And the slightly shorter length helped me get false casts off in a hurry without sacrificing the ability to shoot line. But I had no doubt that the Blackout put extra distance and tighter loops into my delivery. I can’t say I have the skill set to power a 60-foot cast in those conditions. But the rod’s spine held up to the challenge. And I wondered about the shorter length as I waded the surf zone and tried to punch a fly through 20 miles-per-hour winds. On the Bahamas flats, I fretted at first about the potential loss of some leverage when I needed to pull 30 feet of fly line off the water for a second shot at bonefish. They shaved 6 inches off the traditional 9-foot length. Orvis takes a different tack with its 8-weight Blackout. The Orvis Helios backbone helps punch complicated rigs, such as weighted nymphs and hopper-dropper combos, without tailing leaders and aggravating snarls. Trout anglers will appreciate the longer rod’s ability to mend line over conflicting currents in the river or creek, and it’s a blessing when trying more advanced casts like a reach cast or steeple. The all-around performance of a traditional 5-weight fishing rod gets a 6-inch boost in length in the Blackout series.

But given that the Blackout 3-weight is built with the same famously light layups as the Orvis Helios 3 line, that extra length should be barely noticeable in swing weight. The extra length helps deal with confused current seams when you’re fishing at a distance. Designed to tap into the trend of European nymphing, the rod telegraphs the most nuanced takes and keep the angler in touch with a weighted nymph’s ride along the river bottom. The most specialized of the rod is the 11-foot-long 3-weight. Personally, as long as the rod doesn’t have fuzzy dice painted on the blank, I’m more interested in performance than looks. (Note: For certain newer models in the Helios 3 family, you can order the rods with blue or green bands.) People will either love or hate the “tactical” look of the Blackout, especially the drippy, melted-look logo. People either loved or hated that white banner-with most in the latter category. All the components other than the grip have a non-glare, black-on-black layup: black reel seat frame with a black carbon insert, non-glare blanks, and black guides.įor this series, Orvis eschews the signature white band and the overly large Orvis logo in front of the grip. Reel seats are Type III anodized aluminum.

The stripping guides are SiC/titanium, for a super-hard finish and minimum friction on the cast and during the fight. We’ll get to the specifics of each in a moment, but here’s the lowdown on their shared DNA.Īll three Blackout rods use the existing Helios 3 materials package, but Orvis built them with specialized tapers. There is a 3-weight 11-footer a 9 1/2-foot 5-weight and the 8 1/2-foot 8-weight. Instead of launching a traditional rod series with models across most rod weights, the Orvis Helios 3 Blackout comes in three different models. Orvis Fly Rod Models in the Orvis Helios 3 Blackout Series Did I really just do that? Orvis designed its new line of Blackout rods for specialized fishing scenarios. Several times I laid out the line and thought: Dang. Instead, it relies on a kind of casting authority that helped fill the gap between the casts we knew we had to make, and the casts that we actually made in the moment. The Blackout 8-weight is a fast-action rod that seems not to rely on speed so much-although it has plenty of that. Even with very good other choices literally at hand, time and again we reached for the new kid in town. Over two days of serious fishing, rarely was the Blackout fly rod stowed. On the bow of our flats skiff, with tailing bonefish and permit in our sights, even I asked myself: How much of the Blackout’s breathless product prose was hype? The Blackout series takes that technology in an even more refined direction: rods produced for specific-and specifically challenging-casting situations and environments. Orvis designed the Helios 3D for distance casting, while the Helios 3F rod marries that signature backbone to a slightly softer tip for an edge in accuracy. Since the introduction of the Orvis Helios 3D and Helios 3F fly rods in 2017, they’ve helped put a serious new luster on the Orvis brand of fishing gear. The Next Generation of Orvis Helios Fly Rods It’s a brand-new fly rod from a brand-new line of Orvis fly rods. They were all top-of-the-line sticks, and most had been proven in battle, except for a just-out-of-the-box, never-before-fished, 8-weight Orvis Helios 3 Blackout. The rods came from three different manufacturers, in sizes designed to handle any fish from young bonefish to 120-pound tarpon. You can’t say we didn’t come well-armed: In our flats skiff in the Bahamas, my buddy and I had five fly fishing rods.

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Orvis helios 3