Tailwalk B-Breamer SSD S710M/SSL (short solid tip) 7'10'' 5-21g lure rod review - £239.99 UK price

What an interesting lure fishing rod, and it’s one I knew nothing about until fairly recently - for which I blame those purveyors of lure fishing tackle filth at The Art of Fishing! They know I have been increasingly interested in lighter and/or shorter lure rods which might or might not work well for both this creature bait stuff - bumping stuff along the bottom with as much “feel” as you can get - and for scaling things down a touch with smaller paddletails and surface lures and so on…………..

So those bad people (kindly) put this Tailwalk B-Breamer SSD S710M/SSL 7'10'' 5-21g lure rod into my hands the other day and said by all means have a good go with it and see what you think. As ever with these blog reviews, if I hadn’t liked the rod from the get-go I’d have left it alone, and to be honest that first (and deeply scientific!) waggle test didn’t really do it for me. We all do this, but once again that “test” ends up revealing little about the true nature of this rod. It’s fast, light, and responsive, it feels very sharp/precise when you fish with it, I really like the shape of the handle even if I don’t personally believe that being able to place my forefinger on the naked blank gives me any more sensitivity. I found that this rod pairs well with a Shimano 2500 or C3000 spinning reel, which to be fair are the only spinning reels I have used with it, so take that with a pinch of salt.

You know how I am perfectly happy messing around with different lure rod lengths, but this Tailwalk B-Breamer SSD S710M/SSL 7'10'' 5-21g is the shortest rod I can remember actively using for a while. Given that this “bottom contact” style of lure fishing seems more efficient when you fish with the rod tip up, a shorter rod makes perfect sense to me. Whack that MegaBass Sleeper Craw out on this rod and it goes about as well as this somewhat un-aerodynamic lure is ever going to go, but when the lure hits the bottom and you start to fish it with the rod in the up position, this is when the rod starts making real sense. Shorter is definitely better with the rod tip up approach, but fishing with the rod tip down feels just as good I might add.

So what is “feel”, and am I really feeling much more on this specific rod? This rod has a short solid tip, and as per the info on the Tailwalk website, “the short solid tip for the sensitivity and operability helps the user with searching fish delicately and finely around the structures”. I believe we are talking about a short, solid length of carbon on the end of a typically hollow carbon rod, and this solid bit is meant to increase the sensitivity. The whole feel thing is very subjective to me because there are so many factors involved in how much you can possibly feel anyway - wind, waves, water depth, type of seabed, lure weight, type of lure and so on - but give me ten minutes with this rod in calm conditions and something like the Sleeper Craw or the smaller Savage Gear Sandeel V2 Weedless and I can pretty much convince myself that I am indeed getting a smidgen more feedback from whatever I am working along the bottom.

But am I really? Well I think I am at least, but it’s entirely subjective and it can’t be measured anyway. It doesn’t really matter though because we’ve got a lure rod here which I don’t want to give back at all. I love fishing with this thing when I am using lures which want to be fished along the bottom, and then I start messing around with swimming paddletails and walking surface lures and it’s also one hell of a good rod for this stuff as well. It’s rated up to 21g but it feels like a powerful 21g rod if that makes sense - better towards the top end rather than the lighter end of the quoted 5-21g casting/fishing range. I have no doubt you could go over that 21g weight but I haven’t done so. My only regret is that I didn’t get to use the rod for wrasse fishing because I reckon it would be amazing for this when you need to feel what’s going on AND have the power to get those feisty fish up and away from their rocky dwellings.

Because there’s a lot of power to this rod. You can really feel it via the relative thickness in the lower part of the rod blank for starters, and although I can’t remember using a lure rod with a solid tip, for some reason I imagined a rod like this might be a bit soft and floppy. This rod isn’t that at all. This thing is so sharp and crisp, and whatever the tip is actually doing, to me it’s just working so well as part of the overall rod. I get what the rod has been predominantly designed for - “The Answer from tailwalk for Sea Bream Fishing in Bay Area” - but to me we’ve got a pretty stunning, fish with whatever type of lighter lure you want 7’10’’ long lure rod which is effortless to cast and fish with. If you like a shorter lure rod and you want as much sensitivity as you can get around say the 8-21g range, this Tailwalk B-Breamer SSD S710M/SSL 7'10'' 5-21g should be on your shortlist. Wow. You all have a good weekend…………

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