Let's Bend the St. Croix Physyx 6'8" / Medium / Extra-Fast | Polish Pete

 

Video Transcription

All right, we're back with another one of the St. Croix rods Physyx family. I'm very excited to be and honored to be a part of the launch of these rods here. We've got been privy to this project for a while and I've got to play with a bunch of the rods and I'm thoroughly impressed so far. This is a departure from the norm and I want to give St. Croix a lot of credit for that. This is a project that's way outside the typical wheelhouse there at St. Croix. They're obviously superstars when it comes to blank technology and US manufacturing and just manufacturing standards as a whole but getting into something like this is a huge departure and I really like to see it. This is a carbon fiber handle completely manufactured by St. Croix. It does feel incredible in hand and it does make the rod feel more alive. I haven't been on the water with these rods but I have been messing around with them a lot. In hand here at Omnia playing with them a bunch. At first I looked at the handle and thought, boy that's a real departure from traditional St. Croix rods and I wonder how slippery that's going to be when your hands get wet but they have laid like T.P. rubber into the handle here a little bit to give you more traction this way. There are cuts and grooves into the grip here as well that really do mold your hand quite well. If you are a split finger person this handle does feel comfortable as well. They did think about you there but it really does shine if you're like me and you like to hold your hand up above the real seat and use your arm to fish with the fishing rod instead of your wrist. It does aid you in fatigue throughout the day and make the rod feel even more balanced. That's another big feature of these. I think that if you're not a St. Croix purist and you've always had an issue with their rods feeling more tip heavy. I haven 't experienced that as much certainly the spinning rods but I do hold my hand forward. As we know balance can be subjective at times these do feel very very. Most of the weight is back towards the back end of the rod so no tip heaviness here at all even with no real on it whatsoever. I think a lot of you are going to be impressed with these in hand when you feel them. Biggest weird thing here is this trigger on the back here. They were telling me about it didn't think much of it till I actually started doing kind of like a mocking a roll cast that I typically how I cast with the spinning rod a lot. This is like the perfect position. I bet you this is something that we see come into play in a bigger way here soon. It is quite natural and it was it's pretty impressive that they figured that out. It does feel real natural. I'm excited for you guys to pick them up and give us some feedback on that. The blanks themselves do not feel like they're painted like crazy so they do feel quite alive. The rods feel great. This particular model here is a 6’8” medium, extra fast. It's a little shorter than the traditional bass rods that are out there in the market but we are seeing a trend of rods getting a little bit shorter of late due to forward facing sonar and that fatigue of fishing with the spinning rod all day long and having your cast be more pinpoint versus efficient and covering water. This is more about throwing my bait right where the fish are and keeping it right where the fish are. So the hence the shorter rods have been getting more and more popular around here. Let's go bend the 6’8” medium, extra-fast St. Croix Physyx. 

 

All right so we are here with the St. Croix Rods Physyx 6’8” medium, extra-fast action spinning rod. They do feature their trigon handle which is some scientific study they've done and when you close your hand like this it is in a triangle shape so it does fit your hand quite nicely. I am a forward grip person as you've heard me talk about before so these handles are fitting me quite perfectly. If you are a split fingered person as I mentioned before they still have some grooves cut in here that make it quite comfortable to do that but I like my hand up here. I'm on my marks here let's load this one up and just like every other St. Croix rod that's an extra-fast the tip is extra-fast like they state. The backbone isn't in that fast range it is a little bit more like a modern rod with some stiffer lines it will get into more of the back side of the rod there to fight the fish which will aid you with light line and light wire hooks. I'm not opposed to that doing that I don't want just the tip to bend when I'm fighting a fish anymore but I do want that tip to act extra-fast for me when I'm making a bait move around or I'm setting the hook on a fish in deep water or with slack line. This rod immediately gets into the backbone as soon as you move your wrist. I'm not even setting the hook hard at all and I'm immediately into that backbone of that rod so it is extra-fast action. This one is a medium power, it does feel a lot more powerful than the medium-light version of this rod that I was playing with earlier so you definitely are getting a medium backbone they they called it right on the power there. It is extra-fast but I know on the bend test here it doesn't look as extra-fast with the rod loaded up as you would think but I promise you you're just going to have to trust me on this I'm imparting very little action as you can see I can get into pulling that hook into that fish with literally less than a half inch of pressure on this rod raising it up you 're getting into the backbone. Trigon handles like I said it might take a little bit of getting used to you for some of you but I don't think so it's actually quite natural feeling and this little trigger on the back here is interesting and it's growing on me the more I monkey with this thing. The blanks on these the 6’8” medium, extra-fast is a SC4 plus that's the same blank across the whole family not just this 6’8” which is a high end carbon fiber that is a hybrid between different levels of carbon fiber within St. Croix family. It's giving this rod extreme action it's really light really sensitive I think a lot of you rod purists out there are going to be impressed with St Croix's departure from the norm here especially in the spinning models that I've played with so far these do feel alive and they feel like something a lot different and that's impressive we haven't seen a lot of changing in the rod business in a long time so kudos to St. Croix for doing something different here I think a lot of you that are St Croix fans and some of you that aren't big St. Croix people that are brand loyal to other places are going to give them a tip of the cap on this one good job St Croix and the 6’8” medium, extra-fast St Croix Physyx rod (soft music)