Spodding, or more recently Spombing, has for many anglers become an essential tactic as part of their baiting strategy, but until recently I’ve not been a huge fan, mainly because I’m a bit of a wimp. For many years spod gear was all heavy-duty stuff, long very powerful rods, and big pit type reels. Fine if you are built like a heavy weight boxer (I had an alternative description, to do with outside toilets but thought better of it) but I’m not, so spodding was always hard work and as my friends will testify, that’s something I avoid wherever possible.
Then a couple of years ago I started to exploit the use of the smaller spombs in my floating fishing to deliver the smaller types of floater pellets. My Infinity Spod Rod and Emblem Spod Reel were far too powerful for what I needed. Brilliant for a large spod full of wet particles, but wrong for a much lighter payload. I had an old 12ft 2¾ tc carp rod and tried that, easier to compress, but it still didn’t feel quite right, and was definitely too long for what I wanted, so I had a play, cutting down the butt and tip section to produce a 10ft mini spod rod. It didn’t look much but did the job remarkably well.
Having a Daiwa consultancy means you have a direct line to top rod designers, so it was time to start asking the question “Was it possible to acquire a rod that was purpose built for the job?” A genuine “Mini Spod Rod” I did some very rough sketches of my “Sawn Off” rod and sent them through to Head Office. A while later two 10ft rods arrived, no Daiwa graphics, just handwritten coding (2.75lbs and 3.25lbs) time for a play!
I tested out both blanks in combination with a 4000 sized reel, loaded with 20lb braid and a 20lb Sensor leader. Both were good, but the 3.25lbs was superb, I had my 10ft Spod Rod. This rod exceeded all my requirements by a long way. It was brilliant to use, handling small and medium spombs loaded with floaters or wet particles with ease. Distance wise everyone who tried it was amazed at how easy it was to consistently hit distances well in excess of 80yds (sorry, that’s 20 wraps in new money) and in the right hands over 25. The biggest plus was the overall feel and balance. This was easy spombing, a pleasure to use and perfect for all but the extreme long-range heavy-duty stuff, I had my perfect spod/spomb rod. As a bonus the 2.75lbs proved to be a lovely stalking rod, but that’s another story.
If most of your fishing is at short or medium range and you want to use small or medium spombs on a regular basis, then the rod you want is in the Infinity Evo Mini Range. It’s the Infinity Evo MS. In my opinion it’s as good as it gets and well worth a look!
Brian Skoyles (February 2021)