How a $40 Rod and Reel Combo Turned My Slow Fishing Season Around

Two summers ago I almost quit taking my son fishing. Not because he lost interest, and not because I did. It was the gear. Every trip turned into a twenty-minute production of hauling the two-piece rods out of the garage rafters, untangling line that had backlashed itself sitting in storage, and trying to fit everything in the truck bed without snapping a tip off in the door.

My name is Cole Merrick. I live outside a small town in rural Oklahoma with my wife Sara and our son, who was fifteen that summer and just getting serious about fishing instead of treating it like something Dad dragged him to. We've got a pond about a mile and a half down the road, a stock tank really, but it holds bass and bluegill well enough that we didn't need to drive an hour to a lake most weekends. What finally turned things around was a PLUSINNO telescopic rod and reel combo Sara found online, but I'm getting ahead of myself. Back then, the problem was never the fishing. The problem was getting out the door with two full-length rods, a tackle box, and enough patience left over to actually enjoy the evening.

I'd had the same setup for years. Decent rods, nothing fancy, but four feet of solid graphite doesn't fold down for anything. If we wanted to walk instead of drive, which we did more and more since gas wasn't getting any cheaper, the rods stuck out of whatever bag I tried to strap them to. My son started asking if we could just walk down after supper instead of loading up the truck, and I kept telling him it wasn't that simple. Eventually I started hearing myself say no more than I said yes, and that's when I knew something had to change.

I wasn't looking for better fishing. I was looking for fishing that didn't require a packing list.

Sara's the one who actually found the fix. She's not a fisherman, never has been, but she's good at noticing when I'm frustrated about something dumb and just solving it before I get around to it. She'd been reading up on gear for backpackers, since her sister does a lot of trail hiking, and she came across telescopic rod and reel combos. I'd seen them before at the sporting goods store and figured they were toys, the kind of thing you buy a kid for a birthday and it snaps the first time a decent fish hits it. But she kept pushing, so I looked into the PLUSINNO combo that kept coming up in the reviews, and I ordered one to try before I committed to buying two.

The first thing I noticed was how it packed down. Collapsed, the whole rod fit into the side pocket of an ordinary daypack with room to spare, reel already threaded on, no separate case needed. I threw it in the truck for a work trip just to test whether it survived being bounced around with tools and a cooler, and it came out fine. No cracked ferrules, no loose guides. Extending it took maybe fifteen seconds, pulling each section out and locking it with a twist, and it felt sturdy enough once it was set up, not like the flimsy telescoping rods I remembered from years back.

I took it to the pond alone the first evening, partly out of pride, not wanting my son to watch me fumble with something new. I caught two decent bluegill and one small bass that made a decent enough run to test the drag, and the spinning reel held up fine. The bearings felt smooth, nothing gritty, and the drag didn't stick or slip when the bass turned hard near the bank. That was enough for me. I ordered a second one that week, one for him and one for me, both PLUSINNO combos so we'd have matching setups and I wouldn't have to keep two different rigging systems straight.

What changed after that wasn't dramatic. It was just easier. My son would ask after supper if we wanted to walk down, and I'd say yes because saying yes suddenly cost me nothing. No loading the truck, no hunting for the tackle box, just grab the packs, which already had the rods collapsed inside from the last trip, and go. We probably fished twice as many evenings that summer as we had the year before, not because the fishing got better, but because the friction of getting out there disappeared.

There was one evening in particular I still think about. Middle of July, hot enough that we almost turned back, and my son hooked into a bass that was bigger than anything he'd caught off that pond before. The rod bent hard, and for a second I thought the telescopic sections might give out under that kind of pressure. They didn't. He worked it to the bank, I netted it for him, and he held it up grinning like he'd won something bigger than a four-pound largemouth. That's the kind of evening you don't get if the gear keeps you home.

What I'd Tell You If We Were Sitting at My Kitchen Table

If you asked me over coffee whether this combo is going to turn you into a better angler, I'd tell you no, it won't. It's not going to help you find fish or read water any better than you already do. What it does is take away the excuse. If your rods are living in the rafters or the back of a closet because they're too much trouble to grab on a weeknight, that's the actual problem worth solving, and for us, a telescopic combo that packs into a daypack solved it. I'm not going to tell you it's the finest rod money can buy, because it isn't, and if you're chasing striper off a boat in open water you probably want something heavier. But for walking down to a pond with your kid after supper, it's done exactly what we needed it to do, and that's more than I can say for what we had before.