Winston Pure 2 Review: 7’9″ 4-Weight

Images by Spencer Durrant

When you cast a 4-weight Winston, you probably have a good idea of how the rod will behave. The rods are progressively medium-fast, meaning they’re quick in close, but the rod slows down at traditional trout fishing distances.

You also expect a soft, forgiving tip section that can handle delicate tippets, and some backbone that will punch through wind and handle larger fish. Really, you’re looking for a rod that’s finely tuned for dry flies, delicate presentations, and just enough oomph to perform well in a variety of situations.

That’s exactly what you get with the 7’9″ 4-weight Pure 2.

Let’s take a look at everything I loved about fishing this rod.

Perfectly Tuned Action

The 7’9″ 4-weight feels like a classic Winston stick, which means you’ll be able to quickly cast off the tip in close, but the rod gets slower and more rhythmic the more line you send out there. Unlike some of the older Winston rods, though, the Pure 2 is noticeably more stable throughout the cast. The new materials Winston used in this rod (the same technology in their Air 2 lineup) allow for a crisper, tighter experience without some of that side-to-side wobble you can get in older graphite.

As you’d expect from a short 4-weight, this rod really was at its best with a dry fly, but it threw dry-dropper rigs just fine. I cast a few different lines on it, including a Scientific Anglers Creek Trout (half-size heavy with an aggressive head), an SA Trout Double Taper, and SA Mastery Trout Standard. It liked the Mastery Trout Standard line the best, which is true-to-weight with a longer, but not aggressive, head.

Overall, the 7’9″ 4-weight is just an absolute joy to cast. I could get all bogged down in the new tech in this rod, or talk about its torsional stability (and all that matters, of course) but in the end, if you don’t enjoy casting a rod, it’s hard to appreciate everything else. I reviewed a similar rod from a different company earlier this year, and just didn’t click with it. Objectively, it was a good fishing tool. I just didn’t enjoy it.

I think you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who wouldn’t enjoy this 7’9″ 4-weight. Yes, it’s a slower rod, designed for delicate dry fly work, but it’s not overwhelmingly slow. The best word to describe it is lively. This rod had some character, and I have half a mind to tell the folks at Winston that I misplaced it just to avoid sending it back for a few more months.

Versatile Enough

The folks at Winston were kind enough to give me my pick of the Pure 2 lineup for review, and I went for this 7’9″ 4-weight because it’s unique. Incidentally, most rods in this lineup are a bit shorter than traditional lengths—7’9″ instead of 8′, 8’3″ instead of 8’6″, etc. That’s on purpose, because shaving just a few inches off those traditional lengths allows for rod that tracks straighter, maintaining tighter loops and increasing the rod’s inherent accuracy.

I wanted a short 4-weight for my local freestone and high-mountain streams—something suited to throwing mayflies during a hatch, but also tossing a dry-dropper combo when needed. This particular 7’9″ rod is versatile enough for all of that, although I don’t think I’d toss a size 8 Chubby Chernobyl and a size 10 Pat’s Rubberlegs with it and expect any sort of delicacy. It’s versatile enough to do that if the situation demands it, but the rod shines with dry flies (of all sizes, really—it never felt too undergunned even with a big hopper on the leader). I spent an evening throwing a size 14 Parachute Adams with a size 18 Zebra Midge on an 18-inch dropper, and the Pure 2 handled that just fine.

Accuracy

A dry-fly focused rod isn’t worth much if it’s not accurate. As I previously mentioned, Winston opted to cut down the lengths on most Pure 2 models to give each rod more torsional stability. In layman’s terms, that means Winston reduced how much the rod moves side-to-side during the cast. In an ideal world, every fly rod would stay perfectly vertical during the cast, but every rod has some horizontal movement. This decreases line speed, opening up your loops, and decreasing your accuracy. The straight a rod moves during casting, the more inherently accurate it is.

Of course, accuracy depends largely on the angler, but there’s only so much you can do with a rod that moves as much side-to-side as it does front-to-back.

The 7’9″ 4-weight Pure 2 feels and acts like a rod that tracks straight. I’m an average caster on my best days, but I didn’t have trouble getting my flies where they needed to be. Even in tight quarters under overhanging branches, I had confidence I could get the 7’9″ 4-weight to put my flies on target.

Backbone

This rod has enough backbone to deal with some wind, but like any other 4-weight, it’s not built to punch 80 feet of line into a 20 mile-and-hour headwind. Perhaps more importantly, though, it’s stout enough to handle larger fish and quickly get them in the net. Yes, playing big fish on light tackle is fun, but it’s more important to quickly land and release trout. The 7’9″ 4-weight is sensitive enough to give you that enjoyable fight, but you can pull bigger fish away from logjams or other snags, and even handle them in bigger current.

Wrapping Up

The 7’9″ 4-weight Pure 2 is an impressive stick that does a wonderful job of carrying on Winston’s legacy of trout-focused, medium-soft rods that pack more punch than you’d expect. This thing is an absolute joy to cast, and it’ll handle a wide variety of situations. It won’t replace your 9′ 5-weight by any means, but for small-stream anglers, or spring creek nuts, this thing will have a permanent spot in your quiver.

I’m particularly impressed that Winston kept the Pure 2 priced at $995, which is the same price as the original Pure series, which debuted well before inflation hit us all these past few years. That’s still a lot of money for a fly rod, but it’s a premium product, so you’d expect to pay a premium price for it. The Pure 2 is built with Winston’s usual flair and attention to detail (I contend they’re the prettiest production rods on the market) and Winston even changed the grip up a bit, as well. The original Pure had a thicker grip that was fairly polarizing. The Pure 2 uses the same cigar-shaped grip on the Air 2 rods.

In all, this rod was a joy to use, and I’d highly recommend it to anyone looking for a dedicated dry fly stick.