[Gerry Zagorski]

Sounds like you want a muti use rod for surf and boat. For this reason I would reccomend a Shimano Bait Runner 8000 or 6500 and minimum 7 foot matching spinning rod medium or medium heavy rated for 20 -30 pound line. The reason I like the bait runner is becuase you can use it for casting plugs and jigs as well as for live lining, chunking or clamming since it has the bait runner feature.

If you are going to fish with braided line I would go with the 6500, if mono you will need to go with the 8000 to get more line capacity.

Penn sells what they call Live Lining models which is the same thing as bait runner in their Spinfisher Series so you can check them out as well.

Your likely to be spending a few hundred bucks on this set up so I would go to one of our sponsors and check them out in person and choose a rod that balances to your reel of choice... It's very important that it does balance well if your are going to be holding the rod and casting a lot.

I would also have them spool the reel with braid since braid casts way better then mono and for surf fishing that's important and you can always tie on a mono top shot.