Fishing rod selection

There are so many different fishing rods in market. When I went to buy my first fishing tackles, I asked a clerk for recommendation. For general everyday fishing, he recommended me Medium power, 6'6" rod. I can see almost every angler use this type of rod at shore.

I have had no problem in using the 6'6" rod until I started using 6" swim bait. My rod was too weak to handle the lure properly. It made me think about rod selection. Here is my thought about lure selection:

1. Weight of lure: It is the first consideration. If you want to use heavy lures, you have to choose a heavier power rod. With light rod, you can not make right presentation of your lure.
2. Weight of target fish: It determines power and length of a rod, too. If you are targeting large fish, you need heavier power and longer rod. The rod will make fighting a lot easier. But reel is more important in fighting. It means that although you have a light rod, if you have a heavy reel, then you can land the fish without any serious problem. It will take more time in fighting, though.
   
3. Casting method and location: It determines length of a rod. If you want flipping or pitching most time, you should choose a longer one. If you will fish at beach, you definitely need longer one, too. But casting seems not so important consideration in rod selection.

Lure Classification

There are so many different types of fishing lures. We definitely need classify them to better understand when and where we use one. I found that classification by play depth is the most useful way. There are 3 types of lures according to play depth: top, middle and bottom water baits.

1. Top water

• Floating hard bait: They look typical hard plastic baits, but they remain floated when they are retrieved. Chug bug, Jitter bug, Stik bait are brand names of this kind of lure. They are usually called topwater lure.
  
• Buzz bait: They look like spinner baits, but they have props which make them float.
  
• Frog bait: They look like frog, and do not snag on grassed water.
  

2. Middle water

• Diving hard bait: They are the most typical hard plastic baits. They have lips, and they make the bait dive. Larger the lips, deeper they dive.
  
• Swim bait: They are soft plastic lure with paddle at the end. The paddle makes it swim in the middle of water.
  
• Spinner: They are made of wire and wings. Being retrieved fast, spinning wings imitate swimming bait fish.
  
• Spoon: They are spoon-shaped baits.
  

3. Bottom water

• Soft Plastic: There are many different shape of soft plastic baits, such as worm, bait fish, cray fish, and salamander. They are used with jig head or Carolina rig or no sinker rig. They are many variations of rigging.
  
• Jig: Jig is a combination of jig head and many kinds of skirts. For example, bucktail jig is a jighead with bucktail skirt.
  

I found this classification useful. Because it gives us idea which lure we have to use at different situation. Classification like soft plastic, hard plastic, non plastic does not help at all.