APIA Foojin'Z Testamatta 88MH 8'8'' 8-56g lure rod review - available in the UK, horribly expensive (not exactly an increased cost of living thing, sorry)
Allow me to try and justify this review because it’s about a lure rod which costs a hell of a lot of money and surely 90%+ of lure anglers can’t or won’t consider it for any number of reasons. The rod exists though and I have fished with it a lot now, hence this review. If you come from the world of fly fishing then you might not be so surprised by the price of this APIA lure rod, not when a lot of the higher-end saltwater and especially double-handed salmon fly rods can cost almost anything. From a UK and Irish saltwater bait and lure fishing point of view though I find it pretty remarkable that there are in fact a number of lure anglers spending a lot of their hard earned money on lovely lure fishing tackle. Hell, I wasn’t aware how much you could spend on a high-end beachcaster until I went looking around the other day, and the tackle companies ain’t making them for fun - there must be a market for them. I know we are in the middle of a cost of living crisis where every month feels tighter than the next, but I am also not going to ignore certain items of fishing tackle just because they are very expensive. Hell, if what happened last year in August had happened any differently I might well have died. Life is for living and shiny fishing tackle is for appreciating!
Wanna save some reading time? This hideously expensive APIA Foojin'Z Testamatta 88MH 8'8'' 8-56g lure rod is a freak of nature. It’s a remarkably smooth and easy to fish with 8’8’’ long lure rod which happens to be rated 8-56g but feels more like a gorgeous 10-40g rod when you fish with it. Then when you need to step it up a gear and use heavier and/or bulkier lures the power kicks in whilst never feeling how you might expect a relatively short 50g+ lure rod long to feel. I have never fished with a rod quite like this and it’s bloody amazing……………
Anybody want to buy a Genos? The last high-end lure rod I splashed out on was the amazing Shimano Exsence Genos S90MH/R 9' 8-48g, but this utterly ridiculous APIA Foojin'Z Testamatta 88MH 8'8'' 8-56g lure rod has found its way into my hands and permanently onto my rod rack. I quite simply could not let this rod go back to Ben Field at the Art of Fishing so I had to buy it. I categorically do not need to buy lure fishing rods with the work I do with Savage Gear and Pure Fishing, plus through various contacts in the trade I get to try and sometimes review various rods for this blog (you can see the lure rods I fish with most of the time right here).
But I have never fished with a lure rod as versatile, efficient, and downright effortless as this APIA Foojin'Z Testamatta 88MH 8'8'' 8-56g lure rod (let’s call it the Testamatta from now on). An 8’8’’ long lure rod which is rated to cast from 8g all the way up to 56g has absolutely no right to be this easy to fish with. There is no way you should realistically be able to fish with a little 10g surface lure as effectively as you can a 45-50g soft plastic or metal on the same rod, but you can on this rod. I have fished with enough lure rods over the years to understand how hard this kind of versatility and ease of use is to achieve. My Genos is up there as an amazing, say 10-45g rod which via its very steely and fast action requires you to be seriously on it with your casting to get the best out of it, but this Testamatta is a different animal. So I had to buy it. I tried my absolute best to resist but I gave in. Goddamn it if this Testamatta isn’t quite possibly the most technically impressive lure fishing rod I have ever had the pleasure of fishing with………………
Some other, somewhat cheaper lure rods worth looking at which can fish a relatively similar range of lures:
Savage Gear SGS5 9’ 12-46g - review to come (goddam this is such a good rod!)
Savage Gear SGS6 8’3’’ 12-42g - review here
By rights we should be looking at a bit of a poker which requires a good bit of effort to get the best out of it, but somehow the geniuses at APIA over in Japan have made a shorter lure rod which almost hovers in your hands and fishes like a very, very good, say 8’8’’ 10-40g rod, but when required you can delve into your lure box, clip on something heavier and/or bulkier, and get it out there with such minimal effort and absolutely no strain on your shoulders. I will say it again - APIA makes fishing rods. Damn right there’s a lot of power lower down if you need to access it, but it’s a lot of very easily accessible power, and I seriously like this. This Testamatta is plenty light enough (170g), but it’s not a “look at me” rod if that makes any sense. It just gets on with it. Somehow there’s a delightful tip which makes working the lighter lures so easy, but when you need that dose of power for the heavier lures, it kicks in further down without any hassle whatsoever. But the tip doesn’t just collapse and annoy me when you do step things up. It all just works so seamlessly together and I am literally left grinning every single time I cast almost any lure I might turn to on this incredible fishing rod. For sure it’s a bloody expensive weapon, but you are genuinely getting at least two high-end lure rods for the price of one with how versatile this Testamatta is.
I guess you either like fishing with what might be called a shorter lure rod these days or you don’t. I will quite happily turn to a bunch of different rod lengths for my fishing and of course testing and so on, but there is something about a really good 9’ or shorter rod which can seriously float my boat. I love it when a fishing rod feels like a wand. You can bang lures a hell of a long way on this Testamatta, but if ultimate distances are a necessity for your bass fishing then you’re probably going to go for something longer (I would still politely suggest that a percentage of lure anglers could learn to cast a bit better whatever the length of rod though).
What I would say about this very expensive length of carbon is that you can simply turn the rod over rather than need to thrash the living daylights out of it to really get it working. I was fishing with a mate before Xmas and we were chopping and changing between the frigging cannon that is the awesome sub-£150 Savage Gear SGS5 10’ 12-46g (review here) and this much shorter, more subtle and way more expensive Testamatta. For sure I could put a lure out further when I really put the effort in on the 10’ rod, but as much as I think this 10’ SGS5 rod is incredible for surf fishing especially, there is simply no comparison with how effortlessly you can get stuff out there on this Testamatta. I can quite happily fish with an 8’8’’ lure rod for a lot of my bass fishing, and especially when that rod can cover such a wide range of all types of lures. Hard and soft, surface and sub-surface, it makes no difference to me on this Testamatta. It does the lot without breaking a sweat.
Take the little Savage Gear Pop Walker 2.0 9cm/11g surface lure which I really like. Now I am obviously not going to buy this Testamatta if most of the bass fishing I do requires that I use lighter lures like this for much of the time, but it’s bloody impressive how well the rod deals with a subtle little surface lure. You need a bit of a tip on such a powerful lure rod to fish smaller lures like this otherwise you’re feeling nothing and really struggling. Somehow this Testamatta very effectively bends into the Pop Walker 2.0 when I cast it and then (subtly) walk it across the top. I can then turn the IMA Hound 125F Glide over with serious ease, bang the Patchinko II a country mile with very little effort, fish the Gravity Sticks and Slender Scoop Shads on weighted weedless hooks and cheb weights, run a Savage Gear Sandeel Pencil 90 or 125 over some shallow rough ground, then bump something like the Savage Minnow Weedless or Fiiish Black Minnow along the bottom over rough ground or trundling along in a good run of current. Whatever feel actually is on a lure rod, I reckon I am feeling as much as I have ever felt when I am fishing with this Testamatta.
Now it’s not as if I am often finding the need to turn to 50g lures for my UK and Irish bass fishing, but I do love how easy it is to cast and fish say the 46g Savage Gear Sandeel V2 on the same rod as easily as I can fish that little Pop Walker 2.0 9cm/11g surface lure. With the 46g soft plastic this Testamatta isn’t remotely straining, but you can feel the power in the rod, and I have chucked 50g lures with ease when I was testing it out (before I gave in and bought the bloody thing!). I do sometimes carry heavier casting jigs because I think they suit some of the ground and conditions I might fish, and with this Testamatta I can think nothing of blasting 40g and 50g metals if need be. The 40g Surf Seeker needs a more powerful rod to really get it out there, and it’s so bloody easy to do so on this Testamatta. You get all the ease and precision of a “standard” lure rod, but with an extra level you can easily go to without losing out a single percent.
What I do really like is having such easy access to plenty more power which doesn’t then try to rip my shoulders off and make me pay for it. As I said above, I have at least two rods in one here, and with the 56g top end rating you could even argue that you’re close to three rods in one. I don’t doubt for a second that the rod will chuck 56g, but for me it’s really firing up to about 50g with hard and soft lures, with an easy ability to chuck (naturally smaller profile) 50g+ metals if need be. I far prefer a really good overpowered lure rod over a lighter rod where I need to hold back any day of the week, and as much as I loved that considerably cheaper Tailwalk Crimson S88H-F 8’8’’ Max 50g lure rod which I reviewed a while back, this Testamatta lives in a different world which is of course reflected in the price. I honestly do not understand how APIA have managed to make a lure fishing rod like this. I didn’t think it was possible that a similar rated rod could come along which I would prefer to my Shimano Genos 9’ 48g, but for me this Testamatta and how much easier it is to fish with puts it ahead for me. Which is why I bought the bloody thing.
The Testamatta with the Van Staal VR75 spinning reel - love it!
I have used a few different spinning reels on this rod, including the stunning Penn Authority 2500 and the cheaper but seriously good Penn Slammer IV 2500. Both feel really good on this Testamatta. I am also really enjoying the combination of this rod with the lighter weight Van Staal VR75 spinning reel (review to come), and it’s truly awesome with that lovely Daiwa BG-MQ 4000 on it (review to come). I have no doubt that Shimano reels like the Shimano Vanford C5000 or 4000 would suit this rod well, but I haven’t tried these combinations. I can’t get enough of these newer APIA handle designs which are on these top of the range Foojin’Z rods and now the cheaper Foozin’RS rods (lots of reviews of APIA lure rods here), and as much as I don’t use a rod bag, damn the one which comes with the Testamatta is lovely. That lovely in fact I could curl up and go to sleep in it. The guides are a mixture of Fuji Torzite and SiC-S, and they are slightly on the larger side I guess to allow for the use of heavier mainlines and/or leaders.
The Testamatta with the Daiwa BG-MQ 4000 spinning reel on it - love this combination as well!
This is a seriously high-end lure fishing rod which in the cold light of day is way more rod than an angler like me needs for dealing with the sort of fishing I do nearly all the time and the fish I might catch. Fishing is an emotional pastime to me though, and wrapped up with my love for being out and about fishing and shooting photos is my love for really interesting fishing tackle which is an out and out pleasure to use. Every single time I cast this APIA Foojin'Z Testamatta 88MH 8'8'' 8-56g lure rod I smile, and at the end of the day that is more than enough for me. I don’t need to justify my purchase to myself or anybody else for that matter, but on the other hand you could read into this lengthy review that I have just done exactly that. What a lure fishing rod…………
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