Can you have such a thing in lure fishing for bass as a finesse-style but more powerful lure rod? I was so interested to see this longer and more powerful Penn Conflict Elite 9’6’’ 8-45g lure rod after fishing with the 9’ 7-38g version so much (review here). I wanted to see if the rods shared similar characteristics or whether the person responsible for them had perhaps gone down a slightly different route with the more powerful version. After a while with the Conflict Elite 9’ 7-38g it began to dawn on me that I was fishing with something very special indeed, and I felt confident in my opinions when a couple of mates fished with the rod a bit and one of them in particular was blown away by the thing………….
But longer and more powerful lure rods from the same “family” don’t necessarily share similar characteristics. I have seriously liked so many of the 10-30g or 7-35g Major Craft lure rods I have fished with over the years, but I can’t recall liking the more powerful versions quite as much until their amazing new Tidrift range came along (review here). So I got very used to how the Penn Conflict Elite 9’ 7-38g worked for me, and then after a good while with that rod, this 9’6’’ 8-45g version arrived for a thrashing. Could they compare?
I feel entirely comfortable calling this rod I am reviewing here a “finesse-style, more powerful” lure rod. For sure you can bang the 40g Surf Seeker on this Penn Conflict Elite 9’6’’ 8-45g lure rod, and over time I have come to see this rod as a 10-40g which can go to 45g if need be. You can easily put a 45g metal out there if you slow down a bit, but I can cast that 40g Surf Seeker at full power on this rod and it frigging flies. Of course it can cope with something like the sort of surf lure fishing for bass that many of us love to do, but I wouldn’t personally buy this thing as an out and out surf rod. I want less subtlety in a specialist lure rod for surf fishing for various reasons - whack and crank, less tip bounce in the wind etc. - and if there is one thing that this stunning rod is, it’s subtle.
If I tried to compare “my” SGS8 9’6’’ 12-46g rod to this Penn Conflict Elite 9’6’’ 8-45g then I would say that the SGS8 is a touch sharper - what we might think of as a bit faster and more powerful - whereas this Penn rod is a bit easier and lighter in feel, with what I think of the perfect amount of “tension” in the rod when you are working surface lures or accurately casting soft plastics into specific gullies and so on. I really, really like this rod with my Gravity Sticks in both sizes, plus of course the lethal Slender Scoop Shads in the 13cm and 15cm sizes. I note how the words “Japanese blank design” are used on their website, and like with the shorter 9’ 7-38g version, this 9’6’’ 8-45g one does indeed remind me of some of the high-end Shimano Japan lure rods I have fished with.
I don’t personally think that there is a standard design of Japanese style (sea) bass rod out there, but I kinda get Penn’s point. If you took a lot of what is so good about the feel of the Shimano Dialuna S96M 9'6" 8-45g lure rod and tightened up the mid and butt sections, and now add a big dollop of the “ease of use but there’s so much more to the rod than you first think” feeling from the top of the range Shimano Exsence Infinity 9’6’’ 6-38g, now I think you’re getting towards how seriously bloody good this Penn Conflict Elite 9’6’’ 8-45g rod is. If it’s a “Japanese blank design” then I am personally all over it because I really like this rod for so much of the open coast bass fishing I do. If you cover a lot of different types of ground in all manner of different conditions and sea states which in turn forces you to fish with a wide range of different lures then I reckon this Penn rod could easily do the lot for you. I really like this rod with the little 9cm/11g Savage Gear Pop Walker 2.0 for example. It’s an incredibly versatile rod and for a lot of bass anglers it could easily be their one lure rod for all their fishing. Like me.
This thing just sits in my hands and effortlessly puts all the lures I need to fish with on the open coast out there with such ease and precision. When I need to step up a bit this rod doesn’t stress at all, and then when I need to scale down it does a very good job of pretending it can behave like a 7-35g rod. For sure the 8-45g rating means that this rod isn’t going to feel the same with the lighter lures as some 7-35g rods, but it can do it really well - and then step up if you need it to. The handle length works well on a rod this long, and whilst I am fine with the overall reelseat design, as I said in my 9’ review, I’d prefer something grippy where the back of my reel hand sits. I can’t tell you a whole lot about the FUJI SIC K-type SW proof guides other than they work great and seem to suit the rod just fine. The overall build smacks of serious quality.
You know how much I like the Penn Slammers and increasingly the sublime but not at all cheap Penn Authority spinning reels, and I have fished this Penn Conflict Elite 9’6’’ 8-45g lure rod a lot with the Slammer IV 2500 and Authority 2500 reels. I really like this combination of rod and reel, but for some reason when I step up to the slightly larger and heavier Slammer IV 3500 and Authority 3500 reels the combination doesn’t feel quite so good in my hands. It’s fine, and I can fish with the combination perfectly well, but something’s not quite there that was there before with the slightly lighter reels. The rod’s almost too nice for the heavier reels if that makes any sense at all. The Shimano Vanford 4000 and C5000 spinning reels also feel particularly good on this rod.
Damn this is a good lure fishing rod, and I like it all the more because it’s a different kind of rod to what I went for when we did our SGS5 and SGS8 rods. I guess I was pushing more for lure rods which were a bit more obvious in how they fished from the off, whereas with these Penn Conflict Elite rods, you need proper fishing time with them for the rods to fully open up and show you just how impressive they really are. I fish with enough different lure rods to be able to appreciate and enjoy both, and I can’t get enough of fishing with this Penn Conflict Elite 9’6’’ 8-45g.
Please note that I have been avoiding mentioning this weekend’s Six Nations, mainly because I am dreading the England game. Obviously I want us to win, but I think we can dream on for that result, so a part of me wishes every success to this amazing Ireland team for the Grand Slam. They deserve to be the no.1 team in the world at the moment. You all have a good weekend, see you next week.
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