What Rod Do I Use?
It was the late 1970s when I started seriously whipping for ulua (G.T.s). After reading a magazine article about surfcasting for striped bass off the beaches of New Jersey, I bought an 8½- foot S-glass, two-piece, fast-taper spinning rod and a Penn 550SS spinning reel. I loaded the reel with 15-lb test monofilament line, bought some wooden lures the thickness of a broom handle and started whipping.
I remember my first trips in the early 1980s to Christmas Island. Imagine trying to cast a 10-foot Ugly Stik rod with a Penn 900 reel loaded with 50-lb test mono and a lure the size of a water bottle. Talk about work! Even the young guys couldn’t cast for half an hour without stopping to rest. But we were after 25-, 35-, even 50-lb uluas–and what if a bigger
