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Temple Fork basically revived and/or reinvented the inexpensive fly rod.
Years ago, I feel many fly rod companies (basically all the companies) intentionally made their lower end fly rods feel like low end fly rods to help the sales of their high end fly rods. Temple Fork and few others came in, started making quality, inexpensive fly rods, and effectively forced (imo) the big names in the business to take a serious look at the casting qualities of their lower end sticks.
The FLi and many others in this price range are very nice. In most cases, it is tough to tell them apart from their more expensive counterparts.
Sales of $600 fly rods are becoming increasingly rare. There's a few different scenarios that play out all the time at the shop:
One is your beginner caster. He can't tell the difference between a $200 and a $600 fly rod. So he almost always goes with the $200 fly rod, as he should. It's more then good enough to learn on and the quality is such that he won't feel he needs to upgrade as he learns to cast. Shops that regularly sell a lot of $600 rods must be preying on the beginners lack of knowledge, advertising, and trust in the fly shop, imo.
Next is your mid-range caster. He might be able to detect differences between fly rods, but whether there is any distinct advantage to the $600 rod he's not sure. Usually he doesn't think so and he's right. $200 fly rod again.
Lastly we have an experienced caster. He can feel the differences between all the fly rods. Of course, he can outcast most people using a flyline on a broom stick. If there is an advantage to a $600 fly rod that he can feel, he's still going to have trouble justifying $400 more for a fly rod.
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