Who Needs a $200 Rod When You Can Have These for Under $70
Fishing rods in the $40-70 range are the sweet spot for most anglers. Of course, we’d all love to start out with $200 rods, but it isn’t usually practical.
Especially if you want to use specific rods for different fishing tactics, it’s easier to start out on the lower end. For me, $25 combos left a lot to be desired, so I worked up to rods around $50 and as high as 70 or 75. I found plenty of rods in that range that did what I needed them to do, and that allowed me to build a bass fishing, coastal fishing arsenal with multiple setups.
Having used and abused a lot of rods, I figured I’d share a few examples of those here.
Ugly Stik GX2 By Shakespeare
The Ugly Stik had to make the list, of course. This rod has hauled in more fish than I can count. I’ve never had one fail.
I’ve done some ridiculous things to these rods and I swear I could almost hear the rod laughing at my attempts to break it.
You want to have at least one workhorse rod you can throw in the truck bed without a care, and this is it. It won’t give you as much precision as some of the other rods, but it makes up for it in strength and grit. It’s usually $35~$45 for most sizes – see the reviews and links there for current pricing.
Video reviews of the GX2 Casting Rod are here
