A Scott Centric Five Weight Review | Simon Taylor’s First Impressions

It’s always exciting when a parcel arrives from the legends at Manic Tackle Project, but a week ago when I found the box on my doorstep I was both excited, but also nervous. My reason for being anxious was knowing that one of the rods in the box was the new Scott Centric 905/4 fly rod, the rod the Scott Radian had just been replaced with.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

For me, the Scott Radian was the best fast action fly rod I had ever used, and for the past six years the 5wt Radian had been my companion searching the Western Lakes wilderness fishery. It was a rod that just ticked all the boxes, and ticked them well!

So how does the new Scott Centric compare to the Radian?

Firstly, the appearance of the new rod is stunning. Scott Fly Rods have replaced the silver rod tube used with the Radian with an epic looking black tube, with the Scott logo in silver writing. This black tube matching the deep black colour rod blank and black carbon reel seat featured on the Scott Centric.

One thing that surprised me with the new rod is that the blank is slightly thicker that of the Radian. The blank continues the Scott tradition with a ‘natural finish’, has black bindings, with some featuring a flash red giving it a very classy appearance.

NOW, THE IMPORTANT STUFF

First impressions of the Scott Centric is the rod weight feels about the same of the Radian. The action is slightly faster, but ‘crisper’. It’s super responsive, giving incredible feel and feedback when you fish it. The new Centric generates exceptional line speed, seemingly requiring very little effort to cast.

Casting over a range of distances it performed beautifully. Out on the grass, I ran through casts from super short, to long and made a point to cast both into the wind and across it to see how it performed. The rod loads quickly, and really gets going with 15 to 20ft of line out. It casts well close, but felt best at ‘mid’ to ‘long’ range. In saying this, being a fast actioned rod I didn’t expect it to load as well ‘short’ (the way the G Series does), and was really pleased with how the fast actioned Scott Centric performed casting a short line.

I was keen to get the rod on the water, after having a quick cast in the paddock was able to take it to my local river for a couple hours to ‘christen’ it! The section of river I fished was not large, and being a cold day (first day of spring), I rigged up with a 15ft leader, strike indicator and two small tungsten nymphs. This was certainly a good way to test the ‘feel’ and ‘fishabilty’ of a rod. Fishing this rig setup on a ‘fast actioned’ rod (where the majority of casts would be short to mid-range) would soon tell how well the rod could load short, casting at times with not much more than the leader out.

On the water the new Scott Centric was a dream. The rod was able to turn over the heavy nymphs both at a super short range, and also (just because I had try try) when sending a long cast up river into a head wind! I like to use roll casts when fishing nymphs, and the Centric seemed to do this cast really well during my time on the water.

The rod gave an incredible amount of feedback, and the feel coming down through the blank as my nymphs came into contact with fish was exceptional. After catching a bunch of fish, and with time running out before I had to collect the kids from school, I cut the nymphs off and rigged up with a large dry to have a quick fish (pretending it was hopper time) up a run before leaving.

WRAPPING IT UP

My favourite fishing is polaroiding Tasmania’s Western Lakes with dries, so getting a taste with the rod rigged up with a dry fly was great. Loading up my first cast it was obvious how good this rod is. The Scott Centric is incredibly accurate and produced amazing loops, letting me deliver casts with ‘pin point’ accuracy.

Being able to ‘tighten’ up my loops after removing the heavy nymphs was a true eye opener to how good this rod is and made me want to go back for more!