[Gerry Zagorski]

I'm with Leif on the medium action rod. For those of you not familiar with what fast or slow action means, a fast action rod has less give at the tip and the slow action rod has more give. In other words, a soft rod tip is slower to return to a straight postion than a fast tip.

I like tend to favor a softer/slower tip because the combination of your wrist lift, the tip of the rod against the weight of the jig tends to make the jig jump more and give it better action with less effort. If however the tip is too soft/slow its a bit more difficult to jig when you require more weight to stay on the bottom. With a heavy jig, which is sometimes required in the Sandy hook area, a softer/slower tip is going to require a lot more work to get the jig to bounce since your wrist action/lift is going to be absorbed by the tip.

A medium action rod is a good compromise and will cover various conditions you will encounter better.

Having said this there are no standards for actions of rods and each manufacturer is different. A rod that is labled fast might be slow compared to one of it's peers with the same fast rating. Spinning rods, which are for the most part designed for casting tend to have slower tips... They are designed this way so they load up when they are casted. In other words the tip tends to bend more and load up like a sling shot and the forward whipping motion of the tip returning to a straight position helps launch your lure and makes for easier longer casting.

If you want to buy a rod from the rack, it's best to go into a store, don't pay too much attention to the ratings and see how the different rods react under a load. If you'd prefer to go custom, tell your rod builder what you intend to use the rod for and let them build the rod. Most have a certain blanks they build rods on and can cut them to the desired length to make the tip faster or slower.

As far as line, 20 to 30 lb braid is good as is 20 to 30 pound leader. I tend to lean more towards 30 pound because if you are fishing the sticky stuff, which is where jigging works best, you will loose a lot less rigs if you go heavier.