Okuma Helios Rod and Reel Review - Video

There we go. Smacked my little Savage Gear TPE. Come here, you. He liked this lure, he liked this lure. I'm telling you what, man, this rod, I can feel everything, everything. Okay. I'm telling you what, guys, he just ate this thing. Oh my goodness, did he ever. There we go.

I don't know if you can see this or not, I've got net in here. Let's see if I can get the net undone here. I want to show you this. This fish just took that bait all the way in. Look at that. That's the Savage Gear TPE, "Soft Vibe" is what they call it. Look at how deep I gotta go here to get this hook out. I'm telling you what, they like it. Good fish, good fish. 

Tell you what I'm doing today, guys. I'm fishing this on a new setup that I got. Let me let this guy go. I've got a rock pile here that I'm fishing, I'm drifting into so I'm gonna pull that off, pull the boat off. I'm fishing a new rod and reel setup I have here from Okuma. This is a Helios rod with a Helios Air reel. I'm gonna tell you a little bit about it in case you guys are considering looking at one of these. 

I'll tell you first a little bit about the rod here, the Helios rod. It's a 40-ton carbonite rod, which you know that it's lightweight and it's sensitive. And the thing I like about it, it has these ALPS micro guides on it...or actually it's a mini-guide system. Works great for crankbait fishing because I don't use any leaders and mini guides are more sensitive so I could feel every little vibration that's going down through the line that's being transmitted through the rod.

Now, a lot of you don't like mini guides because the knots. If you use a leader, the knots won't go through them very well. Well, the cool thing about what Okuma's done here is they've offered the rods, both with the mini-guide system and standard guides, so you have a choice. You have options. And it's the full lineup, too, so you're not inhibited by that. So that's great. There's not very many manufacturers out there that are offering that. 

The other cool thing that they've done here is this. It's an adjustable hook keeper, so you can put this anywhere you want on the rod in front of the reel. I noticed on the forums there's a lot of guys who have a lot of preferences over exactly where they want that keeper, and they don't like certain rods because the keeper is in the wrong spot. Well, now you can adjust it and put it wherever you want to. So that is a cool thing. They were thinking on that one. 

The reel seat's a dual reel seat, which is good because you can see the blank right there. I've got my fingers right on the blank so you can feel every vibration coming down through the blank. And again, it's a split handle which I really like. This one here is a seven-foot rod. It's got nine guides, plus the tip-top. That's pretty standard for most off-the-shelf rods these days. 

I'm gonna tell you a little about the reel itself. This is a Helios Air reel. I got one last year and I really liked it, so this is my second one because of that. It's a great performing reel. It's a 7.3:1 gear ratio, great for crankbaiting which is why I'm using it for crankbaiting, but you can use it for a variety of purposes. 

And let me tell you something that's really cool about this is typically, when you pull the side plate off...let me show you this. Pull the side plate off, they've got the pin system. Well, this one doesn't. See that? It's got this little dial system here which works great. The dial system makes it a lot easier to adjust your reel because you don't have pins to mess with, or if you pop them off, you don't have pins to lose. I spent about a better part of an hour digging a pin out from inside of a reel once when I popped the pin off and it fell down inside. And another time, I was at home in my living room messing with my reels and I popped the pin off and it fell down in the carpet fibers. Took me a good 20, 25 minutes to find it, so I really like this dial system. Works really well, it's easy to use, you just click it and you're done, simple adjustment. 

And of course over here, the reel tension knob, that's standard on most reels. What I like about it is it clicks. That gives me audio confirmation of my adjustments, plus I think the clicker, it holds that knob in place, holds the adjustment so that I don't have to worry about it slipping or coming out of adjustment, so I really like that.

Really smooth drag system, that's imperative when you're crankbait fishing. You have those little hooks and you don't want to tear that out of the fish's mouth. The drag system is super smooth. It's perfect. 

This paired up with the rod, the total weight is less than nine ounces. Nice, lightweight, you can cast all day long and you're not gonna get wore out. Speaking of which, I'm gonna go back to fishing now because I'm really enjoying this setup and you saw the fish are biting. So I gotta get back on it because they really like this bait by Savage Baits, the Soft Vibe. Talk to you soon, thanks.