If I wasn’t getting the most amazing opportunity to help design and make the lure rods that I want to use for my bass lure fishing with Savage Gear then without a doubt my lure rod brand of choice would be Shimano, and by that I mean lure rods which originate from Shimano Japan and then some of them find their way into our shops and websites via Shimano Europe. I see very little logic in how this happens though, and if I was the boss man at Shimano UK then I would demand at the very least that a very healthy selection of bass lure rods from the outstanding Lunamis and Dialuna ranges from Shimano Japan be made available to UK and Irish anglers. I could not be happier with the SGS5 and SGS8 rods I have done with Savage Gear, but if they didn’t exist then there are some serious Shimano Lunamis and Dialuna lure rods……………..

I have fished with a number of them now, but if it wasn’t a limited edition and not available to buy anymore then outside of my Savage Gear work the stunning Major Craft SeaBass Custom Limited Edition 9’6’’ 7-35g would probably be my 9’6’’ lure rod of choice. I can’t buy that rod though so my 9’6’’ regular casting weight rod of choice would therefore be the amazing Shimano Lunamis 9’6’’ 7-35g, then the sweet as you like Shimano Lunamis 9’ 6-25g would be my 9’ lure rod of choice (you can full-blood a Patchinko on it with no worries). My “next step up” rod would be the Shimano Dialuna 9’6’’ 8-45g because it’s so effortless and offers a silly amount of rod for the price. Money no object and I’d go for the all-round abilities of the Shimano Exsence Genos “Wild Contact 90” S90MH/R 9' 8-48g, but I have no idea if this rod can still be found. These days I will genuinely go for the Savage Gear SGS8 9’2’’ 9-42g rod over that Genos though, and I’m playing with a sample rod here that I think is ridiculously good and also tops the Genos for me.

ive got x to spend on a rod and reel

So there you go as it stands at the moment. One thing I have been enjoying a lot is playing around with shorter lure rods again, indeed I think back to when I really started getting into lure fishing for bass and I did just fine with rods around 8’ long. I target bass in a lot more ways now and I’m perfectly happy with say a 9’6’’ or 10’ rod in the surf, and then something around 9’ to 9’6’’ for my general bass fishing, but there is something about a really good lure rod around the 8’6’’ length that is a real pleasure to fish with. I can’t talk about specific sample lure rods that I might or might not be playing with here, but I can talk about this rather special Shimano Lunamis S86ML 8’6’’ 6-25g (Jig Max 32g) instead………..

It’s another peach of a lure rod from Shimano Japan. I still don’t have a definitive answer for the “Jig Max 32g” thing so I choose to take it that the rod is rated to cast metals up to 32g but regular lures up to 25g. If you have cast a 30g metal side by side with a 30g hard lure then you will know how differently a rod reacts with the differences in air resistance and so on, but for ease of use let’s take this 8’6’’ as I took the slightly longer 9’ version of this Lunamis - a lure rod rated up to 25g which will easily bang the regular Patchinko out, so in many respects you’ve got an 8’6’’ rod here which can cover quite possibly all lure fishing for bass that many anglers happen to do.

shimano lure rod reviews

I loved the Lunamis 9’ 6-25g and I love this shorter 8’6’’ version just as much, indeed if anything it sits even easier in the hands with it being 6’’ shorter. It’s a really interesting rod in that when you cast hard with a lure it’s very forgiving and easy, to the point perhaps where the little “steely bird” on my shoulder says “come on Henry, the rod needs to be a bit pokier in the cast”, but it’s when you have (so effortlessly) completed the cast and you’re working a lure that this rod comes to life and feels so steely and precise in your hands. I really like this. Easy to cast, very forgiving of a bit of dodgy timing - what, me?! - but so precise when you are actually working surface lures or twitching something like the Gravity Stick Pintail around. I don’t do soft, collapsible lure rod tips and I want to feel some resistance when I snap my wrists back to get the rod tip working. This Lunamis 8’6’’ 6-25g is that rod in spades.

If you know the Lunamis rods then you know how well made they are. I like the grips, I like the guides albeit I’d be interested to see if the rod might end up a touch “tighter” again with slightly smaller guides the whole way through, and everything about any of the Shimano Lunamis rods I have fished with smacks of serious quality. You will get no argument from me that north of £300 is a good wedge of cash to spend on a fishing rod, but I don’t begrudge how much rod you are getting when you buy a Lunamis when I compare it to other rods I have fished with. As to why Shimano UK don’t make some serious noise about the limited models of Dialuna and Lunamis rods they make available is beyond me, and why at the very least the Lunamis 9’ 7-35g isn’t on their list is just daft.

This is one serious rod, and it’s a real thrill to wield what might be termed a “shorter” lure rod again. I don’t see much point in trying to tell you what lures and methods this rod might suit because we all think differently here. I choose instead to take the casting weight of the rod and apply it to my fishing like that, because there sure as hell isn’t some man-servant out on the rocks to hand me a different rod for fishing say my Gravity Sticks and then a surface lure and then bumping the Sandeel V2 Weedless along the bottom in some current. Nope, when I’m out fishing I have taken a lure rod which I trust will deal with how I might need to fish taking into account the location and the conditions. You know when you’d take a rod like this Shimano Lunamis S86ML 8’6’’ 6-25g out bass fishing, and damn I like this thing. You all have a good weekend, I caught my second ever bass in February on a lure the day after my first! Would it be rather cheeky to hope for a March bass next? Please note that I am avoiding talking about the Six Nations because of what happened last weekend…………….

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