Snowbee Spectre RMX Fly Rod Review (Hands-on)

In this article we’re going to have a deep dive into the Snowbee Spectre RMX 10’ 7wt Fly Rod. I’ll cover all the different features of the rod — the components, the build, the makeup — as well as how I was fishing it.

At the end of this Snowbee Spectre RMX 10’ 7wt Fly Rod review, I’ll go over who this rod is perfect for, what are the pros, and where it falls a little bit short. Let’s get into it.

Snowbee Spectre RMX 10’ 7wt Fly Rod Review

Before I get started with the review, I have to mention that Snowbee sent me this Snowbee Spectre RMX Fly Rod for review and testing, but in no way are we required to be positive or say anything glowing about this rod.

I’ll be 100% honest about this product and every other product on this website, whether I’m purchasing it for myself, borrowing it from a fly shop, or the manufacturer sends it to me.

How I Was Fishing the Snowbee RMX Fly Rod

I guess I should make one thing clear off the bat. I’ve never fished a 10 foot fly rod before. This was new to me, but I was really excited to try it out.

For a reel, I’ve had this thing hooked up with the Snowbee Spectre #7/8 Cassette Reel. I’ve recently written a review of that reel, and you can go check it out if you want. It basically has all these different cassettes that you can easily change the lines over on.

For the 7 weight, I’ve been using it with the Snowbee XS-Plus intermediate sinking line, and I’ve also been using it with a half-weight overweight reel floating line.

I took it down to a really large river here in northwest Montana, just below an enormous dam, where there’s a huge rock wall behind me, along with my other rods, including a Moonshine and a bamboo rod by Headwaters.

I was having a hard time casting above that massive rock wall behind me, so I knew I wanted to get a longer rod. That’s where the Snowbee Spectre came in, and I’m really glad I ordered it, because it really did help me cast above that rock wall behind me.

But that’s not the only place where this rod shines. I haven’t had a chance to do it yet, but I plan to take this rod out on a drift boat trip this weekend, and I’m also going to take it out on my belly boat.

Those are two superb areas where this rod can really shine, because that extra foot that you get behind you can help keep your rod out of other anglers’ ears and eyes while you’re on a drift boat. It can also help to keep your back cast above the water, helping you to get a better presentation when you’re out floating on a belly boat or float tube.

Watch the Snowbee Spectre RMX Fly Rod Review Video

Snowbee Spectre RMX Fly Rod Build and Construction

We’ll start down at the butt section. There’s a really nice fighting butt on this rod, which is what you’d expect from a rod with a larger line weight.

The reel seat is beautiful. I think it’s one of Snowbee’s most stunning-looking rods in general, especially the reel seat. It has a gun metal color with a double ring uplocking reel seat, and on the reel seat it has a beautiful diamond marker that helps you get your reel in the right position sooner. You just lock it in and get fishing.

Moving up the rod, it has a cork handle. It’s pretty high quality cork with rubberized cork on both the tip and the butt section of the handle. It’s a full wells grip style, and I think it’s the perfect size for a 7 weight rod.

It fits my hand perfectly, and it’s just a beautiful grip. I’ve had a few Snowbee rods, and I think that this one has the best quality cork of all my rods. I like the grip for the 7 weight as well.

Moving up slightly, it has the hook keeper, which you’d expect from any rod. Then there’s the main part of the rod, the blanks. These are super high modulus carbon fiber blanks, and I really love the matte black finish that Snowbee uses on the RMX series of their fly rods.

All of my other Snowbee rods are that classic brown with gold accents, and I’m really glad that with the RMX they decided to go with this matte black finish with silver rings around the ferrules and around the wrappings around the guides.

It’s a beautiful-looking rod all around, and I think aesthetically this is my favorite Snowbee rod. But aesthetics don’t matter, so let me talk more about the blanks themselves.

The Blanks of the Snowbee Spectre RMX Fly Rod

On the Snowbee website, it says that this rod has fine-profile blanks that use predominantly 40-ton carbon fiber and that they blend it with a small amount of 36-ton carbon fiber.

That’s meant to deliver a really crisp middle-to-tip action. I really like the action of this rod, and I like the medium-to-fast action that this rod has.

It gives me a little bit of forgiveness in my casting stroke, but it’s also stiff enough that you can easily mend your line, control your line on the water, and do beautiful roll casts. It has a sensitive enough tip that you’ll feel those strikes.

But with a 7 weight, I was using it mainly for streamers, so if there was a strike, I was definitely going to feel it. But I’m sure that the tip is sensitive enough that if you’re taking fish on a dry drop or a hopper dropper, you’ll feel it with this rod with the action that it has.

From the clear coat applied to every one of the blanks to the wraps around the guides, there are no imperfections in the rod. You get the high-quality workmanship that you’d expect from a Snowbee rod.

The Guides on the Snowbee Spectre RMX Fly Rod

Moving up again, we have the first stripper guide. This is something that Snowbee really promotes with this rod. They call it a “MicroWave stripping guide,” which I didn’t understand at all when I first got this rod.

I looked at it and thought that it was a strange-looking stripper guide. What’s that meant to do?

The stripper guide itself is made with stainless steel, and it’s coated with a super hard titanium that’s supposed to provide a lot less friction through the rings.

It uses the latest American Tackle MW18 MicroWave guide system. The snake guide is high lift with oversized hay fork tip rings, which helps to maximize the line speed as it shoots out of the rod.

After reading that on their website, I had high hopes for the Snowbee Spectre RMX Fly Rod. I looked forward to going out and casting it, thinking that this special, new, maybe gimmicky-looking stripping guide was supposed to help the rod fire the line out easier while not getting wrapped around the bottom blank in the butt section.

What I’ll say is that, like all my Snowbee rods, it did fire the line out beautifully. The line never got stuck as it was running through the guides.

I don’t know if it was as huge of an improvement as their website might suggest, but it’s what you’d expect from any Snowbee rod. When you’re casting it out, the line fires through the guides and you won’t have any problem shooting out far casts with this rod.

Just below the stripper guide and between every section of the rod, there are handy alignment dots in a nice silver color, so you can easily set up your rod while you’re out on the river. It’s a feature that I wish every single rod had.

I have some that don’t have them, so whenever a rod has that feature, I like to mention it here in my reviews.

Moving up, there are some nice high-quality single foot snake guides with a titanium coating. After the butt section in the second section of the rod, there’s the first stripper guide. It’s the MicroWave stripper guide I was talking about before. There’s also the first two single foot guides.

The entire rod has 10 single foot guides, giving the rod a total of 12 guides to pass your line through when you’re setting it up.

The Rod Tube for the Snowbee Spectre RMX Fly Rod

The rod comes shipped in a sturdy black and orange Cordura-covered rod tube. It has the name of the rod embroidered on the side and a sticker on the top of the tube that gives you the length and line weight of the rod.

Inside you’ll find a black cotton rod sock that also has the name of the rod, the line weight, and the length silk-screened onto the side of it. This is really handy if you’re going out on a fishing trip and you put multiple socks into one big rod tube. You’ll be able to know which is which with the Snowbee line of rods.

Casting the Snowbee Spectre RMX Fly Rod

This is where the rod really shines. This is what you want from a rod, for it to cast well. And I do love casting the Snowbee Spectre RMX Fly Rod.

I can’t wait to take it out on a drift boat and on a float tube, where I can really utilize that extra foot. But, as I said earlier, I was already able to utilize the extra foot of this rod when I was fishing near that massive dam with the huge rock wall behind me.

It really does help you keep more clearance on your back cast. If you’re fishing on a really wide river and you’ve got a bit of brush behind you, the extra length can help as well.

I also found that having that extra foot of rod at the end helped me to make roll casts when I needed to, and it helped me to easily mend the rod.

Something that I didn’t mention earlier is that not only did I fish the Snowbee Spectre RMX Fly Rod on that massive river, but I also used it on a small stream, which isn’t the normal application for a rod like this.

But because it’s 10 feet long, I was able to high stick it and tight line nymphs through these little tiny pools that I found. With my shorter rods, I don’t get quite deep enough in the pools, and I don’t want to go in there and scare the fish.

Having that extra foot, when the dropoff into the pool is so steep, really did give me just enough space to drift my nymphs right across the pool, and I found that really handy.

As with all of my Snowbee rods, when I power through on my forward stroke, the rod snaps back into its original form almost immediately. The blank recovery is great, and that helps to keep your accuracy even on longer casts. With a 7 weight, that can come in pretty handy as well.

Fighting Fish with the Snowbee Spectre RMX 7wt 10’ Fly Rod

This is a great rod for fighting fish. Of course, it’s a 7 weight. It’s got plenty of backbone. The moderate-fast action helps that the tip is just sensitive enough that you can feel those takes.

You can really dig into this rod as well. I haven’t been seeing this from my other rods lately, because I mostly have 3 weights, 5 weights, and 6 weights, but with all 7 weights, the fighting butt comes in really handy when you’re fighting fish. You can rest it on your forearm, and it helps you to get more power out of the rod.

The tip of the rod is still sensitive enough that if you’re propping it against your forearm and there’s a fish pulling out line, it’ll protect the lighter tippets. You most likely won’t have super light tippets on a 7 weight, but I did do a little bit of dry dropper fishing with it, and it was useful to have a soft enough tip that I could protect lighter tippets.

Also, if you’re hooking into some big fish and you’re streamer fishing with it, you might not have a light tippet at all, so this might not be an issue. But still, if a big fish takes, you have that anchor point, and it really helps with fighting fish.

Mending and Line Control of the Snowbee Spectre RMX 7wt 10’ Fly Rod

I love the way that it can control the line while it’s on the water. I think that it’s partly due to the extra foot that you get.

Whenever I was mending my line, whether it was just a quick look or if I was lifting the line off the water and putting it back down again with a big hefty mend, both scenarios worked really well. I had no problem controlling the line and getting a dead drift whenever I needed it.

Also, as I wrote earlier, for the most part I’ve been casting the Snowbee Spectre RMX 7wt 10’ Fly Rod with a big rock wall behind me, so I was doing some roll casts too. The rod roll casts really nicely, and I think that’s also due to the extra foot you’re getting on the end.

This is my first 10’ rod, and I love the way you can control the line, do some quick mends, and also get those beautiful roll casts out.

Cons of the Snowbee Spectre RMX 7wt 10’ Fly Rod?

If you look back on previous reviews, you’ll see that we almost always have some kind of negative point about the rods, reels, and other gear that we review.

But with the Snowbee RMX, I really had a hard time coming up with a con. It just does everything that you want it to do. There’s really nothing that I could say that’s wrong with it—not in the way it casts, and definitely not in the way it looks. I think it’s a beautiful looking rod. I like that there are two rings on the reel seat.

There’s really nothing wrong with the rod overall. At its price point in the mid-range, it’s hard to complain. I understand that if you were buying an $800 rod, there might be many things you’d nitpick about. But because this rod comes in at the price it does, there’s really not much wrong with it at that mid-range price point.

The Price of the Snowbee Spectre RMX 7wt 10’ Fly Rod

This version of the RMX rod, the 7wt 10’, goes for $399 USD. Some of the smaller weights come in at around $359 or $349.

The price of this rod is in the mid-range to maybe even the upper-end category, but I think you’re getting a lot for it. They really do have great blanks and a great blank recovery rate, especially for a 10 foot rod. I expected that it would wobble around a little bit more, but it didn’t and held its own.

If you want to purchase this rod, you can follow this link and use the coupon code IFF10 to save 10% on this rod and any other products on the Snowbee website. Those are affiliate links, which means we receive a commission if you choose to purchase through them.

It helps to keep this webpage running, and we do appreciate your support.

Snowbee Warranty and After-sales Service

Like all Snowbee fly rods, the Snowbee Spectre RMX 7wt 10’ Fly Rod is backed by their limited lifetime warranty.

Basically that means that for the first 12 months that you own the rod, if any issues arise due to manufacturer fault, they’ll replace that part for you for free. Also, at any time after you purchase this rod, if you break any section of it, Snowbee will replace it for a flat rate of $40.

That’s the same with all their fly rods, and that really is a great warranty. Snowbee is known for putting their customers first and making sure they have great after-sales service.

We’ve actually had to use their after-sales service before, and they shipped all the way out to South Africa. They’re great at keeping their promises to their customers and making sure that when you buy a Snowbee rod, you know that it’s backed by that excellent warranty.

My Personal Thoughts and Opinions about the Snowbee Spectre RMX 7wt 10’ Fly Rod

I like the way the rod casts. I love that I finally have a 10 foot rod in my arsenal. It really helps me to get my casts out there when I have a lot of stuff behind me.

I’m excited to try it out when I’m float tubing and also on this drift boat trip coming up on the weekend. I think that this rod is the perfect tool for all those applications.

If you’re in the market for a 10 foot rod, whether it’s the 7 weight, 6 weight, or 5 weight that they offer, I think it’d be a great addition to anybody’s kit.

I hope you enjoyed this review. If you did, please give it a like and leave a comment down below.

Until next time, tight lines.

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