fly fishing in competition in little streams. And that’s a great idea to decline this model in this length, because seen the results, it would have been too bad to not have it.
The rod is packaged in a green olive cordura tube. Very easy to carry, there’s a handle on the tube, and an amovible system to be shoulderhung, it opens and closes by a tough zip closure. The storage of the rod’s elements in the tube is smart, each element goes over one another, from the tube to the center. Which is much easier, when you store your rod, than usual tissue compartment, which have seemingly the same shape and in the end the elements never fits !!
This is the top of the discretion. Its green olive matte color, allows it to do some mimetism in the tree branches, and to fish some fishes when they’re 3 feet in front of you, as long as yourself stays discret, that is really common in this type of waters… The last thing you want is a flash on the rod that spooks the fish !

The reel holder is in cork with rings to tightened it, that’s absolutely in the spirit of an ultra light rod. First I was little afraid by this type of tightening (they’re not all reliable…), I never have any problem with my reel, because of the cork, that perfectly holds the reel.

While fishing

The main strength of the Competition 7’6” is undeniably its lightness and its easy handling. Champion of « super-feather » weight, it’s a rod of accuracy, which is ideal in streams and very littered rivers, to fish under the tree branches, using roll cast, reverse cast… Furthermore, it allows to cast 50 feet of line when needed (even if we rarely need to cast that long in such little rivers).

I’ve fished this rod with a JMC line, The Symbol #3 in honey colour. With such a line, its fast tip action is smooth and progressive (means that it’s quite autoritary with few line out, then it begins to charge with few dozens of feet of line out) and makes it a rod that allows to fish on very short distance (right cast, roll cast, reverse cast…) to 50 feet without any problem.

What pleases me the most, is that this rod becomes your arm while fishing. The sensation when you hold it is great : ligthness, maniability. Really soon the cast becomes instinctive (especially in that kind of fishing, where you can quite never spread your line, and where casts, more than esthetics, have to be efficients), and you can use its power when fishing further is needed. This without affecting the accuracy and discretion of your presentation. By the way, you could use a line one number up, that will not trouble your casts. That’s a characteristic of JMC, whom likes fast and powered rods that cast!!

The final word

That was a crush for me. The same rod in 6′ version would be deadly. I Highly recommend it to all those, like me, who love « Sioux fishing » in the streams !

David Maillard

David is the first person ever who put a fly rod in my hand when I was 5 or 6. He is the one who gave me the love of the nature and the river.

Jérôme