BigBendFishing.Net

I mainly fish inshore. All of my rods and reels are in the 3000 class. I am going to start fishing the reefs and towers in the area an am looking for advice on rod and reel setups. What size rod and reel would you recommend for fishing St Marks reef, Rotary reef, K-tower, and any other reef or wreck between here and there?

I generally prefer spinning setups but if I am bottom fishing or trolling I don't mind a conventional reel. I just don't want to cast with them.

I have a Shimano Baitrunner 8000D on a 6 ½ foot Star medium heavy spinning rod that will handle most anything reef fishing. It also makes a good kingfish setup while you are bottom fish’n.

I have recently gone through the same process.

For trolling, I have been using a Penn113h combo. You can buy them from tackledirect for about $150, which is a great deal. If you want to use spinning, I have two heavy duty rods/reels with Shimano 8000 reels, and then I have a sportier Daiwa 6000 that should be able to handle *most* anything out there if not bottom fishing.

Bull Bay Rods 30-50# XHeavy - Fast
Shimano Twin Power 8000
50lb Diamond Braid


....if you had the money to spend

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https://m.tackledirect.com/quantum-cabo ... -reel.html

That reel has an incredible amount of drag. We have pulled up Goliath
Grouper and large sharks with it. The Pen jigging rod is a great rod and for the budget rod I would go with the Ugly Stick jigging rod.

Quantum gives a percentage off to first responders if that apply to you.

I've got a Shimano Terez rod with a Shimano 5000 Ultegra reel spooled with braid. Strong, sensitive and casts well.

The Daiwa BG spinning reels are very durable, too. The BG6500 has 33 pounds of drag and holds 550 yards of 50-pound braid. Tackle Direct sells them for $140. Not much in our stretch of the Gulf you couldn't handle with that.

I was over in MB last year and cracked a couple of eyes on rods for basic bottom fishing (I told them to stop reeling up to the swivel ) I found a couple of Penn Mariner rods with SS guides at BWO, very comfortable to hold, my wife loves them because the triangular shaped section forward of the reel is comfortable and keeps the rod from turning on her when she is fighting the fish, pretty darn inexpensive too.

I've got them matched up with Penn Fathom 25s with level wind and they have performed well so far, decent drag, easy to operate and again not overly expensive for the average snapper/grouper fishing we do, overall a pretty balanced setup for us.