Gearing Up

Finally, my time is finally starting to free up a bit.  I'm looking to finally start planning some of the trips I've had on the back burners for a while now and also looking to learn to fly fish.

I was over at Bass Pro this weekend and the guys behind the counter were pretty helpful but they didn't have any newbie gear in stock. It's apparently been selling out pretty quickly.

For now, I only plan to fish for trout in nearby rivers and lakes.  It sounds like I should be buying a 5wt and since I'm a beginner I won't need anything expensive or exotic. Is there anything in particular I should be looking for or looking to stay away from?  Is a 4 piece rod good? 

I was looking at this... https://www.orvis.com/encounter-fly-rod-outfit/2TMX.html in the 9' 5wt. 

I'm still learning all of the basics. If you have any good sources of info point them my way.

Thanks!

Package sets are good because the lines are matched to the rod, but my only issue is they come with a floating line.  If you plan to fish only creeks, then a floating line is good, but if you plan to fish stillwater "lakes" then you want an intermediate and a type 4 line.

My go to line in stillwater for bass, trout, bluegills and crappie is an intermediate line, I use the 95% of the time.  then I use my type 4 when I need to get a little deeper.

Redington also makes a good package set.

And yes, a 5 weight is the best all around rod size, I have like 5 of them.  It is my go to rod size.

I have a 2 piece 5 wt and a 4 piece 4 wt. I love my 4 piece for venturing into the backcountry. The portability aspect is really nice. But yeah 5 wt is a really good all-around size for bass and trout. Stripers, steelhead, pretty much anything else in the ocean you'll want a 7wt+

Definitely don't need to ball out on anything fancy especially to learn on and bang around a bit.

I bought a Cabelas package deal years ago and only finally used it this last year.  Like you I got a 5w, as that's what's recommended for trout and maybe some bass.  But what I learned after trying it was that the streams I was fishing really didn't need a very long fly rod, and casting was pretty much roll casting or even just kinda tossing.  No way you could do the fancy false casts with so many trees on the banks, in fact sometimes you just kinda would drop it in a spot and let it float over the 10-15 ft and see if something came out.  Lots of videos I saw had much smaller rods for this type of fishing in streams, but I did have plenty of fun at least trying out my cheap combo last year.  I really liked the advice of a local fly shop that would tell me what is working and how to rig correctly, etc.  anyway good luck, hope you have fun doing it!  I got so bored of catching trout on powerbait, fly fishing was way more fun!

Thanks for all of the info so far.  I checked the redington site and they're currently sold out of the two rods below $200.