Who Makes the Best Jerkbait Rod?

Video Transcription

What's up out there, Fishing World? Welcome to our first edition of some Rod Battles. I'm not even sure what we're gonna call these yet, but we'll figure it out as we go. This is a request by our Omnia customer base to put some rods from different manufacturers head to head against each other in the form of technique-specific models, right? So we're gonna kick it off with the jerkbait. And this was not a decision we made. This is actually, this is a number one technique requested to see a battle amongst the rods.

Funny, right away my head went to some of our most popular jerkbait rods, thinking I knew what the action should be in a jerkbait rod. But as you'll see here, hopefully on this test, as we bend them here, the three most popular models here at Omnia Fishing via fishing reports and sales volume, we combine those two to find the three top jerkbait rods in our system right now. They list them with very different actions, but let's bend them and see how different they are and spark the discussion who makes the best jerkbait rod.

Here we are with the St. Croix Victory 6'8" medium, extra-fast jerkbait rod. This in their very new Victory line, I know it's been out now for a couple years, I think, because it's new maybe, that's why it's so high up there in volume, but I'll be honest with you, a lot of the St. Croix faithful have told us, they find this line up, as far as the bass anglers go, to be the best bang for the buck line up in the entire St. Croix line up and out there in the rod world in general. So very interesting that they went with 6'8" medium and extra fast action, medium power, extra fast action. This is the shortest of the three rods. This is also tied for one rod with power rating, but it's the only one with an extra-fast action. So pretty interesting stuff there from St. Croix, let's bend this thing and see the St. Croix's version of a jerk bait rod is.

I'm here with the St. Croix Victory 6'8" medium, extra-fast jerkbait rod. So we're gonna give it a bend on my marks here, just load it up and it is exactly what they say, when they say action. St. Croix does a great job of matching what their descriptions of an action is and having it very visible. Now, I know to a lot of you maybe at home saying, well that thing's bending like a fast action tip. It's hard to see sometimes, but I'm the one putting the pressure on the rod, I'm telling you right now, this tip dances the minute you put any pressure on it. That very top, very top, 10th, eighth of the rod or however far up there you wanna say, the minute I give it any tension is what's bending. Now, the power of the rod being immediate means I can take it past that tip and load it up into the top third, if not almost, not halfway down the rod, but that top third of the rod's with bending. But you're seeing it's a medium power and it is extra fast. This is a great example of exactly that. I'd have to bend it slow, like I said, for you to get the super visual of that, but what their theory is behind that is, when I wanna impart action on that jerkbait, I shouldn't have to crack my arm four feet to get that jerk bait to dart and move around. I can just give it little twitches of the rod, we'll do it up here for this view and you can see that I'm getting into a little bit of backbone with just that very little twitch of my wrist so I could fish a really subtle small jerkbait or a really big jerkbait and impart a ton of action on it without having to use my whole arm, I could use my wrist to do it. Now, whatever you would see some controversy around that is be, oh, I got little light treble hooks and it's super cold water, am I gonna be able to land that fish with a really stiff rod? That's where the genius of this rod is, is as you see as I loaded power into it, it bends quite a bit back there. So it is soft enough being a medium power that it will get past that tipping, let you get into the backbone a little bit so you should in theory not be losing a lot of fish into treble hooks. I can see why this is a very popular jerk bait rod, it's insanely light, the handle's nice and short, it's behind my way of far in front of my elbow and I can just twitch it with little twitches of the wrist and impart action in the jerk bait. Let's check out one of the St. Croix Victory's competitors in this jerk bait showdown.

Next up in our jerkbait rod battle, we have the Daiwa Tatula Elite Seth Feider 6'9" medium-light moderate jerkbait rod. Obviously this one is near and dear to our hearts here is Seth is an Omnia angler. I think that helps obviously with us pushing a lot more of these out in front of people. This was a popular rod way before Omnia was around in its previous iteration. Seth has a lot of theories around why this is the perfect jerkbait rod for you and I think a lot of consumers have found it to be that way. If you go out and do your own research out there and all the forums and ask what great jerkbait rods are, this one does come up a lot in those discussions. Hence why the sales volume is really high on it and our fishing report data coming back to us. This is a common rod used to deploy the jerkbait technique. Let's go bend it and see what Seth's talking about with why this action is perfect for a jerk bait.

Okay, I'm here with Seth Feider's to Tatula Elite 6'9" jerkbait rod. This thing is a medium-light power, moderate action. They call it regular I believe. We'll give her a bend and yeah, you're gonna see right away this thing bends all the way down. So it is a moderate action or that regular bend to it. And I will say just imparting any action on it at all with my wrist. If you pay attention to the one I did before with the St. Croix, when I just twitch my wrist, I just bent the tip of the rod. This is bending almost halfway down with even that slightest bit of pressure. We'll do a little bit harder hook set here. And you see this is a moderate action rod with a medium light power. It is exactly what it says on the rod. We know that sometimes that's not the case. That's why we're doing the bend. But so now we'd have to talk about why would Daiwa consider this a jerk bait rod or specifically Seth Feider's it says on there. Consider this a jerkbait rod when St. Croix was considering that extra fast model, totally different action and a different power a better jerk bait rod. This one's designed around something that's very near and dear to the hearts of tournament anglers and that's not losing expensive fish. That's right, their fish can be worth up to $10,000 if it's their limit fish for the day. You'd be worth up to obviously $100,000 if it's the fish that wins a tournament. So losing fish is the number one thing that comes to mind when you talk to a lot of high-end tournament anglers. And this one's designed around that cold water time for the year and not losing fish. Light wire jerk bait hooks bend out easy if you put a lot of pressure on those fish. So this rod is designed to give those fish all the rod they want almost like a fiberglass rod. But being graphite it's nice and lightweight and crisp and still sensitive enough that it makes it for makes an awesome tool for fishing a jerk bait. The knock I'd have on this, where the St. Croix would win is if you wanted to impart a ton of action a larger jerkbait or even a smaller jerkbait you have to give it pretty significant cracks. Now we're using our arm to strike the rod to get that bait to jerk around and move underwater. We're the St. Croix, I'm just imparting that action with my wrist. This rod you're gonna have to use your whole arm and a little bit more body to get that bait to dance around if that's what the fish are asking for that day. But you're probably gonna have a better landing percentage than you would with a faster action rod. So which one's right? That's up to you out there. But as you can see we have very different actions between our first two rods. Now let's check out our third.

Here we are with our third contender in our rod battles for the jerkbait division. And this is our most popular. That's right with adding in fishing reports and sales volume. The number one jerkbait rod we sell here at Omnia Fishing is the Expride 6'10" medium, moderate-fast. So this one is considered by our consumer base to be the most popular jerkbait rod. So this has a moderate-fast action and medium power. So if you remember the other two contenders here, you had the St. Croix, the Victory with a medium, extra-fast action, the Daiwa a medium-light power, moderate action. Now here we go back to a medium power but we have a moderate fast action. So three different rods are the three most popular and they all three of them have different actions and powers all together. It's pretty cool to see each manufacturer as a different view of what the perfect jerkbait rod is. Let's go bend the Shimano Expride and see how it differs from the other two.

Okay, here we are with the Shimano Expride as promised. We're gonna do a bend here with it the same as we did the other two among my marks and we're gonna load it up and yeah, it's pretty moderate. I will say the reason why I would give them the, yeah, with a slight amount of power on it, give it some better bend, yeah. If I just impart any action on it with just my wrist, it is faster than the competitor's moderate action rod. So it is moderate-fast. I will give them that, the action is dead on on this and it is a medium power. This is a lot stouter. I would say that this rod's actually the stoutest of the three in my opinion, as far as backbone and power in the rod, a little bit more than the sSt. Croix and it is a little bit more of a moderate bend than the St. Croix, but it does have a little bit of tip in it that if you were to subtly wanna fish this jerkbait with just your wrist, you could impart some good action on the rod.

I think if we take all three rods and put 'em together and I talked about the advantages of the other two, the Daiwa being one that probably would shine at being the best at keeping fish buttoned up with light wire hooks and cold water conditions, the St. Croix being the one that you can impart the most action on the jerk bait with the least amount of exerted effort from you and your body, this is kinda in between the two of 'em. So you have two extremes there. You have a moderate action, medium-light power rod and you have a fast action, medium power rod, extra-fast would say, and here you have what's kind of in the middle. So in my head anyway, that math adds up to, we've got a perfect rod for cold water conditions, but multiple sizes of jerk baits and I can fish them kind of however I would like. I could fish them aggressively and get tons of action on my jerkbait or I could fish them softly, I could fish with the lightest wire hooks I possibly wanted to, still have a good landing percentage. I can see why this is the most popular of our jerk bait rods. Obviously there's brand loyalty involved here, there's price points involved here, there's all sorts of different ways to assess what jerkbait rods best for you. I hope this helps you make your decision between the three, but I would have to say, bending these so far, I see the Shimano being the most versatile, the St. Croix being the most aggressive jerkbait rod for aggressively fishing your jerk bait, and see the Daiwa's being the one that if you're fishing for big, big money and you don't want to lose any bass, that would be where that one would shine. So all three different rods, I'd love to hear your feedback and which one of these three is your favorite and why. (upbeat music)