[Quiet Man]

Greetings from New York. Or, as I not-so-affectionately refer to it, "The Big Attitude."

I've been watching this board for a while now, and have been more than impressed by the civility, fellowship, and wealth of knowledge of the folks who post here. But, not having much to say, and having even less to say that's worthwhile, I haven't posted much.

Well actually, I haven't posted at all, but I hope we can get past that.

I live in Manhattan, but I fish Montauk, from May through December. It's a long drive from one tip of Long Island to the other, especially in the summer when the poser-bees are swarming in the Hamptons. But it's worth every agonizing, red-faced, profanity-laced moment in the truck to get out East.

Not so much because the fishing's good, which it often is, but because of where there's good fishing. To be perched on a rock in a deserted cove with soaring bluffs at my back and white water at my feet, casting to the horizon, is a religious experience. By that I mean that it's the only thing that keeps me from buying a black-market Uzi, snapping like an over-stretched bungee cord, and sending scores of my fellow urbanites to meet their makers.

All in all, though, I'd rather catch a schoolie in Montauk than a 40-pound fish in the shadow of an office tower or beach-side condo building.

But then, fishing's not all about the fish, is it.

Nah. It's about the hunt, the solitude, the brotherhood, the physical challenge of the sport. It's about shooting stars, and off-course whales, and foxes appearing and disappearing like ghosts in the darkness. It's about knowing the date, without looking at the calendar, by the type of bait in the water and the kind of birds in the sky. It's about self-sufficiency, and rekindling the ancient skills and instincts that died out in most men about the time they invented carbon paper.

It's also about the toys. I mean tools. Okay, I mean toys.

Which brings me, at long last, to my question.

In my arsenal of rods, I have two rods built on XRA 132-2 blanks. One is a one-piece, and one is a two-piece. Except for guide placement, they're built identically. Same number and type of guides. Same fuji plate reelseat. Same cork-tape grip, same butt length, same, same, same. But they're two very different rods.

The two-piece Arra is my favorite rod. It's fairly light, versatile, and powerful. It'll toss a 3 1/2 ounce pencil the better part of the distance to Portugal, but it also does a reasonably good job with a one ounce bucktail. The problem is, of course, that's it's a two-piece. And even when the two pieces are taped firmly together, working a pencil popper eventually causes the tip section to twist and throw the guides out of alignment.

The one-piece? I hate it, at least for the jobs I ask it to do. It's noticeably stiffer than the two-piece, and far heavier in the hand than the listed one-ounce difference in weight of the blanks would suggest it should be. It's harder for me to load and much more tiring to cast. If there were a stiffer 11-foot blank in the Arra line, I'd swear my rod-maker got a mislabeled blank, and built on that instead of the 132-2.

What's going on here? Should the one-piece and two-piece versions of this blank really be that much different? And if they're not, is there that really much variation in blanks of the same model?

And finally, can someone suggest an alternative 11-foot, one-piece blank that has a similar feel to the two-piece Arra? Something that can throw 1-3 ounces, is light and sensitive, has a moderately-fast action, and has enough guts to muscle a fish out of the rocks when needed?

Thanks in advance for your help, gentlemen. Now that I've broken my silence, I'll try to find something of interest or value to offer this board.

And I promise to root for the Sox till there's two outs in the ninth inning of the seventh game of the American League pennant series.