The 11-Foot Switch Rod Kit from Wild Water
Wild Water offers one 11-foot kit: the Switch Rod Fly Fishing Kit for Steelhead, a 7wt, 4-piece setup at $250.00. The reel arrives pre-spooled with 400 grain floating switch line, which is how two-handed lines get rated instead of the standard 1-through-12 weight scale, and matches this rod directly at the manufacturer's specification. The kit also includes six large-pattern steelhead and saltwater flies, not the trout nymphs and dry flies a standard starter kit ships with, plus wire leaders, stainless forceps, spare leaders, and a hard tube case.
This rod earns its place on wide rivers where there is no room behind you for a standard overhead backcast and where reaching fish consistently requires casts beyond 60 feet. That covers big steelhead and salmon rivers, open saltwater flats, and large lakes.
What's Inside the Kit
Wild Water has been designing and testing these kits since 2006. Every component ships matched and ready to fish.
- Rod: 7-weight, 11-foot, 4-piece IM8 graphite with medium-fast action, an 11.75-inch cork foregrip, a 5.25-inch extension butt for the lower hand, and silicon carbide stripper guides. Each section measures 34.75 inches and the rod weighs 7.9 ounces total.
- Reel and Line: 114mm die-cast aluminum reel with adjustable disc drag, pre-spooled with a custom dual-color 400 grain floating switch line and a 12-foot 0X tapered leader. Converts from left to right hand retrieve in about two minutes with no tools.
- Flies: Six large-pattern flies: size 2 cone head black wooly bugger, size 2/0 red and white deceiver, size 2/0 green deer hair frog popper, size 1/0 tan and white sand eel, size 6 purple egg sucking leech, and size 2 chartreuse Clouser minnow. All matched to steelhead, salmon, pike, stripers, and saltwater species, not the trout patterns a standard starter kit ships with.
- Rod Case: 38.5-inch hard tube case with a reel pouch, side storage pouch with zipper, carry strap, and a 4-section cloth rod bag that wraps each section individually before going into the tube.
Why Buy the Kit Instead of Piecing It Together
Sourcing a matched switch rod setup piece by piece takes more time and money than most people expect. You need a rod rated for two-handed casting, a reel pre-spooled with switch line at the right grain weight, a case long enough to fit an 11-foot breakdown, and large-pattern flies matched to the species this rod is built for. None of those components are interchangeable with standard trout gear, and finding them separately means multiple orders with no guarantee they arrive matched. The kit handles all of it in one purchase at $250.
Call us at (585) 967-3474 if you need help. Our team has been rigging these kits since 2006 and can point you to the right setup in about two minutes. All orders ship free from New York.