Abu Garcia introduced their Veracity fishing rods last year at ICAST. They sent me a couple of their rods this spring to fish with and test in a variety of situations. As it turns out, they became some of my most used rods this season. Here are a number of reasons why I continuously reached for these rods in different situations:
- Light weight performance
- Powerful balanced blanks
- Comfortable grips
- Smooth guides
- Great power and action combinations
Get the weight out but keep the sensitivity
There has been a big push in the last decade to get the weight out of fishing rods and reels. Weight reduction can be achieved in two ways:
- reduce the weight of the components
- reduce the material in the blank
The Abu Garcia Veracity employs a 36-ton blank of a smaller diameter with Abu’s Nanotechnology for reducing the resin weight in their rods. The rod blank features titanium guides and inserts that further reduced the weight. The high density EVA foam is light and comfortable and resists tearing. All of these things work together to reduce the weight of a great rod.
The major benefit to getting the weight out of rods, is sensitivity typically goes up. What you have to be careful with is the durability of the rods. You don’t want a light but brittle rod because all of the resin and hardening agents have been removed. The Veracity rod withstood a tremendous stress and didn’t show signs of durability degradation like creaking and cracking you’ll hear in some lesser made rods.
Balanced blanks make for comfortable fishing
I got the 7-foot medium heavy power rod and the 7-foot, 6-inch heavy power rod. Both rods are very strong, set a mean hook and give you lots of leverage over the bass. But that’s not what makes for a great rod in my opinion. You definitely need to control the bass, but let’s face it, more of your time is spent fishing without a fish on the line than with it. So you want a rod that is as comfortable on the first cast of the day as it is on the 1,000th cast at the end of the day.
The grips can make a rod more comfortable, but balance is more important to a rod being comfortable. The rod being too tip heavy or too handle heavy with a reel on it, will cause you to flex your wrist and arm all day. That will cause you a lot of fatigue and chronic problems down the road.
The Abu Garcia Veracity balances great with a variety of Revo reels I tested on it. The reels sit well in the rod seat, although it can take some tinkering to get the rod cap to cinch down on the reel solidly. You just have to move the reel around as you cinch it down to make sure you get it locked down tight.
Grips and guides
The EVA foam is dense but it makes a comfortable grip and weighs a lot less than cork. It stays looking clean after a lot of uses also which is another plus for an OCD fisherman like myself. The split grip gives you a nice fulcrum to bomb long casts and the guides let the line flow off the reel effortlessly. Braid, fluorocarbon and monofilament all performed well with the guides on the Veracity.
Options always nice
The rods come in 9 casting models and 4 spinning models and they retail for $149.99. Their lengths, actions and powers range from a 6-foot, 6-inch medium-heavy power rod good for topwaters and jerkbaits to a 7-foot, 11-inch extra-heavy power rod great for flipping heavy cover with big lines.
My personal experience
I fished lipless crankbaits with the 7-foot medium-heavy Veracity back in April and wrecked the bass on windy flats. Since then I’ve been flipping with the big 7-foot, 6-inch heavy power rod and caught a bunch of big bass doing that. Recently I’ve been using the 7-foot Veracity to fish deep spinnerbaits and football jigs and I’ve been using the 7-foot, 6-inch heavy power rod to fish big flutter spoons.
Flipping heavy cover and ripping big 1-ounce baits in deep water can be very stressful on a rod. Throwing 3/4- and 1-ounce lures long distances can also be stressful on a rod. But I keep reaching for these rods and they haven’t let me down yet after 4 months of heavy use in a variety of conditions and situations. They are comfortable. I’ve thrown spinnerbaits all day with them, flipped all day with them, hopped spoons all day with them and more. I even used the 7-footer to skip Yamamoto Senkos and Zoom Fluke Sticks to shallow bass this spring with great success.
I didn’t think I’d like the red rod, but it turns out I really like how it looks and how it fishes even more. I’m not much for flashy loud colored rods. Give me a black rod any day. But I found the red was unique without being
If you’re in the market for a new rod in that $150 price range, this would be a good one to consider in my opinion.
