After getting my hands on most of the new 2009 Dobyns Champion and Champion Extreme rods, I’ve been able to feel what rods are best designed for most bass anglers. Dobyns rods are purpose built, meaning many of them are technique specific. The man behind the rods, Gary Dobyns, a highly accomplished professional angler, has designed these rods to be the best on the market. This means no holding back on the quality of the components in the rod. The point being, Gary spends most of his time on the water rather than in an office, and his rods reflect his passion for fishing. The Champion Series offers 39 styles and Champion Extreme Series offers 14 styles of rods, from drop shotting to throwing half pound swim baits. If I had to pick 5 rods to go to battle with in a tournament, these would be my weapons of choice.
Champion Series:
735C- 7’3″ med/heavy extra fast action. An awesome jig rod, and also good for light flipping, frogs, small swimbaits and carolina rigging.
734C- 7’3″ heavy fast action. Perfect rod for most moving baits like spinnerbaits, chatterbaits, and buzzbaits. Good for stick baits and buzz frogs as well.
705CBGLASS- 7′ med/heavy fast action. Great all around treble hook bait rod. Excellent on medium diving cranks, traps, topwater, and jerkbaits.
Champion Extreme Series:
DX744C- 7’4″ heavy fast action. Great all around rod. Excellent for texas rigs, small jigs, spinnerbaits, buzz frogs, and stickbaits. My absolute favorite Dobyns rod.
DX702C- 7′ med/light fast action. A finesse casting rod made for drop shot, shaky heads, tubes, and light texas rigs. For everyone that throws finesse baits on a casting gear, this is your rod!
Those 5 rods cover most of the applications for bass fisherman and will outperform other rods. If you have not tried fishing with longer rods, I highly recommend it. I started fishing with longer rods about a year ago and it truly has made a difference in how many fish I put in the boat. More length gives you a better hook set, longer casting distance, and plays the fish much better close to the boat.
One of the keys to these rods is that they are built to be balanced with a reel on them. This balance allows for longer rods like the DX744C to feel shorter than they really are. With most of the rods having 10 guides and 11 and more on the Extremes, Gary also offers more guides on his rods. This allows the force of the fish to be distributed over more of the rod. The high grade Kigan guides themselves are also unique to the rods. You will also notice the guides are smaller than on most rods. This allows the line to move tighter off the reel, equaling longer casts. The Champion Series has Grade A cork and the Champion Extreme has Grade AAA cork, and both come with Fuji reel seats. These rods are built to last with locking thread wrapping. Even with the extra guides and higher quality thread wrapping, they are still some of the lightest rods around. In the hand, they feel extremely light because of the balance Gary has achieved. The Champion Series Glass rods are an accomplishment in themselves too, being the lightest glass rods I have ever picked up! When you top all these features off with a custom hook keeper, and a beautiful color design, you have a rod that is tailor made for bass fishermen. Pick one of these rods up, and you will be spoiled when you feel the difference.
