jimf

I am a big fan of St. Croix rods, I own 2 Avids, 2 Mojo's, a Panfish rod, and a #7 Legend fly rod. I will be adding another Avid casting rod to the lineup before the season for spinnerbaits. - 6'6" M/F Avid spinning rod doubles as my shaky head rod as well as my go-to rod for walleye jigging. - 7' MH/F Avid casting rod is my worm/jig rod. - 7'4" H/F Mojo I throw frogs and swim baits. - 7' MH/M Mojo I throw crankbaits on. The Avid's are, in my opinion, the best value in the game. The Mojo's are good rods, but imo they lack a refinement and sensitivity that you get with Avid. I'm not going to retire the Mojo's anytime soon, but unless I'm just in a big hurry to fill a gap in the lineup I would personally wait a bit until I could afford to bump up to an Avid. Going from an Avid to a Legend seems to be much more of a subtle difference, and I've kind of settled in with a philosophy of always fishing with good equipment, even if it isn't the very best. Avid rods meet that nicely. Also, I have a preference for the full cork handles vs the split grip. I might be showing my age by saying that, but I'm just not enamored with the split grips.

Thank you everyone, and bankbeater I love the old school Cardinal logo. Go Cards!

I'm 53, two grown sons with a grand daughter on the way in March. Grew up in Central Illinois fishing mostly farm ponds, live now in a far southwest suburb of Chicago, alot of my fishing is done on the No Illinois cooling lakes Braidwood/LaSalle/Heidecke, the Kankakee/Illinois/DesPlaines rivers, the old strip mines at the Mazonia wildlife area for panfish. I also fish Sangchris in Central IL, that's one of my goals is to get back home more this year and spend time there. Spent about 15 years mostly fly fishing - chasing brown and brook trout on tiny little spring fed creeks that you could jump across in SW Wisconsin. I don't do that much anymore, kind of returned back to my roots of conventional fishing(mostly bass), but I developed habits and techniques fly fishing that have carried over to my bass fishing. I'm definitely more of a finesse fisherman than I was pre-fly fishing, that's for sure. Right now I get around in a Lund 16' Fury with a 25 hp tiller, nothing fancy but it gets me to where I'm going. I go out probably 2x a week when the weather cooperates, I have pond in my backyard that fishes really well for bluegill and bass and I enjoy poking around there a few minutes after work. Almost had the ice off last week, but not quite. Looking forward to learning and improving my fishing here.