Glenn May: Hey Folks, Glenn May here with BassResource.com. I'm here at the 2015 ICAST Show at the Okuma booth with John Bretza and the brand new rod that's coming out. John, tell us a little bit about this.
John Bretza: Well what we have is a Guide Select, this is a new generation Guide Select. One of our top selling rods has been the swimbait rod in this Guide Select series. This is just a new A generation. What we've done is, you'll see we have a split butt configuration, so it gives you nice balance but it helps reduce the weight. The blank is accented with a 1K woven carbon fiber. The overall blank itself is 30-ton carbon so it's very responsive, great for casting. It's complemented with a nice Fuji reel seat. One update that we've had on this rod is on the guide configuration. In the past, we used Fuji new concept guides, and we've upgraded this to Fuji K guides. So if you're not familiar with Fuji K guides, they're slightly slanted forward. So the advantage there is if you're fishing braided line, the braided line in a windy condition wraps around the guide, you get pulled at the other end of the line with a lure, and it pulls right off. It won't knot up, tangle around the guide. So it's a big advantage there and it features Alconite inserts.
The other thing that we've done is in the tip of the rod. The tip section has what we call UFR construction. Where most rods, the fiber's gonna be wrapped in a spiral configuration from 18 to 24 inches all the way to the tip, on this rod with the UFR construction, it's a longitudinal fiber so it's running longways up the blank with three different layers. The advantage there is that when you load this rod up on a big fish, the fibers are being distributed over a longer area. So what you do, when you get lifting power, you're gonna bounce a big fish, it gives you three times the lifting power. So one of the big advantages there is that with rod breakage, you get a lot of rod breakage when you get high sticking, this is gonna help in that high sticking application. Or if you're gonna bounce, you know a big trophy bass, you can't get a net in time, you're gonna worry about losing the fish, you're gonna try to bounce him. So...
Glenn: And that's also extra-strength for throwing those big heavy swimbaits, right?
John: Exactly, when you're loading up some of these huge baits like the big Deps or Savage or these Castaics, some of these baits are pretty heavy out there. But one of the other nice things is that with the upgrades that we've done to this rod, we've actually reduced the price as well. These rods are gonna come in at $124.99. It's gonna come in three models, 7'11", heavy, extra-heavy and XXH.
Glenn: XXH, okay. So what are you throwing with one that big?
John: Big baits for big fish.
Glenn: What size? What are we talking about?
John: Some of these baits guys are throwing are 10, 12 inches long. So they're heavy. They get up 8 ounces, 10 ounces, up to 12 ounces.
Glenn: Nice. Awesome. I can't wait to try this out. I've been doing some swimbaiting myself and this looks like a great rod to try out. When does it come out?
John: These rods are gonna be available right around the September time frame.
Glenn: Fantastic. All right guys. You gotta check this out, from Okuma, the new swimbait rod. Powerful stuff. Good stuff, guys. Check it out.