When using longer rods for float fishing having a light weight rod makes for a much better experience and in some cases allows you to fish more effectively over the course of a long day. Try holding up an 11" rod that feels like it has 4 lbs attached to the tip all day. I use high end rods for float fishing not because it will detect a bite but because it feels weightless when I'm holding the rod up high all day.

Also, if you float fish long enough you can detect not only fish grabbing your presentation and letting go by sight you can also feel subtle ticks that are fish biting. 95% of float fisherman don't even know they have missed either of these fish.

A lot of vibration coming though the blank are absorbed by fore grip. Unfortunately most off the shelf rods, high end and cheap, have some sort of fore grip.

So catching fish without a float makes someone a better fisherman? Drift fishing is how I learned to steelhead fish and still do it in the right conditions. Is it any harder to catch fish drift fishing than float fishing? Nope. Half the time drift fishing or side drifting the fish hook themselves so most people don't even have to feel or see the bite. Pulling plugs, casting spinners and spoons, pretty easy to catch fish with all these techniques. Swinging flies, that must be how real fisherman catch steelhead.