General Purpose vs Technique Specific Bass Fishing Rods

"A fishing rod doesn't have a brain. It doesn't know what it's supposed to do, or what it's even doing for that matter."

- Truthful quote 

The bass fishing rod market is full of rods labeled for a specific type of technique or presentation of baits. Sometimes this is actually helpful and sometimes it's just marketing spin. Let's take a look at it. 

Labeling a rod for a specific technique can be helpful for anglers new to that technique or even beginning anglers. It help points them in the right direction so they can purchase a rod that works for the way they are trying to fish. Specific labels can help someone be more successful on the water, not waste money, and even gain a lot of confidence in a new technique.

The downside of technique-specific labeling is when anglers believe a rod is not usable with another technique. Now we have a scenario where the terms "helping" anglers buy more rods. If you fish 20 methods... you need 20 rods... right? But wait, you need three jigs rods, so now you need 23 rods! Man, our sales just went up!  Now we're using this to help sell more rods, not for helping the angler. 

Our philosophy is this - a rod doesn't know what it is going do. You do - so everything we do with designing a rod is for you. During the design, we look at how it is going to be used by you and what you are trying to accomplish. How can we help you have confidence that this is the right rod for what you want to do? Most of our new models come from multiple requests or trends we see in our custom shop. When a specific type of rod is asked for enough or custom-built often enough, we know we are missing something in our line up of production models. All of these are usually the result of lots of conversations with our great customers. - hearing what they need, what they are looking for, and what they can't find on the market today 

A great example of a technique specific rod we designed is our ZOLO Skipper The Skipper is shorter - which helps achieve the right casting angle to skip a bait (low, sidearm cast that is even with the water surface). It also has the power to handle the lure weight usually used for that type of presentation. 

Sometimes though, we surprise customers by telling them they don't need another rod. A great example of this is the ZOLO PowerBolt. Most people look at it as a flipping/punching type of rod. The PowerBolt also excels at deep diving cranking, spoons, and A-Rigs. These are all techniques that tend to be seasonal or very specific. No need to buy a different rod for all of them, but you can use a PowerBolt to help you all year long in different ways. 

Overall, we list the most popular techniques for each rod model to help. Most rods don't get a name that is dead on what it's for (there are a few exceptions) since most have multiple uses. If you ever aren't sure - give us a call, and we'll make sure to match you with the right rod.

- Alex