Lipless Crankbait Rod Bend! Which is BEST?

What's up out there? Kit here with Omniafishing and before we get into this week's rod bend, I want to give you a quick reminder that we are giving away this Diwazillion. 7 -2 heavy. If you haven't seen the video we shot last week, pause this video, go watch it. I'll leave a link to it right up here. But we are giving away this Diwazillion. All you have to do is like that video, comment on it and subscribe to the channel and you can be entered to win this. So go give that video watch, come back here and we'll talk about today's topic which is Lipless Crank bait Rods. I'm going to put this one down here. The Lipless is an awesome technique to be throwing early spring. It can be a late fall tactic as well but the Lipless is great around here in the spring and it's on our mind. So today we've got five rods that we think would be killer for a Lipless Crankbait. I want to preface this with you do not need a specific Lipless Crank bait Rod. It's great to have a technique specific rod for every scenario but you can get away with throwing a 7 foot to 7-3 medium heavy fast. A rod that everybody's got in their boats and you can do just fine with the Lipless but if you really want to fine tune the rods that you've got in your boat or in your garage we're going to talk about a few options today. The first one being the Shimano Zodiac 7-2 medium heavy moderate glass rod. This rod came in at 5.4 ounces so definitely a glass rod a little bit on the heavier end but it does feel pretty good in hand. It's a composite rod so we've got a little bit of graphite mixed in there somewhere but the ratings on it we're looking at 3/8 of an ounce to an ounce and a half. Glass rods are typically rated a little bit heavier than your graphite rods. They can withstand a little bit more but they are softer and they aren't quite as sensitive as your graphite rods but a lot of people really like that for treble hook baits. Me being one of them I prefer that for most of my crankbait applications. So another thing I'm noticing right off the bat and we've gotten this question in the past is what is the difference between the Zodiac 7-2 medium heavy glass and the X-pride in the same specs. They definitely are different rods. That X-pride has still glass but it has a faster action than this if that makes sense. It's a little bit more crisp a little lighter it would make a better chatter bait rod than this one. It's just a little bit stiffer rod overall but let's go test that on the wall here. Again the 7-2 medium heavy moderate glass Shimano Zodiac. All right on the wall with that Shimano Zodiac 7 -2 medium heavy moderate glass rod composite rod and applying a little bit of power here it is definitely a moderate action. Super soft but does have quite a bit of backbone just because a rod is moderate doesn't mean that you're not going to eventually hit some backbone here so definitely soft but again hitting some power back here. Now there is a lot of crossover between a lipless rod and a chatter bait rod. I think if you've got a solid chatter bait rod you have an awesome lipless rod as well. This one in particular again comparing it to that X-pride in the same specs. This is definitely softer and a little bit flimsier. I'd say if you have that X-pride it'd make a killer lipless rod and obviously a great chatter bait rod. This one I think is more aimed towards the crankbait side of things. It'd be a great square bill rod medium to deep diving crankbaits but also a great lipless rod. You know there's a couple of ways to work a lipless or a couple of popular ways to work a lipless. One of them obviously casting and retrieving and another being kind of warming a lipless back or fishing it more like a jig where you're just giving it a couple vibrations off the bottom of the water and letting it sit again. This to me leans more towards a straight retrieve side of things. If you're winding it in and get bit this rod is going to double over and that fish is coming in the boat. So a cool rod here in the z odiac line not restricted to a lipless at all. Definitely well suited for all of your treble hook moving baits but again the 7.2 medium heavy moderate glass Shimano's Odias. All right rod number two for this week is yet another Dobbins rod. Again it seems like Dobbins and Falcon are popping up more and more in these videos. You guys seem to like them so we're going to keep featuring them. This one in particular is the 735 CB glass. This one really stood out to me as a rod that would be a killer lipless crankbait rod. This and the 736 CB glass are known to be awesome chatterbait rods for good reason. I don't couple of guys around the office have the 736 for a chatterbait. It's one of the best on the market. This is just a little bit softer and hence makes an awesome lipless rod. This is a 7.3 medium heavy fast action. So it is a glass rod but has a little bit faster action than we saw in that Zodiac. So I'm intrigued to get that on the wall. It came in again at 5.4 ounces. Same weight as that Zodiac but this one does feel really well balanced. It said it a million times it feels like now but Dobbins does a great job in counter balancing their rods and this one is no exception. It feels great for a glass rod. As far as specs it's rated from a quarter ounce to an ounce so it's going to handle basically any of the lipless crankbait on the market. Some of the more popular lipless crankbait on the market are 5/8, 3/4 ounce even. That lucky craft LV500s I believe 3/4 ounce rod. So it's not a bad idea to have a medium heavy even a heavy powered rod to handle those bigger lipless. So again the 735 CB glass coming in at 5.4 ounces let's take it to the wall. Back on the wall with the Dobbins Champion XP 735 CB glass and giving it a little pressure here definitely a faster action than that Zodiac. And again depends on what you want in a rod but I talked about that Zodiac being an awesome straight retrieve lipless rod or even a square bill rod. This one I could see excelling in the scenarios where you want to hop it off the bottom. Because of that faster action you're going to get to backbone quicker so when they pick it up off the bottom you got to get a hook set into them. This is a rod that I think would do great in that scenario. Obviously it would make a killer chatterbait rod too so if you are looking for a rod to handle a chatterbait and a lipless this would be right at the top of my list. A really cool rod here from Dobbins. You know it's got your full cork, Fuji Reel Seat which I'm a big fan of. I believe it has Fuji guides on it as well. Just a quality rod in the Champion XP line from Dobbins. Again this was the 735 CB glass. Next up is a rod that you wouldn't necessarily expect to see in this rod bend but it is one that we wanted to cover because a couple years ago on the St. John's River Bob Downey had an excellent finish on a Storm Arashivibe I believe, throwing this exact rod. And he was doing what we were talking about when we were bending that Dobbins he was hopping it off the bottom and in that scenario he wanted a rod that got to backbone really quick. This is a 7 foot 5 medium heavy fast action St. Croix LTB legend tournament bass. Came in at 4.2 ounces so it's first two had some glass in them. This one definitely does not. This is probably more thought of as like a Texas rig, football jig, offshore rods, got some length to it. But in that tournament Bob was using it for lipless and obviously had a great amount of success with it. He got some giants so definitely one worth looking at. So this rod is rated from 3/8 of an ounce to 1 ounce. It's not a huge weight rating. I wouldn't be surprised if you could go a little bit on the lighter end a little bit on the heavier end on this one but this is a more traditional rod. 7.5 medium heavy fast action can do a little bit of everything if you were looking for a rod to handle maybe a lipless and some bottom contact stuff. This would be one to look at. I think St. Croix has improved a bunch on the weight and balance of their rod for a 7.5 medium heavy coming in at 4.2 ounces. Pretty impressive. So I'm excited to get this one on the wall the 7.5 medium heavy fast action legend tournament bass from St. Croix. All right on the wall with that St. Croix LTB 7.5 medium heavy fast action coming in at 4.2 ounces and giving it some pressure here definitely seems like a fast action to me and when you really load it up absolutely fast action. Like I said everybody's got this style of rod in their boat already. 7.3 7.5 medium heavy fast action rod. So if you're just looking for a rod to cross over and handle a little bit of that that moving bit stuff a rod like this will definitely work. When looking at the bend profile from my angle this isn't a rod that screams the lipless crankb ait to me but it is one that could definitely handle it and a bunch of other techniques like a 7 foot ish medium heavy should. But with these St. Croix especially when you get up to the 200 we've actually got one more St. Croix to look at but when you get to the 200 price point and up you're getting a USA made rod you get an awesome warranty. So even if this war horse is what they're calling it even if this rod isn't for you they definitely have other rods in that lineup that would make killer lipless crankbait rods. And we're going to talk about a victory rod in a little bit here. But the 7.5 medium heavy fast action St. Croix LTB a killer rod if you're looking for something that can do a little bit of everything. The fourth rod for today is a rod from Dyla. I happen to own a handful of Dyla rods and haven't really looked at this one because I wasn't really sure what it was made for. This is the Dyla 2 low elite 7 foot 2 medium heavy regular bend. I thought it was called the Universal Spinnerbait. It's Randy Howles rod but this one just says universal. So I wasn't really sure what this rod was about until I picked it up but I think I might have found its niche. I think it's going to be an awesome treble hook moving bait rod. So this one came in at 4.6 ounces it's a graphite rod and it's rated from a quarter ounce to an ounce in 3/8. So really wide range there and just bending it in hand here it definitely feels like a regular bend like it's going to itself for moving bait lures. So you could definitely see if it did say spinner bait on there at one point I could definitely see why. I think it'd be a killer spinnerbait rod but I think it'd make an even better lipless rod. So let's take it to the wall these 7 2 medium heavy regular bend Dyla 2 elite Randy Howles. All right back on the wall with the 7 2 medium heavy regular Dyla 2 elite Randy Howles rod and applying a little bit of pressure. See even with a little bit of pressure here I can see it bending almost to this guide here and that's an action that I 've grown to to love personally. Something that loads way further into the blank feel like you land more fish. So from feeling it and looking at it at this angle I could see it being killer lip less rod lighter shatterbait spinnerbait for sure but if you throw bigger top waters like a a spook or a wafer plop or even or something in that realm I could see this being an awesome rod for that too. It's not glass but it does have that more moderate bend that you 're looking for with with those style of baits so it's it's not heavy super well balanced and the action is spot on. So a surprising rod here from Dyla one that I haven't picked up before and one that I think would be killer for those applications. So if you're in the market for relatively budget friendly rod that can handle a lot of your moving baits with treble hooks even some top water the Dyla 2 Elite 7.2 medium heavy regular Randy Howell edition rod would be a great choice . All right last rod for today is another rod from St. Croix actually had a tough time picking out just two rods from St. Croix. I think they have a bunch of actions in the victory and the LTB that would make awesome lipless rods but we had to narrow it down to just two and this one is the St. Croix victory 7 foot 2 heavy power moderate action and they're calling this the Rippin Ch atter. Again I believe this is a graphite blank so if you're a guy that wants the action of a glass rod but doesn't necessarily want the weight that comes along with it I think this would be a killer choice. It's a heavy power so it does have some backbone and again as the name suggests Rippin Chatter I think it would make a great lipless rod and a chatter bait rod. We'll figure that out on the wall though it came in at 3.9 ounces the lightest rod for the week and it's a heavy power so not a whole lot to complain about there. It feels great in hand we've got one of these seven reels on here and it matches up pretty good with it actually so again victory that $ 200 price point made in the USA 15 year warranty I believe. Tough to go wrong for this price point but let's bring us to the wall the 7 foot 2 heavy moderate St. Croix victory. All right on the wall with that 7 foot 2 heavy power moderate action St. Croix victory and giving it a little pressure it's definitely moderate like the name suggests and when you load it up absolutely the case. One thing I will mention is this rod doesn't necessarily feel like a heavy power to me. I think you know St. Croix also makes the 7 2 heavy glass mojo bass rod that's a killer lipless and chatter bait rod as well and that feels like it has more backbone to this. I don't know if it's just because the blank is so thin with it being a graphite rod but this doesn't feel like it has the backbone that even that that champion XP we looked at did but that being said I don't think that's a bad thing for a lipless rod and a lighter chatter bait rod even. It has the right action it has the right feel it's just a little bit softer than what I would expect from the name. Now if you are not a glass rod fan if you prefer a graphite rod I don't think there are a ton of better options out there on the market than this one. It's got enough power in the right action to definitely handle those chatter baits those lipless crank baits and really any other treble hook bait that that you want to throw so if you're in the market for a new moving bait rod the 7 2 heavy moderate St. Croix victory is one you're going to want to check out. All right that is going to wrap it up for this week's rod bend one final reminder if you are not signed up to win this die was zillion seven too heavy fast watch our last rod bend video make sure you're entered and if you are not already a premium pro member start a seven day free trial start saving on all your tackle purchases and we will see you next week back at the rod law. [Music]