Well In my last post I said I had some Bass stuff to show off, well it mainly consists of soft lures and Jig heads, I've decided not to bore you with those for the time being.
The new rod however, I guess I should show off a little.
The Apia Foojin'AD Flow Hunt 89ML
Now I have been waiting to get my hands on this rod for what seems like an age. I have been looking for a rod that would fish bigger lures, both hard and soft and is around 9' in length, this one seemed to fit the bill.
Well I finally received the rod on Friday after work and upon opening the tube I was impressed straight away. The rod comes in a nice neoprene type bag which is quite thick and cushioning, the bag has a simple velcro closure and separate pockets (front and rear) for the tip and but section respectively. I realise that no one catches fish on a rod sock, but a carefully designed package is something a lot of rod manufacturers could do with looking at!
Upon pulling the rod out of the bag and assembling it even my children exclaimed "wow, that is a nice rod!" and my children rarely get as excited as I do about fishing tackle.
It really is a nice build though with good attention to detail.
The rod itself weighs in at an impressive 134g, will cast a maximum of 34g and has an upper line rating of 2.0 PE.
Now I am not going to pretend that I know anything about blank design, I know that Apia have employed their 4 way axis tech on this rod and that it features double cross wrap tech. Basically by laying the carbon horizontally, vertically and diagonally on the cloth the material eliminates "twist" which results in loss of power in the cast, yet still maintains integral strength in the blank. The design is to give the angler accuracy and distance (AD), sweet!
Incase you forget the name of the rod, Apia have decided to remind you of it in several places.
On the very strong looking joint;
And on the fore grip;
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The grip and handle are lovely, I really like the mix of the AAA cork and Duplon/EVA, it looks posh and its incredibly comfortable to fish with.
The rod also features Titanium frame K guides which are also the smallest I have come across on a Bass rod, so small in fact that my JB clips that are said to "fit through the smallest of spinning rod guides", do not!
Well how does it fish?
That is a difficult question to answer as yet as I have only used it once and despite expecting to catch, I did not!
I can say that, I wasn't expecting it to feel quite as stiff as it does and that will take a little getting used to, especially after using my lighter Megabass rod for so long. It does feel quite powerful though and is accurate for sure!
I used a range of lures on it from a 3.5g jigged and 3.5" soft plastic to the Xorus Patchinko II and Megabass 7"Dot Crawler. To my surprise it put out the 3.5g jig head softie combo a decent distance and I could feel what was going on subsurface very well, yet it also punched out the Patchinko II at 28g over the surf a respectable distance indeed. I found it very easy to work the Patchinko II on it which I have missed using somewhat.
I wouldn't say at this point that I like it as much as my lighter Megabass rod but, I have a feeling it will grow on me once I get into some fish. It certainly does what I want it to and that is to punch out some bigger lures in tough conditions. It did feel pretty good with the 25g Fiiish Black Minnow 120, but only OK with weightless soft plastics like the 6" OSP Dolive stick and the Megabass 7" Dot Crawler.
I am hoping the rain clears up soon so I can get onto one of my estuary marks to see how it fares there and hopefully find some fish to put a bend in it.
As I've said though, these are just first impressions and I shall maybe do a more informed review after I have used it and caught on it for a decent length of time.
For now; Tight lines.
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