Do You Believe in Micro-Magic? WTF!! : Duckett Fishing's Medium Powered Spinning Rod

Total Score: 7.75 - GOOD

Introduction: In July of 2009, the news spread like that of a hot bite that Boyd Duckett was leaving his rod sponsor, E-21. From the outside, the story sounded an awful lot like a star athlete who was disgruntled with his team.  Things are said, quotes are published, action is eventually taken. The difference here is star athletes can't just go out and start their own team. Fast forward to ICAST 2010, and that is exactly what Boyd Duckett did as he was standing in a booth amongst a wide array of rods bearing his own name. The rods themselves, as one might expect, looked an awful lot like white Carrot Stix.

Introducing Duckett Fishing's Micro Magic Medium Powered Spinning rod (DFMM70MS).

Impressions: The DFMM70MS has the distinction of being the first spinning rod to land at TTHQ with micro-guides. We have ample experience with these guides on casting rods now and for the most part, really like what they have to offer. But to date, we’ve yet to fish a spinning rod with these guides and were very curious as to how it would all work out.

The first three guides on this stick are standard spinning style guides.

Our concern and curiosity, of course has to do with the first few guides on a spinning rod, the ones that are charged with taming the crazy loops that come off the reel on each cast. As we suspected, the first few of guides on the DFMM70MS are standard spinning rod guides and then from the fourth guide on up to the tip top is where the actual micros are used. The guides are made by American Tackle and are part of their Nanolite series.

After that, there are seven micro guides then a micro tip top.

The handle assembly on the DFMM70MS is a split rear grip made of cork. Duckett Fishing also offers their sticks with a full fore and rear grip. The reel seat on this rod features the “power hump” popular on many sticks and so therefore is not a split reel seat. In fact, on the entire Duckett Fishing series of rods, each stick features a standard, full reel seat.

The butt end of this rod is a familiar Ken Whiting design going all the way back to Airrus rods.

One feature many will recognize on the Duckett Fishing rods however, is the removable cap at the butt end of the rod provided to facilitate custom balancing of the rod to suit each customer’s own taste. This feature is reminiscent of Ken Whiting’s design who departed E-21 to join Duckett Fishing for a short time and is now freelancing.

Matched with a new Shimano Stella FE 300 and ready for action.