Home Forums Fishing Flyfishing Anyone know about older Browning fly rods?

Back in the 90s, my brother was deployed to S. Korea and brought back a fly rod for me. While I never did much fly fishing back then, since the move to Montana I've started to fish more and thought I'd finally try out this rod. The only thing I know about it is what's printed on the rod, shown in the pics below.

I'll be taking to the local fly fishing shop soon to see if they can get it ready to fish (the reel is an old crappy Shakespeare, so I know that needs to be replaced with a better one and new line) but any info on what I have is appreciated.

They're a fairly slow action mass produced rod. Of course nothing wrong with that for close in dry flies, nymphing.

looks like a 9 ft 6 weight. pretty standard.

Throw on a good 6 weight line , I like SA line, and a reel like this

https://www.sportsmans.com/fishing-...WUF7rB_i0KAdUEbOE99A2nc4SqYaAjE2EALw_wcB

The #7 indicates a 7 weight line. There's nothing wrong with a crappy Shakespeare that means you have to replace it now but pull the first 25 feet of the line off and make sure there are no cracks or rough areas in it. You may be in for a new line depending on how it held up.

As Ribka recalls, the ones I cast were a pretty slow action rod that was great for dry flies and less so for big streamers.

Thank you both for the helpful responses!

JUNK!!!!!!!!

Pictures of the reel would help, some of them were crap but some were pretty good reels. The foreign made rods were usable but not great rods. The older fiberglass Browning rods were much better. Only owned one of theirs in graphite and as stated above I thought it was pure crap.

There is a reason Browning no longer plays in the fly fishing world. I had several of them back in the 80's and they were not very good.

The Silaflex glass rods from the late 60’s were decent, I bought a 6’ and a 7’ that fished pretty well.

I never fished one but I do remember their advertisements!