Who Makes the Best Drop Shot Rod?

Video Transcription

What's up everybody? We are back with another one of our rod battles here and we this time we're talking drop shot. I wouldn't have picked drop shot to be honest with you to be the one we do a head to head on. I guess I've been so used to talking about drop shot stuff for years and years and years. I didn't think there was a huge ton of difference in drop shot rods, but you the consumers wanted to see and sure as hell, I've been surprised already. Just even here setting up the bend. These three rods are going to go head to head with. There are some significant differences there and obviously drop shot's a pretty wide technique to be going into to say what's the perfect rod for it. Drop shotting could be something like dropping straight off the front of your boat right on top of a fish inside your sonar cone of forward facing sonar. We have nowadays or drifting a drop shot in the Great Lakes with 50 yards, 100 yards line out and drifting across a big flat. So there's different rods and different reasons why you would fish different rods for the drop shot technique, but we're going based off basically the most popular drop shot rods we sell here at Omnia Fishing based off two factors, Sales volume and fishing report popularity.

NRX+ DSR 6'10" Mag Medium, Extra-Fast

So I bet you that's why this one's in there because this is a spendy spendy rod. This is the NRX+ from G. Loomis, by many people's accounts the night the finest rods out there on the market today. That's obviously opinions out there, but there's a lot of people that have that opinion. So they're that many people can't be totally wrong. One of the finest rods ever made period on planet earth, their drop shot rod. It's short. It's a 6'10" by my standards. It's short anyway. Is is their drop shot rod? It is an extra fast action. Mag medium power. So this is a very interesting take on what a drop shot rod would be. My head right away goes to this is for dropping on fish that you are seeing on your sonar in and around and underneath your boat or around your boat. Not far away, not like a drifting drop shot rod. But let's bend it. This is one of the most popular drop shot rods on planet earth. I don't think we'll get an argument from anybody on that. Let's see what the most expensive of the bunch and one of the finest rods in the market is like bending on our board back here. See what it does.

The NRX DSR drop shot rod. All right, we're here with the NRX+ drop shot rod. This is a 6'10" rod in length. We have extra-fast action and mag medium power. So a little bit more power than a medium, a little bit heavier power than that, but not as stiff as a medium-heavy. All right, let's bend it. Let's make sure I'm on my marks. We'll do a pretty heavy bend there. So right off the bat, a little surprised myself. I expected the action to be much more up in the tip with a slow bend like that. Let me tighten up the drag a little bit here. I was losing a little bit there. Get on the marks. Wow. So even when I do light pulls with just my wrist, you know, not using kind of my whole arm, if I just you, this rod is not as extra-fast as I expected it to be. Now, may this may come as a surprise to you. I'm kind of not knocking them for that because this is actually more what I expect to see in a drop shot rod's action for my from my experience with lots of other manufacturers. This rod seems to have a little bit more of a fast, if not fast, moderate action to me. The tip doesn't seem to be dancing around just up in that top section. When I apply really light pressure to it, it is more in the fast. It absolutely is. So if I'm shaking a bait, this is just the tips dancing around. I can do that. I can part very little action on it. Just make the tip dance around here on this rod, which is good because I don't want to necessarily move my drop shot out of the area. I've got it in front of that fish. I don't want the tip super stiff and super bouncy up there that I'm actually imparting tons and tons of action on it. I might just want a gentle shake of just my slack line. You see a lot of people do that quite a bit. The rod's power aids in the action past the tip there, aids and landing fish with really light lines, especially braided line to leader applications. So big surprise for me here on the NRX that it's not as extra fast as I expected it to be, but this is more of what I would view as a traditional drop shot rod in the world, the drop shot. So interesting one. Let's bend the other two rods here. Let's see what its competitors are in the drop shot rod category in our Omnia Fishing rod battle.

St. Croix Victory 7'3" Medium-Light, Extra Fast

What's up everybody? I'm back with another rod for our drop shot rod battle. And this one here is the St. Croix Victory 7'3" medium-light, extra-fast. So this one is listed as a finesse rod. Their max finesse, I believe it was listed as in their other series. It's exact same blank length and power and actions listed as a drop shot rod. We actually have our consumer feedback stating this is being one of our most popular drop shot rods. Obviously this series came out to a lot of thunder, that St. Croix was doing a US made rod for a price point. This was a lot more affordable for a lot of avid anglers out there. And they got on this train really fast and we've seen a ton of popularity in a bunch of models in the Victory family. So I'm not surprised to see it in our first two rod battles. The Victory have two different players jump into the game here. This is a high volume family for us. So the sales might be lifting this one up, but it also is being reported in our fishing reports. We did take both things into account to get our three most popular rods for a technique involved. So this being a 7'3" drop shot rod versus the one I did before, which was actually the G. Loomis. This is longer in length than a drop shot rod from the other manufacturers that I've seen. Being 7'3", it's a little bit on the longer side. I've seen drop shot rods all the way out to 7'6", seven six, but as short as 6'7" and 6'6" drop shot rods from some of the Japanese manufacturers for say, for example. 7'3" being longer. This makes me think a little bit more of a casting a drop shot rod, right? If I'm going to actually cast that out to some fish that are further away from me, or if I'm drifting, if my boat's blowing and I'm trying to cover some water, get it setting up a drift for a lot of what smallmouth applications for drop shot fishing is, that's probably where this rod would shine a little bit more due to the length. Now that doesn't mean you can't still drop your bait right off the front of the boat, down to fish right around or beneath the boat, but this being a 7'3", this gives me a little bit more length and more versatility to pitch way out there. The other thing I think the length gives you is a little bit more control of a hook set with light line far away. I'm picking up more line. A lot of times with spinning reels, you're picking up a lot of line and trying to get that hook in that fish. If you see that, as you all probably experience a fish actually moving before you've got a hook in them or anything like that, length aids you in those situations. So 7'3" is in my opinion, a great length for a drop shot rod for versatility, medium-light power. That's where I started to go. Okay, how light is this thing? Is it going to bend over? Can I not fish out? If I have a half ounce drop shot weight on and some heavy wind is the rod going to be bent over just from my weight, let's find that out over here on the wall. And then action wise, why extra-fast ? Is that tip all I want to bend or do I want the rod to load up a little bit more than that when I'm fishing a drop shot, especially with line to leader connections there with braided line to leaders. So let's bend it on the wall. See how the St. Croix Victory drop shot rod does in the 7'3" medium-light, extra-fast.

All right, I'm here with the St. Croix 7'3" medium-light, extra-fast max finesse rod. This is not listed by them as a drop shot rod. I'm them being St. Croix rods out of Park Falls, Wisconsin. It is listed as a max finesse rod for them, more reversible finesse fishing rod. But our consumers feedback is that this is a drop shot rod. It is listed as an extra-fast action. So I'm excited to bend it. We do sell a lot of these Victory being a very meat potatoes price point for a lot of us avid anglers out there that have a lot of rods. It's a very friendly price point. Now, like our previous one here, well, it was a very enthusiast rod, a super high end that was listed as an extra-fast action as well. Let's see how this one is and very similar to its competitor. I am surprised at the action. I thought I would see a lot more tippiness in this rod. Instead, it is a lot more like a drop shot action. I would think of more of a fast, almost moderate action for that line to leader connection. Now, lightly just giving a little bit of action to the rod, bend into the rod with just my wrist. You are seeing that the action in the rod is a lot faster than it is when I really load the rod up when I give the rod some power to it. I am seeing more of a fast to moderate bend. This is definitely fast when you just give it a little bit of action, which is key with a drop shot because I want to shake it a lot of times or move it around without moving the bait out of the target zone. Sometimes when you want to impart action on it, you do want that little extra-fast action where I am just dancing the tip around and moving around, let's say my slack line if I want to do that. The other advantage to this is if I want to run a heavier weight on my drop shot, which I tend to do a lot, especially if I am in really windy conditions or I am casting my drop shot out and I want it on the bottom. I am getting my bites on the bottom part of the water column. This won't keel all the way over with a half ounce weight on it. You are just going to load that tip up a little bit so you would still be able to detect some bites or impart some action on it without moving it because that tip is extra fast. But honestly, just like its competitor, shockingly not as crazy extra-fast as I am used to seeing from I would say St. Croix. Instead, it is very similar in action to that very expensive competitor of it in the NRX. Interesting that we see extra-fast from both and we end up seeing that they have very similar actions that I wouldn't consider super extra-fast unless you are imparting very little action. Even then, still, it seems to me more of the top third of the rods dancing around there. Very interesting stuff here from the drop shot rods from our first two competitors in the rod battle. Let's go grab the third.

Daiwa Tatula Elite AGS Brent Ehrler 7'1" Medium, Fast

All right, back with our third entry in the rod battle here for drop shot rod and as no surprise, another familiar face shows up in our drop shot battle and our rod battles. That's another Tatula Elite rod. We do sell quite a bit of these here at Omnia Fishing so that sales volume pushes these way up there and we are taking into account fishing report data as well and reporting that we get back from our consumer base. This is being listed as a staple in the drop shotting world and I can say from my previous experience, a lot of people with fishless rods say the same exact thing. This one here, they list as 7'1" with a medium power, fast action. So we have a medium power fast action 7'1" with AGS carbon fiber guides. So this should be an interesting one to bend on the wall here and see how this one compares to our first two battlers, the NRX and the St. Croix Victory.

All right, this is going to be interesting here. This is a totally different departure from the other two. We don't have the same action. We have a medium power as opposed to a medium-light power. So we're going to give it a little load up here and you're going to see I would say my opinion, that's fast action. That is not extra-fast. That is exactly what they're deeming it to be. Fast action there. Not a surprise on the action. Seems about right. Let me get impart just a little bit of wrist action. You're going to load it up. Yeah, it's honestly no slower than the two rods previous that said that they were extra-fast. Now, I will say this rod has noticeably quite a bit more power. I know that's hard to express in these videos but given a jam there, showing a lot more power. This is definitely to me more of a largemouth drop shot rod. Definitely could get away with some smallmouth fishing with it 100% upside your hooks a little bit, maybe a little bit bigger leader line and stuff like that. This is not to me a super finesse-y drop shot rod. This is a much more versatile, like I might be dragging one with a half ounce weight, 50, 75 yards off the front of the boat. I could be dropping straight down on them. I could be fishing in heavy vegetation. Whatever you want to do in the drop shot, this one seems a lot more like a full on power drop shotters, versatile drop shot rod and no species limitation either. You can go for some big bucket heads of this thing. This is not just a finessy smallmouth drop shot rod. The other two seem much more by the book drop shot actions and powers. This one seems a lot more of a lot more of a almost a power fisherman's drop shot rod. Loading up, like I said, with a fast action and even into the backbone, believe it or not, it's hard to express here. I'm just having to trust me verbally. I have to give it a lot of power to even get it into that past or even to the top third of the blank bending there. This is a powerful rod. I can see why people like it. I could see why it would be especially with today's new lines and better drags and things like that. Why a rod with a little bit more power is getting more and more popular. But if you're a traditionalist drop shotter, man, especially if you're using a lot of light light line, those other two seem a lot more finesse-y than this one. This one definitely is different than the other two.

Conclusion

There you have it. Thanks for tuning in to our drop shot rod battle as stated. Hopefully it got across. We got these three rods based off sales data and customer feedback that we get in our fishing reports that we get in surveys. We do a lot of surveying here at Omnia Fishing. I'm sure some of you if you're watching this have seen that we do a lot of that. So it's not a bias pick by anybody here at Omnia. These are, this is straight volume. So you're going to see some redundancy from some brands. We hope to expand on these. We hope to get your feedback on rods you want to see going head to head. The models or I should say the techniques where we've picked first for these first three versions of this we've done have been based off consumer feedback that what they wanted to see. So let us know in the comments what you think of our rod battle for drop shot rods and what rods do you think should be in the fight with these three models of drop shot rods. [Music}