re: 3 Wt skinny water fly rods

I use a TFO NXT Black Label 9’/4 piece 5 WT and it works just fine. I visit the mountain streams of the Smokies and Cherokee National Forest often, to include backpacking trips. It works fine. I find myself rarely doing a full backcast…and really only have about 10-12’ of line (tippet + leader) out at any given time. A Tenkara rod may be useful as it packs down smaller, but I have not used one.