Penn Conflict Elite 8’ (2.44m) 6-32g lure rod review - just north of £300 here in the UK

First things first - for the majority of lure rod reviews I rely either on my direct working contacts I can access to get hold of gear, or the many good people I know within the fishing tackle trade who are happy to let me play with stuff. You might have worked out many moons ago that there is no way on earth I could ever afford to buy all the many different fishing rods I review on here, so aside from my complete and utter tackle tartery in shelling out not inconsiderable amounts of money on some of those high-end Shimano Japan lure rods especially, for the most part various kind people help me get access to the gear.

And this new Penn Conflict Elite 8’ 6-32g lure rod is firmly in that category. I have been completely blown away by how good the longer Conflict Elite 9’ 7-38g (review here) and 9’6’’ 8-45g rods are (review here), so because I can with the work I do, I asked if I could please see this 8’ 6-32g version. I didn’t know what to expect and I didn’t think I’d end up reviewing it here because I didn’t really imagine that it would be a rod I could envisage using very much. Sometimes my work allows me to scratch the odd itch though………….

As a predominantly shore based bass angler I wasn’t looking for a rod like this. I would not have been about to spend a bit more than £300 on an 8’ long lure rod which has in some respects been designed a bit more for boat fishing - short butt/long tip, oversize first guide - and especially when I have tended to shore fish with 9’ and longer lure rods for a fair few years now. But some samples I have been testing together with two of the 8’3’’ Savage Gear SGS6 lure rods especially (the 7-25g and 12-42g, stunning rods) have kinda brought me back to loving fishing with shorter rods in certain situations all over again. That resulted in the itch I wanted to scratch with this Penn Conflict Elite 8’ 6-32g.

Bearing in mind then that I didn’t expect to be writing this review - life’s too short for me to waste time on fishing with gear I don’t enjoy using - I am now in this slightly weird situation when I am going to have to sort of ignore any emails asking for this rod back. But why you might ask? Because I can’t get enough of it. If you think that this review is some sort of cleverly designed marketing ploy then I would not be able to convince you otherwise with how conspiracy theories tend to work, but for those of you who do recognise a hopeless tackle junkie when you see one, well it’s SO nice lure fishing for bass in certain situations with a really good, shorter lure rod. A very good 9’6’’ lure rod can obviously feel like a wand in the hand (the stunning new Major Craft Tidrift 9’6’’ 7-35g is one of those rods for example, review here), but when a seriously good 8’ lure rod rated around this 6-32g mark sits in your hand and you’re working something like a surface lure, that’s when you’re talking about a proper wand. It’s merely a matter of physics.

I come back to it again - I wasn’t remotely expecting to fall for this rod like I have. This Penn Conflict Elite 8’ is rated 6-32g and to be honest it doesn’t really matter if I break it while I’m evaluating it because it’s a work related thing and I can claim that it wasn’t my fault (when is a broken fishing rod ever the angler’s fault anyway?!). I have absolutely full-blooded the 40g Surf Seeker on this rod and I would imagine I could push a bit more if need be (thanks Matt for the nudge on my Facebook page). I would not be employing a lure rod like this if fishing with 40g metals was top of my list of course, but what it does for me (because I didn’t pay for it) is make this rod even more useful than the 6-32g suggests. I am categorically not telling you that it’s safe to fish with lures over 32g on this rod by the way - casting a 40g metal is very different to casting a 40g soft plastic for example - but I know I can personally push it and not worry about it. If you do so and break the rod then you haven’t got a leg to stand on when it comes to the warranty. I can claim that I was “testing” the rod of course and hope they believe me!

Let’s forget about how I have overloaded the rod then and instead think about how I might actually employ a rod like this. I really like the little SG Pop Walker 2.0 90 surface lure (10.7g) in calmer conditions, and a good 8’ rod which covers the sort of lure weights we often use should be able to very effectively cast and work a small surface lure like this. This Penn rod does just that, indeed if you and I could fish together I would put this rod in your hand with this exact surface lure and tell you that it’s my definition of a wand when referring to how a lure fishing rod can feel. It just makes me smile with how good it is.

I need more than just the above though, and especially for a touch north of £300. I hope you realise how open I am to different lengths of lure rods these days, but with how much I fish with any of the two sizes of SG Gravity Sticks or indeed the ever-deadly DoLive Stick, there is no getting away from how good it feels to be doing so with a really good 8’ rod. I can obviously do so very effectively with other lengths of lure rods when they suit the weight of soft plastics I fish with, but again that shorter rod and how it sits in my hands feels so efficient if it’s a really good bit of carbon. It’s a matter of physics and balance and you can’t get away from it. Give me a while with any decent lure rods between say 8’ and 9’6’’ and even an easy 10’ one like the very good Major Craft Flatrek 10' 7-45g (review here) and you know what it’s like - you get used to how it feels the more you fish with it. What I am not trying to do is now tell you that shorter rods are better than longer ones. Nope, what I am trying to tell you is that if you take me as an okay bass angler who by virtue of where he lives and/or works can end up fishing a lot of different types of locations and conditions which then need to be fished in a variety of different ways, I can easily press a rod like this into service for a fair bit of it.

I wasn’t quite sure about the short butt/longer tip and larger first guide design when I first pulled this Penn Conflict Elite 8’ 6-32g from its rod bag, but then I think back to the design of the Tenryu Injection rods which catch a lot of good bass for a lot of good anglers and they seem to do just fine with this kind of lure rod design. When I rig a lure rod up for fishing it sits in a rack here at home and then goes on rod holders on my Epic Berlingo so it makes little difference to me anyway. If you need serious distance for a lot of your bass fishing then you will most likely be using a longer rod anyway, but I would still argue that an angler with a shorter rod who can cast really well is going to be able to cover more water than an angler with a longer rod who can’t cast great. I like the levers on a longer rod for my surf fishing, and I also tend to like a longer rod for say bouncier conditions out on deeper rock marks, but I think about all my estuary and open coast reef and gully fishing and I can fish quite as comfortably with an 8’ rod as I can a 9’ or 9’6’’. It’s what you prefer and don’t let anybody tell you otherwise.

This Penn Conflict Elite 8’ 6-32g is lovely and sharp and fast and precise, but it’s not that sort of “razor-like” sharpness on the amazing SGS6 8’3’’ 12-42g which I can’t get enough of. The Penn is smoother and easier and I guess a bit more progressive with how it bends and fishes, with so much power in the butt section which then blends into the rest of the rod. It’s also rated to cast lighter lures if you ignore my overloading it, but firstly I haven’t found a need for 6g lures yet for bass fishing, and secondly I think this particular Penn is performing better with 10g and over. As with the other two Penn Conflict Elite rods I have reviewed, I would prefer something grippier where my hand sits behind the reel, but I can easily live with the configuration here. I have really come round to how the rear handle on some of the Penn rods have a small flattened section on the duplon, indeed with how good this feels on the cast I wonder why more rod companies don’t employ this simple bit of design. I find the overall handle length on this rod perfect for me and how I fish.

Another thing I find interesting about this 8’ rod is how it feels in your hands with different spinning reels. Strap a 2500 or 3000 Shimano Vanford or Stradic to this wand and you can guess how it feels - wand-like. I would imagine that most bass anglers who might gravitate to a lure rod like this will end up using those sort of very lightweight spinning reels, but because I can’t get enough of the Penn Authority 2500 and the Penn Slammer 2500 reels, I thought what the hell, let’s see what it feels like. Damn this combination feels good to me. The lighter spinning reel approach feels great, but put some extra weight on the butt-end of this rod via the two heavier Penn reels and the way the rod now sits in my hands if anything makes the whole outfit feel lighter with how it all balances out when you’re actually fishing and not arsing around with trying to balance the rod on your forefinger which has never made one iota of sense to me anyway.

Please accept my apologies because this has ended up being a far longer review than I meant it to be when this rod started really getting to me. If you have got to here then I need waffle on no more other than to say that this this Penn Conflict Elite 8’ 6-32g lure rod is going to sit in my rod rack with my Penn Authority 2500 on it and I am going to enjoy fishing with this outfit as much as possible (until they ask for it back I might add!). Estuaries, reefs, gullies, structure, you name it, I’m going to press this rod into service. I am also going to press it into service for a bit of wrasse fishing with how good this rod is at bumping soft plastics across and over reefs for bass, indeed I am looking forward to seeing how the power in the butt section is going to skull-drag some nice wrasse out. I didn’t envisage falling for shorter lure rods all over again, but this one’s a peach. Time to ignore those “please can we get the rod back” emails……………

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