I just wanted to give a very positive recommendation for this rod. I bought the 8'6" 5 wt outfit for my girlfriend as a starter. This cheap rod actually loads quite well and is pretty responsive. It isn't the fastest action rod in the world but hey, it is $40 right now for rod, reel and line. This is high praise coming from somebody who is spoiled with Loomis and Sage! http://www.cabelas.com/cabelas/en/templa...rset=ISO-8859-1

Now that is a danged fine deal! (I edited your post to make the link clickable)

Thanks for editing. I am really thinking about getting the 8wt combo for some striper fishing. I have never had that heavy a rod. If I do bite the bullet and buy it I will give a review.

Oh, I want to add that the reel is really friggin heavy. It throws the balance off quite a bit. If you have a spare graphite reel lying around you might want to swap that out. But still, $40!

indeed.

Not sure I really needed another outfit but I went ahead and ordered the 9' 6wt Cahill outfit (they were out of the 5wts). I have a friend who has a an older Diamondback Carbon(?) rod that really casts nice. It's a slow action but super easy to feel the rod load up. Are these Cahill rods anything like that?

Got the Cahill 9' 6t outfit in today and went outside in the yard to cast a bit. Very nice looking, easy loading rod. With very little effort I was getting 50' cast even with a little wind to contend with. For $52 and some change you can't go wrong with this setup.
Steve

thats a nice deal, wish they had it in a 3wt