APIA Foojin'RS Lynx 93M 9'3'' 6-42g lure rod review - £389.99 in the UK

I was close to writing this review and telling you that I liked but didn’t quite love this APIA Foojin'RS Lynx 93M 9'3'' 6-42g lure rod - let’s call it the Lynx from now on - and then I went and changed something up and it was almost like fishing with a different rod. I liked it beforehand, but now I bloody love it, and it all came about because I did nothing more technical than change the spinning reel I had been using with this rod…………….

I am deep into the new APIA Foojin’RS range and I have reviewed most of them on this blog now. It fascinates me how APIA have quite deliberately made a range of higher-end lure rods which are all different to each other. Of course they are you might well say - different lengths and casting weights - but one rod doesn’t necessarily lead into the next rod if that makes any sense. They all do subtly different things. The incredible APIA Foojin’RS Vivogue 96ML+ 9’6’’ 6-38g (review here) is still the standout for me with its accessible power to utterly sublime tip combination, but in many respects the 9’3’’ length and 6-42g casting range of this Lynx means that by rights it should be the most applicable rod in the range for so much of my open coast bass fishing especially.

Which was why I was a tiny bit disappointed when I started fishing with this Lynx. I strapped the Penn Authority 2500 spinning reel to it and away I went. It could just have easily been the Penn Slammer IV 2500 which weighs about the same as the Authority, but it was on another rod and the Authority was winking at me for a bit of a thrashing. As they do. Swine reels. You know how much I love these reels and also how the fact they are a bit heavier than the equivalent Daiwa, Shimano or indeed ABU doesn’t bother me one bit on many of the rods I might get to fish with or try out. I love how the (heavier) Authority or Slammer IV 2500 reels feel on the sublime but shorter Savage Gear SGS6 8’3’’ 12-42g rod for example, but for some reason this Lynx wasn’t feeling as good as I was hoping it might when I went out fishing with the Authority 2500 on it.

So I carried on and started getting to grips with what the rod can do. Most things as you can imagine, and wow can you feel that power in the butt section when you wind a heavier lure up. I wouldn’t be buying this Lynx if I fished only with the sort of soft plastics I would swim and twitch around - Gravity Sticks, DoLive Stick etc. - and neither would I be doing so if I fished with a lot of the smaller surface lures. It’s a powerful rod with a powerful tip which I think is performing better at the heavier end. This Lynx will do all the lighter stuff pretty well, but now put an IMA Hound 125F Glide on and belt it out into bouncy conditions and we’re seriously talking. The Patchinko 140 or Savage Gear Slap Walker 125 go a frigging mile and they are great to work at range on this rod, and I can bang the 40g Surf Seeker at full power without any worries at all.

But with what I know about APIA rods and what I believe the casting weights of this rod surely had to imply, the little bastard on my shoulder was going on at me that I was surely missing something with this Lynx. As I said, I was liking it, but I had hoped I might love it. So I tried something different. I strapped the lighter ABU Revo ALX 4000SH spinning reel to the rod. It could have easily been another lighter reel - the awesome Shimano Vanford C5000 for example - but I am enjoying fishing with this particular ABU reel (262g as opposed to 340g for the Penn Authority 2500). The difference in weight between the two reels I have fished with on the Lynx is not actually that much, but wow did the lighter reel make the rod feel SO much better.

I was really surprised to find this out because my ideal spinning reel on a rod like this Lynx would be the Slammer IV 2500 or Authority 2500. Both those slightly heavier reels obviously work on the rod, and it’s obviously just what I think and feel here - nothing remotely scientific and you could feel completely differently to me - but with the lighter ABU spinning reel on it, this Lynx properly came to life in my hands and now it’s the all-rounder that the 6-42g rating suggests it should be. I choose to ignore balancing a rod on your forefinger because it’s meaningless if you think about where you actually hold a lure rod and how you fish with it. How a rod and reel combination sits and feels in your hands as you fish is obviously of huge importance when it comes to lure fishing especially.

It’s still nowhere near a lure rod I’d be buying for 6g lures I might add, but considering I am simply not carrying bass lures below about 10g (the deadly little SG Pop Walker 2.0 90 surface lure for example is 11g), this doesn’t matter to me at all. Now though this Lynx is feeling a whole lot better with my smaller SG Gravity Sticks 120 for example. The lethal little SG Sandeel Pencil 90 obviously flies out anyway, but now we’re fishing it with some feeling instead of simply cranking it. I love fishing with this rod instead of just liking it. I don’t want to hand it back now!

As I said earlier, it’s a powerful lure rod which I think now does the lighter stuff a whole lot better with a lighter spinning reel on it. I’ll go for “my” SGS8 9’2’’ 9-42g rod if I was fishing a lot with some of the lighter lures I often carry, but without a doubt this APIA Lynx moves into top gear when you need to push things a bit in bouncier conditions or fast currents and so on. Bumping the Fiiish Black Minnow or SG Savage Minnow Weedless soft plastics along the bottom in deeper water is awesome on this Lynx, and I can push all sizes/weights of the SG Surf Walker 2.0 surface lures - including the substantial 18cm S42g (sinking) version which needs a powerful rod to show off quite how much water you can cover with it.

I don’t need to tell you about how much I like the grip design on these Foojin’RS rods because you can read my recent reviews of them. The long and short of it is that I think these grips are essentially perfect. APIA makes proper fishing rods and the people who are responsible for the design side of these Foojin’RS rods are either serious anglers themselves, or else APIA have implemented a proper feedback filtering/adoption system from the testers. The most interesting lure fishing rods I have come across recently are the APIA Foojin’RS and Penn Conflict Elite rods, and both ranges contain very individual rods which you can tell share a similar DNA, but which are all also very unique in what they do and how they fish.

So I have managed to find my way to loving this APIA Foojin'RS Lynx 93M 9'3'' 6-42g lure rod. If I knew nothing about the Foojin’RS range I’d be most tempted by this rod because everything about the specs says it’s THE rod for me and my open coast or deeper water/fast current estuary fishing especially. I have loved spending time with all but the Beluga 105MH 10’5’’ 14-50g so far (there are also three baitcasting models which have no relevance to my fishing), and when I first went out with Ben from the Art of Fishing to spend a bit of time thrashing them all, I was seriously drawn to the Foojin’RS Desire 95MH 9’5’’ 12-50g (review here) and how easy it is to get at the subtle power contained within this incredible rod. A change of reel (weight) has helped me see how versatile this Lynx is, but still the standout rod to me from this range is the awesome APIA Foojin’RS Vivogue 96ML+ 9’6’’ 6-38g. I can’t get over that tip on the rod………….

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