I have a story to tell, which all began a couple years ago. I was out fishing one day with a Keitech minnow on a Vtec jighead. All of a sudden I started catching crappie, each one bigger than my foot (I wear a size 13). I caught about six of these slabs and then they stopped. It was enough to get me hooked on pan fishing again, which I haven't done a lot of since I was a kid. Anyway, so I started chatting about this with some fishing buddies and they told me I should use something called a road runner. They said it was the cadillac of crappie baits.
I searched high and low for these road runners and couldn't find anyone locally who carried them. I didn't even have any success looking online. So now let's fast forward to a couple days ago. I was at the tackle shop looking for an ultra light setup, because I was getting that urge again to fight some fish on a smaller setup. The tackle guy suggested this combo, which he said he used himself. The rod was really nice, but it had one of those cheap crappy reels on it.
I found a Lew's Speed Spool 1000, which of course was more than the combo, but I knew it would go great on the rod that had that crappy reel on it. The guy took the combo down and was saying how great that reel was, then I handed him the Lew's and said 'try that.' He did and his eyes kind of lit up. He said 'wow'. Yeah, wow. So I bought the combo in order to get the rod.
The next day I had to work so I'm driving around with the windows open. It was a windy day and as I was driving to another store (I'm a vendor) I rolled up the back windows and heard this crunch. I looked back and saw the end of the rod had been sticking out the window and was now just hanging there. I was devastated especially since now I couldn't take the rod back because the night before I had sold that crappy little reel to someone.
Now I had to find another ultra light rod. Since I drive around the area a lot for my job I started looking for places I could find fishing rods. Meijer sucks for fishing stuff, so I tried Walmart, which is only a little better than Meijer. Unfortunately I don't live in an area that has great tackle shops like Cabela's or Bass Pro, so finally I saw a Dunhams Sport shop and pulled in there. I was shocked at the huge selection of fishing rods they had there. I searched through all of them and the only one that grabbed my eye was this ultra light Berkley Cherrywood.
Now I'm not a big fan of two piece fishing rods, especially two piece ultra light fishing rods, but then this one was only twenty bucks so I thought what the heck. I was checking the guides to make sure they were all lined up and not bent or anything when I saw them.....road runners! There was one entire section of road runners on the opposite wall. I almost dropped the rod I was so shocked to see them. I'd looked high and low all over the place and here they were. It was almost like everything that happened that morning was leading me to them. Ha ha!
I didn't go overboard, although I wanted to buy them all, so I just bought one to try it out and see if it was as great as everyone told me they were. That evening I picked up my buddy and we took the new setup out to the park. I told him the whole story and he said 'well, it sounds like fate'. I don't know about that, because I had no great confidence in the rod, or even the line (I was using 6lb Sufix Elite low vis green). I relayed all these misgivings to my buddy as I made the first cast and was reeling and giving the road runner little twitches then BAM!
It was a four pound largemouth. He fought and pulled and jumped a couple times and then I lipped him out of the water and while we were both oogling his beautiful greeness I was honestly amazed how well the gear had performed. Next cast BAM! this time it was a 3 1/2 pound smallie. After fighting and a couple acrobatics I lipped him and now I was truly amazed. After that a huge slabsize sunfish and then a decent size rock bass. I was like, what the heck is going on, I'm catching one of each species - and large ones, too (large by ultra light standards anyway).
After all this I reminisced about the day and how I had ended up here. Obviously the hype about the road runner was certainly true, but I was more amazed by how the rod and line had performed. Of course there's more fishing to come and only time will tell if these things hold up, but for right now I'm content and willing to give quarter to seemingly cheap two piece rods and line.
Now if I can just remember to bring the dang GoPro next time....
