Received my GLX 902c on Friday and took it out for a spin on Saturday. Wanted to share my early thoughts on the rod to help others in their possible decision making process.
Reminder: My (old) GLX 892c snapped on me (the rod probably did not like that it was foul hooked and casted into the lake some time before it snapped.. ;D), so I used the Xpeditor program to replace it.
[b]First impressions out of the rod tube:
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* Rod weight 3.73oz, the 892c came in at 4.31oz, which is great deal of weight reduction given the additional length and its full cork handle!!
* Weight reduction would not mean nothing, if balance was off. I am happy to report that the rod balances really well. I am using a Calcutta Conquest Shollow Edition on it and the rod balances perfectly with the reel.
[b]Looks:[/b] well, let's put it this way: the black and gold takes a bit of time to get used to. While the Conquest SE's blue tone perfectly matched the old GLX's color tone, it looks a bit displaced on the new GLX. The golden Conquest would look probably perfect on it though. I am not thaaat particular about my gear, so dont think I will change that any time soon.
[b]Fit and finish:[/b] typical Gloomis. It's okay but no where near a Megabass or even a Steez. We all know that.. The blank has little to no epoxy on it (similar to the NRX, is it the same blank?) which I would think is a main contributor to the reduced weight. It feels a bit more fragile in comparison to the old GLX. Time will tell..
[b]Power and action:[/b] Here I was a bit (positively) surprised. While I expected the mag taper, to me the taper turned out to be much faster than expected. Since I am planning to use the rod mostly for finesse bottom contact activities, this was taper is definitely welcomed. The taper is definitely (as one would expect) very light, but gets into a rather powerful backbone about 1/4 of the rod in.
[b]Intended use:[/b] 1/8oz texas rigs, micro jigs, small paddle tails and small cranks and lipless
[b]Fishing experience:[/b]
I had the Conquest spooled with 18.5lb braid to 7lb FC leader. On the water the combo felt very well balanced and was a joy to fish. It is hard to objectively compare sensitivity here against my other high end rods (Conquest, NRX, Steez, Megabass P5), but I think it was comparable to an NRX (maybe slightly below it). With braid to leader it is more splitting hairs at this level anyways...
Threw a range of lures: Lowes was a 1/16oz jig head with plastic (1/8oz total weight), that I was able to cast somewhat comfortably for 20-25m. Not sure if that was more contributed to the reel than the rod though. Maybe its the combination of the two! 😉
Highest weight was a 1/4oz swimbait jig head with a 3.8oz keitech, which probably got close to 1/2oz). I was able to bomb cast this lure out like there was no morning. While it was quite windy, I still got more than 60m out of it.
I had only one bite on the combo, but it was the right kind of bite. A 5.6lb largie decided to give my 1/8oz T-rig a try. The fight was a lot of fun and took me almost 3mins to safely land her.
*rant on* I really would love to upload pictures of the balance point and the action of the rod, but it is just such a PIA to upload pictures on this forum (we have the year 2024 where we have very capable out of the box forum templates that can do that easily and more..) that I just did not want to spend my Sunday on resizing pictures to make them hopefully work... *rant off*
Overall, I would think that the rod is promising and is fairly versatile in its applications. I just do not think that it is worth $600 (with taxes). For $350-400 it would get a recommendation from me. At this price point its a meh.
