Winston Passport...

[mr. 3 wt.]

Any thoughts on this new rod that Winston added to there lineup? I want to get a cheap 4pc 8wt rod to travel with. It looks decent and feels good in hand. I am going cheap because when we drift Ak's steelhead river we have a lot of stuff on board the driftboat. Things get banged around a bit and I don't need that stress of a 700$ rod getting messed up. I float fish and spoon fish mostly up there and have gotten things down pretty good with those methods. So, time to perfect flyfishing with wf floating line (no indicator). Anyways, the Passpport runs 199$ or so. Sounds pretty reasonable.

[Woodman]

Don't know what happened to the Winston vapor series. Maybe this replaced it. I have a vapor in a 5 weight that retailed in about this range and it is quite a nice rod for the money.

Another option is find a Sage RPLX on ebay or elsewhere. See them quite often and they usually are in this $200 range.

example
http://cgi.ebay.com/Sage-890-3RPLX-/180621150666?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item2a0ddc09ca

[OceanSunfish]

I've seen brand new TFO TiCrX 8 weights going for $125 on ebay. Heck of rod for delta stripers for when you fishing opportunities back in CA.