Basic Fishing Equipment

bass-fishing-ohio-reel

To begin bass fishing need a basic rod, reel, and fishing line. If you have never fished before, you need to start out with good quality equipment that is budget friendly. You have to find out how much you like fishing first and how often you will use your fishing equipment. The rod, reel, and line are the most basic necessity, the rest of your money should be spent on lures.

Rod
You need to start out with a 7 foot rod with medium to medium heavy power. This will give you the most versatility to be able to fish most applications. You will be able to finesse fish, power fish, throw light or heavy baits and do almost everything. One rod that fits all of these characteristics is the Ugly Stik by Shakespeare. (Links to buy will be provided at the bottom). The 7 foot Ugly Stik GX2 is a very nice composite rod. You can get them in medium heavy and they have a fairly sensitive tip. You would be do almost anything with this rod and it’s fairly indestructible. The guides for the line can handle, braid, mono, and fluoro.

Reel
Your first reel needs to be a spinning reel, not baitcasting. Spinning reels offer you a lot of versatility and are capable of doing anything that a baitcasting reel can do, but baitcasting reels can’t do everything that a spinning reel can. Shakespear makes a combination Ugly Stik and reel combo that retails for around $50, links below. It’s a great combo and has continuous anti-reverse, which is essential. The reels they use are fairly indestructible. You can also invest in a separate reel that is an upgrade to a beginner reel. Truly, the reel matters more than the rod. Mitchell makes great reels and they last forever. You want a 25-30 size reel. Some manufacturers use 2500-3000 to define the size. Anything bigger would be overkill. Some of the guy on bass fishing tournaments used to use size 40 (4000) reels, mainly to avoid the line twist and so that the line comes off faster and possibly get a further cast, but for our purposes, we will stick to smaller, lighter reels.

Line
There are 3 basic kinds of lines, mono, fluoro, and braid. Then you have all kinds of blends. The best line to start out with will be braid. Braid is the strongest type of fishing line. It’s impossible to break and can be used for almost all applications. For beginners, this will be your best friend. The best braid is Spectra’s Power Pro. It was one of the first invented, and is still the best. They’ve improved it over the years and it’s remarkable with what you can do with this braid.

Now that you got your basic equipment, we will talk about the basic lures you need to get started.

Ugly Stik 7 foot Medium Heavy Rod

Ugly Stik 7 foot Rod and Reel Combo

Mitchell Spinning Reel

Spectra Power Pro Braid 20 Pound

Spread the love

Editor in Chief

Over 40 years of fishing experience! Began as a young boy at age 10, and slowly grew deeper and deeper into this hobby! Have been a writer and technology reviewer since 1990.