A video review after fishing with the brand new, smaller size Penn Slammer IV 2500 for 6+ months, available in October I think

I was asked to wait until today to tell you about the fact that THE spinning reel I have been hoping for is finally a reality, and believe you me it’s not been easy keeping this thing quiet since I first heard that it was actually happening back in December 2020, and then I’ve been fishing with it since the end of January this year. The brand new Penn Slammer IV 2500, the spinning reel I so wanted to see ever since I started fishing with the bigger 3500 size Slammer and realised what it could do for me and my lure fishing for bass…………..

Now I don’t do any work with Penn USA or indeed Penn Europe, but after working in fishing for as long as I have I obviously have a fair few contacts and friends within the industry. I have no idea if my hassling some Penn Europe contacts or shouting about it here on my blog or on Facebook that a “baby” size 2500 Slammer could be ideal for a lot of our bass fishing made any difference at all, but it matters not because the reel is now a reality, I have a couple of them here (plus the new Slammer IV 3500 and 3500 DX, more on them in the future), I have been using them for a lot of my fishing for over six months now, and I thought it might be a bit of fun to put a video review up on my YouTube channel.

How much do you know about the Penn spinning reels that we might employ for our saltwater lure fishing? I think I know enough by now to have accepted that they are mostly that bit more “agricultural” than your equivalent Shimano or Daiwa, and if you are obsessed with filling your spinning reel up to the brim with braid then a Penn generally isn’t for you. If you want the lightest spinning reel going then you aren’t going to go for a Penn either, but there seem to be a hell of a lot of anglers out there who accept the odd quirk as a byproduct of fishing with what tend to be some seriously tough and robust spinning reels - and in the case of the Slammer family, spinning reels which don’t start seizing up if you drop your reel in saltwater or spend time getting the thing splashed and drowned in hectic surf conditions especially. Hell, I would also suggest that enough anglers have worked out that the lightest possible spinning reel doesn’t always feel the best on all the different lure rods we might use (but what the hell do I know as some kind soul “politely” suggested on Facebook the other day?!).

So as much as I like fishing with the Slammer 3500 when the situation calls for it especially, it didn’t take a genius to work out that a slightly smaller and lighter 2500 size Slammer could be rather nice a lot of the time. I have the regular black coloured Penn Slammer IV 2500 (326g loaded with braid) and the “will only be available in certain shops I think” silver coloured Penn Slammer IV 2500 DX (328g loaded with braid) here. If you have fished with a number of different Penn reels then you will know that you can’t go filling up the smaller 2500 sizes with braid as full as you would the larger 3500 or 4500 sizes, and it’s the same with these Penn Slammer 2500 reels. I get the various arguments but I have yet to ever be out fishing and see another angler putting his or her lure way further than me because they happen to be fishing with say a Shimano spinning reel which we all know you can fill right up with braid and never worry about. It might make a difference in a controlled environment, but when you’re out really fishing?

I can easily live with needing to fish with a bit of a lower line level on these Slammer 2500 reels because of what they give me and how much I love fishing with them. I can also quite easily live with the fact that they don’t quite feel like a brand new Shimano or Daiwa spinning reel (which hasn’t been drowned I might add) when you turn the handle in a tackle shop or in your kitchen - but now go out fishing and again, does it make much difference when you’re actually casting and retrieving in the real world? Have a guess as to which spinning reels I have fished with the most this year because they do it for me so much and they are THE spinning reels I was so hoping we might one day see? As I say in the video review, if I fished with light bass lure rods and fished mainly lighter lures in calm conditions I’m not sure the Penn Slammer 2500 is ideal for this (it does me just fine though), but I have used them extensively on all the new Savage Gear lure rods we have recently launched and I can’t get enough of them for my own fishing. If I had my way then I’d have the perfect EVA handles from these awesome new Slammer 2500 reels on every single spinning reel out there. I think the new Slammer IV range is due in the UK around October of this year but I will keep you posted if I hear any more. The Penn Slammer IV 2500 is a reality and it’s just about every single thing I could have possibly wanted from a smaller Slammer………..