I have fished with a few 10’ or so lure rods for bass now - including various samples which may or may not end up on the market at some point - and whilst I don’t personally feel inclined to add one to my arsenal for what I tend to think of as my “everyday bass fishing”, you might, and this Major Craft Flatrek 10' 7-45g lure rod is a very easy rod to like. Unless I am banging metals in heavy surf when a 10’ rod makes a certain amount of sense to me (but I still find myself defaulting to the cheaper Savage Gear SGS5 9’6’’ 12-42g rod for my surf fishing), for some reason I just tend to prefer 9’6’’ lure rods over 10’ lure rods when I’m at the longer end. You may not……………
As far as I can work out via various online translation resources, this Major Craft Flatrek 10' 7-45g lure rod has been designed to fish lures for flatfish in lighter surf conditions in Japan, with an emphasis on being lightweight in the hand and very easy to fish with as you wander up and down the beach for hours on end. Just because Major Craft markets this rod for flatfish doesn’t mean that it can’t be used for bass fishing of course, indeed I think that the 7-45g rating really opens this rod up to a lot of what we tend to do for bass in the UK and Ireland. I would also urge you to almost forget about the fact that this rod is 10’ long, because as I said in my recent Major Craft Crosride (here) and Tidrift reviews (here), they are doing something very interesting with their 5G technology. This Major Craft Flatrek 10' 7-45g is incredibly smooth and easy to fish with, and in your hands it doesn’t feel any longer or more unwieldy than a good 9’6’’ lure rod (it only weighs 145.5g which is incredibly light). This is a hugely efficient lure rod.
Okay, so a 7-45g rating implies a hell of a lot and I am not sure that any single lure rod out there can fish a 7g lure as well it can fish a 45g lure. There has to be some sort of sweet spot within that casting range, and every rod is going to be slightly different with where it’s skewed within a quoted casting range. Take a rod like the powerful Shimano Lunamis S96MH 9’6’’ 10-45g - I would suggest that it performs far better with heavier lures than it does the lighter lures. I think that Major Craft Crosride 9’4’’ 15-40g rod fishes say 10-30g lures better than it does 30-40g lures, but a lot of rods can do a lot, and it’s up to us to work out what suits us the best. Which I might add isn’t always remotely easy when there is no standard way to describe rod actions and how they fish certain lures and so on, but that is the fishing tackle industry and obviously not Major Craft’s fault.
So this Major Craft Flatrek 10' 7-45g lure rod is really interesting. If I was to drop down to a 7g lure it would mostly be when I am trying some subtle stuff in an estuary and I wouldn’t want a rod like this anyway. I have fished this Flatrek rod as say a 10-45g rod for open coast bass fishing, and the ease of use combined with how the length of the rod doesn’t ever, ever bite back makes for such an efficient and easy fishing experience. When I go surf fishing it’s generally in heavier conditions and I want a less subtle rod for banging stuff out in the wind and waves - my SGS5 9’6’’ 12-46g - but I also do a bit of lighter surf related stuff at night or when conditions and tides suggest that something like working soft plastics around in the holes and gullies in the surf could work for bass. I can quite happily use this rod for that.
If you have a hankering for a slightly longer, “deal with the bulk of open coast lures you might fish” lure rod which feels more like a 9’6’’ rod in your hands and can put all manner of lures out a country mile whilst also doing your precision gully work around the rocks, then I would urge you to look at this thing. I can’t really see how anybody could actively dislike this rod with how easy and efficient it is to fish with. For sure you might want a sharper feeling rod, or you might need different casting weights or prefer something shorter etc., but I like the sound of how Major Craft intend this rod to be fished for long sessions and not remotely tire you out. They say flatfish and I say bass though. As much as I love to joke that this turbot above which Declan caught on a 40g 3D Jig Minnow in Ireland was because of my guiding expertise - “cast on the back of that sandbank Declan, there might be some turbot there” (as if I really said that!) - we don’t tend to target flatfish with lures in the UK and Ireland. Nope, I have fished this rod for bass, and with a wide range of lures as well.
I find it surprisingly comfortable to fish surface lures on this rod. The ever brilliant Patchinko 140 and 125 or the equally long-casting SG Slap Walker 12.5cm/20g go out as well as you would expect, and whilst fishing them at range with my rod tip up is obviously easier with a shorter rod, this thing does just fine. Whacking and cranking any manner of different hard lures is a dream with this rod. The IMA Hound 125F Glide and this rod is basically perfect for example. So little effort is required to put the lure out a mile. I don’t bump soft plastics like the Sandeel V2 Weedless over shallow reefs nearly as much as I would fish weedless soft plastics like my Gravity Sticks or the Slender Scoop Shads, and I think this rod is better suited to the swimming of weedless soft plastics route rather than bumping stuff over reefs. It does it of course, but I think a sharper, shorter and slightly more precise rod works better for bumping whereas an easier rod like this loves banging stuff out and winding it in all day long. That’s just me though.
It’s not as if this rod won’t cope with surf fishing when you are banging say any of the 30g, 35g or 40g Surf Seekers out, indeed it’s incredibly easy to wind these lures up and let them fly. It’s more me and my liking of stiffer feeling and slightly less subtle rods for surf fishing. You may not agree with me so I would urge you to look at this Major Craft rod if you are interested in a 10’ long lure rod which really can do a hell of a lot of what we need to do for bass. I have fished it mainly with the Penn Authority 3500 spinning reel which isn’t the lightest reel around. I like the combination of rod and reel a lot, but I also like how this rod feels so good with the very lightweight Shimano Vanford 4000 and C5000 reels. I come back to the words effortless and easy again. This Flatrek is not one of those sharp as hell, rapier-style lure rods which I am drawn towards but which I know don’t work as well for some anglers as a rod like this one will. The handle design is very similar to that Crosride I reviewed recently (Fuji VSS reel seat), which in turn is basically the same as on those outstanding Seabass Custom rods. The guides are Fuji S-SiC K series. Nice and simple and clean and it just works. Hell, the whole rod just works. I still don’t want a 10’ long lure rod for my day to day bass fishing, but if I did? I’d be very tempted by this Major Craft Flatrek 10' 7-45g……………..
Likes:
Amazing ease of casting and fishing for a 10’ rod
Good build quality, nice and clean
Not remotely tiring to cast with for hours on end
Very light for a 10’ rod
Doesn’t feel remotely unwieldy
Niggles:
Could be slightly “sharper”, but to be fair that’s not the point of the rod
Can’t think of anything else, this is a really good lure rod
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