APIA Foojin’RS Vivogue 96ML+ 9’6’’ 6-38g lure rod review - around £390 in the UK (ML+ means so much here)

I am going to do something I have never done before on this blog and review three rods one after the other from the brand new APIA Foojin’RS range this week. Please excuse my doing so if you have no interest in higher-end lure rods from Japan, but I am hoping that enough of you here are in fact interested in gear like this. A number of bass anglers outside of Japan know all about APIA and what they do with lure rods especially, and in my opinion we are talking about one of the most interesting Japanese fishing tackle companies out there. Here goes then, and if all this tackle tartery at a time of year when bass are at best scarce AND we’ve got high pressure sitting over us which doesn’t exactly help then so be it and I will catch up with you next week. We don’t have to buy gear like this to be interested in how it works…………

I have been seriously impressed by APIA lure rods since I first got to fish with one back in 2012 when a friend of mine started bringing a few of them into the UK. APIA the fishing tackle company strikes me as a bunch of people who know how to design and make serious lure fishing rods (plus lures etc.), and they also seem to want to make unique products within a fairly crowded market. If you read these reviews then thank you very much as always, and if you do ever think about dropping a pretty significant amount of cash on any of the new rods in the range, I would urge you to try and get yourself along to the Art of Fishing tackle shop in Wadebridge (north Cornwall) and actually handle these rods in the flesh. Contact them beforehand and there is every chance you will be able to go out and cast these rods. Ben Field is the UK APIA bloke now, and he knows all these rods inside out. For all that I am going to try and communicate to you what I think about these three lure rods this week, ideally they need way more than a blog review or a few waggles to open themselves up to you. Higher-end lure rods tend to be like that. Hidden depths…………

I will try and summarise this APIA Foojin’RS Vivogue 96ML+ 9’6’’ 6-38g lure rod before we move onto the details, and for ease of use let’s call this rod the Vivogue from now on. Easily one of the best 9’6’’ lure rods I have come across, but it’s actually a difficult lure rod to properly describe because with a waggle test it’s exactly the sort of rod I would more normally shy away from. But after some decent water time I absolutely love this rod, indeed in many respects I think it’s the most impressive and interesting rod in this new APIA Foojin’RS range. A noticeably powerful butt and mid-section which blends into a somewhat finer and more forgiving tip section that in a tackle shop might feel a bit soft on the old waggle test (which I think tends to tell us less as a lure rod gets more expensive) - but then you take this Vivogue out fishing and it is absolutely staggering how good it is. An out and out precision lure fishing rod which so badly needs to be fished with because it’s absolutely frigging incredible. Having shied away from lure rods like this in the past, APIA have somehow made a “stiffer butt, easier tip” lure rod feel like the most natural thing in the world when I am fishing with it instead of muttering drivel in a tackle shop as I waggle it around. I still can’t believe how much I like fishing with this Vivogue rod and I am going to shamelessly steal from Ben Field’s own description of this rod and refer to it as an incredible finesse lure fishing rod hiding within the clothing of a 38g weapon.

Not only would this Vivogue do me perfectly for much of my estuary fishing, but I also seriously, seriously like it for a lot of my open coast fishing when it’s fizzed up a bit or I am night fishing in the flat calm. I know I bang on about fizz and bounce and green water yet I meet plenty of anglers from say the south east of the UK who dread any kind of lift on the sea because they need flat calm conditions for the water to be clear. I dream of say a southerly 4 gusting 5 and they dream of a light northerly for days on end because it should get their coastline fishing on the bass front. This rod loves all of this. This is the first time I have ever fallen so hard for a lure rod like this and it’s making me think about things.

Forget about the fact that the Vivogue is actually 9’6’’ long, because it’s so wand-like in the hand that you could close your eyes and easily feel like you’re fishing with say a 9’ long lure rod - it’s that good. You can absolutely animalise the Patchinko 140, and I have hit the 35g Surf Seeker as hard as I physically can again and again on this Vivogue. It’s not even close to straining. Some people might say that a more forgiving tip on a lure rod - it’s not a soft tip, that’s a cop out word here - doesn’t lend itself to working a bigger surface lure like the Patchinko 140 or Savage Gear Surf Walker 2.0 18cm/29g Floating at serious range, but I disagree. I love the tip on this rod when I didn’t think I would. As I said, it’s so bloody good it’s got me thinking about so many lure rod related things.

A powerhouse butt section with a more forgiving tip which doesn’t feel at all like a powerful rod/”easier” tip could if it was done badly. I know that a lot of the Scandinavian saltwater sea trout rods are based around softer tips and powerful mid and butt sections, but I have tried a few of these types of rods and I don’t get on with them. Too soft is too soft to me. I understand the reasoning behind softer tips for soft (sea trout) mouths, but give me this Vivogue and its more responsive tip any day of the week. I know virtually nothing about shore based sea trout fishing, but I reckon this Vivogue would be bloody awesome for it. Huge respect to whoever is responsible for designing this thing.

So we have forgotten about the fact that this Vivogue is 9’6’’ long. In my hands I can cast and retrieve/twitch any of my Gravity Sticks with consummate ease. Twitch/pause/twitch a 6’’ DoLive Stick or a Gravity Stick Pintail and it’s a dream. Punching a small surface lure into a breeze almost feels too good - slow down, aim lower, let the rod do the work - and bumping stuff along the bottom in shallower water is as suitably good on a rod this responsive as you would imagine it to be. Whacking and cranking regular diving hard lures like both sizes of the SG Gravity Shallow and my beloved IMA Hound 125F Glide is almost ridiculously easy and efficient on this Vivogue, in fact in some respects I have spent more of my fishing and testing time with this rod trying to trip it up - but I can’t. I don’t feel that this rod is best suited to bumping soft plastics in deeper water I might add, but it can do it just fine. I am fairly sure the designer(s) of this particular rod didn’t intend for it to be used much in heavy surf conditions, but I have done just that though and the rod really surprised me with how well it did - check out this Feb bass blog post from the other day. You know how little important I attach to how the rods we use feel when we are getting our bass in, but that chunky bass I had the other day was a genuine delight to fight on this rod.

I have different amounts of time now with all the rods in this new Foojin’RS range, and whilst the Desire 95MH 9’5’’ 12-50g rod is SO my kind of open coast lure rod (review later this week), I am really surprised to be telling you that the Foojin’RS Vivogue 96ML+ 9’6’’ 6-38g is my favourite from the range. I have never fished with a lure rod anything like this that I have really enjoyed and could imagine fishing with a lot of the time, but I genuinely think this Vivogue is that good. Anglers bang on about feel and sensitivity and so on which I believe depends a lot on wind and waves wel before we start thinking about rods and setups, but I do know that I have never had so much feedback from my lures as I get on this amazing APIA Foojin’RS Vivogue 96ML+ 9’6’’ 6-38g. Even metal lures like the SG Surf Seekers transmit more to me on this rod. These lures literally tell you when you hit a rip out in the surf because they go heavier and feel a bit like you have picked up weed (it’s the lure gripping into the rip current and making you work harder on the retrieve), and I can definitely tell a bit more about what is going on out there when fishing with this Vivogue. The thumping you get when you retrieve the SG Slender Scoop Shads on a belly-weight weedless hook is extraordinary. A rod this subtle obviously works well with the lightweight Shimano Stradic and Vanford spinning reels strapped to it (or the more expensive Vanquish reels I guess), but I like it just as much with the heavier Penn Slammer IV 2500 or Penn Authority 2500 on it. Hell, I just like this rod a huge amount anyway!

We need to finish up by talking about the handle design on these new Foojin’RS rods, because I happen to think they are rather good. The foregrip is what I think of as a reverse reelseat design with a really comfortable, shaped, grippy, and contoured EVA section where your reel hand sits when you are casting and retrieving (screwlock is in front of the reel rather than the more usual behind). Then you have the little section which screws down to secure your reel and upon which your forefinger and thumb will naturally sit when you’re fishing. The material feels like a very grippy sort of rubber shrink tube, indeed the whole handle design is perfect for wet and dry hands. I have always liked APIA rod handles and I think with this very minimalist and well thought out way of doing things on these Foojin’RS rods they have absolutely nailed it. Wow. What on earth do I do because I so badly don’t want to send this rod back? If you read my rod reviews you might have noticed how I have always shied away from these “easier tip” style lure rods, but with this Vivogue I have found the perfect mix and it is genuinely changing how I think about things. There is obviously a lot more meaning to the ML+ rod code here than I originally thought………..

If by any chance you find this Vivogue to be in vogue with your needs - sorry! - then please follow one of the links in this post (in blue) through to the Art of Fishing where you will be able to preorder one. I believe that a bunch of these new APIA Foojin’RS rods are coming back into stock in March/April, and then it could be a long wait for the next lot. Get in there now if you want this rod. Help!

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