Henry Gilbey
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Henry Gilbey blog

Is your choice of lure rod influenced mostly by size of fish, terrain you might fish, conditions, or type and weight of lures?

I would imagine that cost is the main factor for most of us when we look to buy a lure rod for bass fishing from the shore, but let's assume you've got the money you need put aside - what now are the principal thoughts that influence the rod you end up buying? Are you coming from bait fishing with say 4-6oz beachcasters and wondering how on earth these little rods would land anything remotely substantial? Are you fishing a stretch of coastline that demands bigger and heavier than normal lures? Is where you tend to fish beset with strong currents? I could go on, but I think you get my drift.

I would argue that when it comes to bass and thinking about the size of fish we are likely to catch, if you take a "standard", half-decent lure rod rated somewhere around say 8-30g, then this in fact takes the size of fish question out of the equation. Hook the largest bass ever seen in an area that has no snags and no current, decent mainlines, knots and reel drags, and it is my belief that if everything goes the angler's way then those particular lure rods are plenty man enough to cope with the size of fish. I will talk bass up against any other fish in the world because they are awesome, but they are not so ridiculously big and powerful that a primary consideration with regards to which rod to use must be the animal size and power of the fish.

But when do you hook a bass in a "perfect" area? Like you I am sure, a lot of the time I am deliberately fishing into and over rough ground, or fishing soft plastics into a run of current where of course the size and power of a fish can become exaggerated due to them knowing exactly what to do. OK, so I haven't caught a heap of big bass in my relatively short time at lure fishing, and I have been done a few times by decent bass doing me somehow - but outside of the UK I have caught enough big fish to at least have half a clue. And I would still argue that in a run of current or over the roughest ground, your "typical" lure rod that I have described is plenty man enough to deal with the fish. Fishing is fishing, and the fact is that we sometimes lose to the fish.

Forgetting about the rod action and how we need to work various lures, I reckon the principal consideration for me comes down to a mix of lures and conditions. I am not worried about a "typical" rod not being up to the actual fish, so I tend to think about the lures I fish with and the places I would fish them - and for me I am just not lure fishing from the shore with lures over about 28/30g, and to be honest they are mostly under 26g. I can fish relatively rough conditions whilst accepting that most places I might go bass fishing, when it gets too rough I need to look somewhere else because the directly onshore locations are now blown out - so I don't need a heavier rod to chuck bigger lures into bigger seas. I don't fish particularly deep locations for bass therefore I don't need to be chucking say heavier paddletails to deal with the depth combined perhaps with a strong current.

But you might. Depending on where you live and fish, you might well need have different needs to take into consideration when choosing a lure rod. I know that if I lived where John Quinlan does down in Kerry for example, I would own a heavier rod that I pressed into action come autumn and needing to chuck various metals and plastics as far as possible into a heaving surf - and more than likely I would be using that heavier rod for my shore pollack fishing as well. I must admit that I am interested to try out some of the heavier 15-42g Major Craft lure rods to see how they might punch out my regular, say sub-28g lures into and across some fairly strong winds, but nothing can convince me that I might need a rod like this because of the size of the bass I might catch. It's only my opinion of course, and you are perfectly entitled to think that I'm talking out of my rear, but I would also argue that 99% of lure anglers could push their rods a lot, lot harder when hooked into a fish as it is - "but the fish maxxed my rod out, I couldn't bend it anymore" - to which my reply would be along the lines of a steaming pile of horse manure quite frankly. Hey ho, it's Monday morning!!