I really thought I would never own one....

[nofearengineer]

but I actually broke down and bought a $400 rod...for $240. Which is still too damned much money for a fishing rod, but what the heck...you only live once.

My St. Croix Legend Extreme XC76MHMF arrived today. I always love the feeling an 8' cardboard tube on your doorstep gives you when you arrive home from work. It brings back the way you felt as a kid when you came out on Christmas morning and saw all of those presents under the tree.

While I am not sure the guy selling it was 100% honest...I am pretty much blown away by this rod. He advertised it as "new", but there are a couple of tiny superficial scratches on the rod; you have to hold the rod up at the right angle to see them. I'm not sure if this thing was a blem, he fished it a couple of times, or it just got scratched up on the store shelf by customers handling it. It is an amazing rod for the price, nonetheless.

The first thing I notice when I pick it up is how much it doesn't weigh. At 4.8 ounces, it's lighter than most of the ultralight spinning rods I've owned in my life. And this thing is 7 and a half feet long. Technology is good.

I'm not sure how well it translates to detecting fish bites, but I always like to take a rod and place the tip on a speaker and see how low I can turn the volume down and still feel the vibrations in the handle. Maybe I'm just getting hard of hearing in my old age, but I could feel some of the "noise" with my hands that I could barely make out with my ears.

I'm going to pair this thing up with a Revo Premier for a total weight of less than 12 ounces.

The next thing I did was check out the REC Recoil guides. You can literally bend these things over with your thumb, and they spring right back into place. I don't plan on bending them any more now, at least on purpose.

It seems to be a bit more stiff than my Mojo Bass MB76MHMF, and the action seems just a smidgin faster. I get the serious feeling that if I jerk on a big ol' sow in the weeds with this rod, she's comin' out. Major backbone.

This purchase is just going to make the next 10 weeks harder. Who knows...maybe February will turn nice on us, and I'll have to do some late Winter fishing with it. I don't actually have what I would call a deep jigging rod, but I think this rod would work in a pinch rather well. When Spring gets here, I am definitely going to use this rod for what it was meant for...pitching. Also as an open water spinnerbait rod.