Well here's what I do - and this is the ultimate winter setup that will get you down in high water and stick your fly exactly where you want it in streams almost too brushy to walk down.

I started with a 10.5 foot Lamniglass bobber rod blank - forgot the number now but basically a standard steelhead weight, and put a long fly handle on it with slip ring mounts. I use a 1598 1/2 Pflueger Medalist with the drag bunged down all the way and a good raised rim for palming those fish - wouldn't have lost your line with that reel :p A couple hundered yards of 30 pound dacron backing helps also! For line I use a size 12 floating saltwater taper and cut about 10 feet of it off, so I have all the weight in the first 20 feet. Then with a piece of hollow dacron squidding line and a special needle (got this stuff with instructions at the fly shop in Lacey) I make loops, which I superglue onto my fly line and my shooting/sinking head. I Use Deepwater Express - out of each 30 foot piece I make a 5 footer out of the belly, a 10 footer out of the back, and a 15 footer out of the tip. The loops are essential for quick-changing your heads to match water conditions - I'll sometimes change these drift-to-drift just like I change lead when drift fishing. The loops never even enter the guides except when you are just about to land the fish, and actually with the length of rod I use only the 15 footer does that. To the other end of the heads I nail knot a 6 inch piece of 40 pound mono with a loop, and tie my 2 foot leader to that. The 15 footer plus your 12 weight saltwater taper will give you about a 16 weight line in 35 feet, is real easy to roll cast 70 feet and will shoot 100 on one backcast, and will hit the bottom of the Hoh at 3000 cfs - the stuff sinks a foot a second! Now you see why I went with the bobber rod blank - short of a Spey rod nothing will handle this concentrated weight of line effectively, and I like to cast one handed and hold my loops in my left hand. With this rig I can fish everything from Goodman Creek to the Hoh in any kind of water, and it is damn near as effective as a drift fishing rod - actually a bit like drift fishing with a 15 foot slinky I have aced out bait fishermen in water with 6 inches visibility using one of my sponge flies soaked in bait butter, and have coaxed fish out of a gin-clear glide that you could see over 100 feet away and that would run for the rapids if they saw anything brighter that a size eight black and grizzly wooly worm. This setup is a fish killer, but is also pretty killer on your arm - had to kind of back off from using it very much after I injured my rotator cuff (did that loading an anchor in the boat on a cold day ) But if you can handle it this is the way to go