My grandfather, the only flyfisherman (but not the only fisherman) other than me in the family, used to use the 11 and 12 foot rods on these streams. That was before my time. My dad tells me he was a "dipper", he'd just poke that rod over a brushpile and drop a fly in little nooks and crannys.
I'm sure that works in some cases. An above poster said 10-12 feet across, thats awfully big for the brookie streams I'm used to, maybe the biggest pools reach 10 feet but you can, in places, stand comfortably with a foot on each bank. I'm not a great small stream fisherman just yet, but I'm getting the hang of it. Typically overhead is a covering of hemlock or low tree limbs, with some small vegetation on high steep banks. I do backcast, roll cast, bow and arrow cast, and many casts that may or may not have a name that I know of on these streams. But many casts have to be sidearm. A short rod is a big advantage, in getting to the stream and casting once your on it. You want a rod as long as you can get away with, but not any longer. Unfortunately that length is different for every stream. I carry a 7'6" rod for most brookie streams. There's ones I wish I had a 5' rod, and others I'd wished I'd brought my 9 footer. But in all cases, I'm using fairly big flies and trying to get some punch, as long a cast as possible, with the backcast either carefully calculated or completely impossible. I think these 2 and 3 wts would be a huge disadvantage. I use a 4 wt overlined with 5 wt line. I wish I could find such a short rod in a 5 or 6 wt and overline it.
