Saw a bunch of really interesting lure rods for £100 and less, I’m a bit embarrassed that I haven’t seen some of them before

I’m away for a few days with my family and I managed to drop into the Wadebridge based Art of Fishing tackle shop on Tuesday morning. It was really good to catch up with the owner Ben Field, meet Josh who works there a few days a week, see what they have done with the layout of the shop recently, and as always when you go there, see a whole bunch of interesting lure rods which I haven’t seen before………..

Ben had a big range of seriously interesting “Specter” lure rods from the Spro brand which were all retailing around the £100 mark and which felt absolutely incredible in the hand. Faster and “sharper” than the SGS2 rods so I know they will work for how a lot of anglers like their lure rods, I have to take my hat off to Ben for coming across these rods and stocking them in his shop. There was a particularly interesting 9’6’’ version which I think was rated up to 60g or so and which I reckon would be bloody lovely in the surf with a Slammer strapped to it, but from memory and after seeing a few of them, it seems to be that within this Specter range that there’s a lure rod to cover all the sort of fishing we might do. There were some interesting lighter lure rods in the range as well. I can strongly advise giving the Art of Fishing tackle shop a shout if lure rods like these sound interesting, and for the time being don’t go too much on what’s on their website because I know come autumn and into winter they will be doing a lot of work to bring it up to date.

Very early days with it of course, but so far I am seriously, seriously liking this brand new Penn Authority 3500 spinning reel……….and it’s got easily the nicest reel handle on it that I have come across

And it was mildly embarrassing to have to ask what on earth the blue coloured Savage Gear rods were that Ben had in the racks! For the life of me I can’t recall having seen any of the roughly £85 Savage Gear SGS2 range of lure rods before, but Ben had the 9’ 10-40g, one of the 9’6’’ ones (I think it was the 10-40g), and the 8’3’’ 10-35g which felt especially interesting. There are loads more in the range (check here, here, here and here for starters). When I got back to my laptop I sent an email straight away to ask my contacts at Savage Gear if I could please see a bunch of the SGS2 rods, whilst at the same time rather hoping that they don’t pick up on the fact that I should have asked to see these rods ages ago but I just didn’t know anything about them and they sort of passed me by! You know as well as I do that as handy as online shopping can be, when it comes to lure rods it’s hard to beat going to a good tackle shop and actually being able to pick up and waggle a few rods. I am really looking forward to getting hold of some of these very much sub-£100 SGS2 lure rods and seeing how they might or might not work out for me and my bass lure fishing.

Do I need a new lure rod? What do you think?! Seriously though, as much as I am a disgraceful tackle tart who does love some of the higher-end fishing gear, on the rod side of things I do love getting to see and fish with the cheaper lure rods when they are really good and offering so much to an angler who for whatever reason isn’t going to drop serious money on a fishing rod. Those Specter rods from Spro are SO my kind of lure rods I like to fish with for bass especially, and within the extensive SGS2 range of roughly £85 lure rods from Savage Gear, after seeing that 8’3’’ 10-35g especially I am convinced there may well be a few gems littered around the range. Give me some time and I will do my best to get around to testing some of these lure rods, but in the meantime have a good weekend and I will see you next week…………