Finesse-Fishing.com has closed and has nothing left to sell. I have decided to leave the website up as a resource for people interested in fishing with light rods, light lines and light lures - true finesse fishing.

If you want any of the items mentioned on these pages, I can only recommend using your favorite internet search engine.

Trout Baitcasting Rods

Trout baitcasting rods are an outgrowth of the Bait Finesse System (BFS), which allowed bass anglers to cast light lures accurately with baitcasters. It did not take long for Japanese anglers to adopt BFS reels for trout fishing, and rod manufacturers were not far behind that. There are now a number of excellent trout baitcasting rods that can handle light lines and light lures.

To reiterate a point made on the BFS page, purists consider BFS to be specifically a bass fishing method. BFS reels, for example the Shimano Calcutta Conquest BFS, can be used quite effectively for trout. BFS rods, though, - rods that have BFS written on the rod - are bass rods and will be too stiff for trout fishing. The Japanese companies who make baitcasters for trout fishing call them "trout" rods, not BFS rods. (Trout rods are broken down into spinning and bait, or S and B or BC.) Thus, while you can refer to all the baitcasting reels on this site as BFS reels, to be precise, the rods on this site are trout baitcasting rods, not BFS rods.

As with spinning rods, JDM baitcasting rods for trout can be divided into rods for stocked trout in Areas (managed pay-to-fish ponds) and wild (native) trout in mountain streams. In a sense, the two different rod classes illustrate the two different sides of the finesse coin - micro lures and ultra light lines in the Areas, and extremely accurate casting in the mountain streams.

There will be a gap when you put the sections together. It is supposed to be like that.There will be a gap. It is supposed to be like that.

For Japanese baitcasters, as with the spinning rods, when you put the sections together there will be a gap. It is supposed to be like that. Please don't force it.

Trout Baitcasting Rods - Wild Trout

Shimano

Shimano makes the Cardiff NX rod for wild trout. For anglers who love to fish the little blue lines, the Cardiff baitcaster comes in a convenient 4'8" length. Even better, it is a 4-piece rod so it will fit in or on a backpack rather than towering over your head as you hike in and out.

Model
Type
Length
Sections
Breakdown
       Length
Rod Weight
Line Weight
Lure Weight

Cardiff NX B48UL-4
Wild (stream)
4'8"
4

15 5/8"
2.7 oz
2 - 6 lb
1 - 7 g (1/32 - 1/4 oz)
Made in Indonesia

Tenryu

Tenryu Rayz RZ4102B-ULTenryu Rayz RZ4102B-UL


The Tenryu Rayz baitcasting rods are just beautiful rods, and to my eye are even nicer than their spinning rods. If there was ever a rod that just cried out for the Shimano Calucutta Conquest BFS reel, this is the rod that does!

Tenryu now makes a few baitcasters for trout, in their Rayz, Rayz Spectra and Rayz Integral lines.  I had kept one of the earlier Rayz models (RZ53UL-BC) for myself, and can attest that it worked very nicely with 2.5 and 3 gram spoons, but was not at all overburdened with 5g sinking minnow plugs. Later sold it and purchased the Rayz RZ4102B-UL which replaced it. I eventually sold  that rod and purchased a Rayz Spectra RZS51LL-BC. My latest edition is the new (in 2023) Rayz Integral RZI484B-UL, which I must confess I haven't fished yet.

Model
Type
Length
Sections
Breakdown Length
Rod Weight
Line Weight
Lure Weight

RZ4102B-UL
Wild (stream)
4'10"
2
30"
2.9 oz
Max 4 lb
Max 6 g (just under 1/4 oz)
Made in Japan

Finesse-Fishing Home > Bait Finesse System > Trout Baitcasting Rods

Warning:

The hooks are sharp.
The coffee's hot.
The fish are slippery when wet.