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Hello friends, I am new to the site and relatively new to salt water fishing. I live in NW Arkansas and only get to Florida once or twice a year. I want to do some surf fishing and need advice on which rods would work best. I recently bought a couple spinning reels (Cabela's) Salt Striker 65. I also have 2 Penn Senator 6/0 reels, a Penn 209 and a Penn 309. I bought a cheap spinning rod from wal mart a couple weeks ago while in Florida and caught several whiting, trout and catfish on the spinning rig. Looks like the Senator 6/0 needs a much heavier rod. We would like to use a kayak to drop the bait and would like to catch some sharks and larger fish. We will be in the panhandle area near St. Joe and near St Vincent's Island. Of course we would like to keep a few edible fish as well. Price is a consideration of course. We release fish that we don't eat. Thank you for any advice you might have.

Hey y’all first post so sorry if this is a mess. Basically I’m looking into getting a new baitcasting rod here soon and I’m not sure whether to get a MH or. H Rod. I Started out with a little 6”6 MH fishing t-rigged plastics (I know bad rod choice buts it’s I had) and it worked fine for years caught plenty of bass with it. A few years ago I injured my wrist dragging my Jon boat to the water (Irony at its finest haha) and have had trouble being able to put power behind a hookset due to the fact I can’t put all my armstrength into it when I go weak at the rod itself. I ended up switching to a Old 7”3 Heavy rod that my father used to use and by old I mean there’s no visible writing on it neither him or me know what brand or model it is just that it’s a heavy/extraHeavy action haha. I’ve caught plenty of 5+ pound fish with it but the reason why I switched to it was my thinking was that I could somehow make up for my lack of strength in hookset by going with a stiffer longer rod. Should I go back to a medium heavy but maybe a 7”3 or stick with a Heavy? I guess I just wanna know if my logic is sound or if trying to make up for lack of hookset power with a stiffer Rod is pointless. Short version for those who don’t wanna read story time (didn’t realize it was that long haha) Basically I had a wrist injury a few years back and wanted to know if using a heavier action rod would make up for some of my lack of hooksetting power. All I do is texas rig plastic worms and I know MH rods are better for that. Been using a H 7”3 under this logic and wanna know if it makes sense to anyone else.

Recently one of my cheaper poles have started to break down on me, as I only have 2 poles right now, I need help selecting a rod and reel that would be perfect for the things I fish in my lake. I've watched some youtube videos and have read some articles but I just want some extra advice from this forum. Anyway, I really love fishing lures that are 1/4 oz lures, personally to me when I use that weight of lures it feels the most right, when I do usually do this it's on a medium heavy pole (which is beginning to break on me). Another thing that I really love to fish with is a jig, 1/4 oz with a trailer that's more on the lighter side, (people have told me to go 3/8 of an oz when using jigs, but it always felt way to heavy for me.) So people have told me that when fishing heavy cover jigs you need a strong backbone to set the hook through the weed guard. Regardless of those things though, I just want something I can fish with through the seasons, topwaters, diving baits, texas rigs, carolina rigs, most every technique. At the point that I'm at right now I don't need different rods for different lures. As far as reels go, I'm not picky, something that's good for everything, as you could have guessed. My budget is around 250$ I've saved for a while now over my birthday and Christmas etc, so I really want to make good use of my purchase so that it doesn't go to waste. Thanks everyone, Tight lines!