Evergreen International Re-Enters our Search with the Black Racer

Total Score: 7.43 - GOOD

Introduction: Bait Finesse is a term referring to the practice of fishing finesse baits on conventional casting gear rather than spinning. Naturally, in order to do this, you need specialized gear because not all casting rods and reels can handle a super light drop shot setup. In North America, this practice is still somewhat new and awkward to a lot of anglers, but in Japan, it's pretty common place as is evidenced by the host of specialized baitcasting reels from Shimano and Daiwa, and the rods by giants like Megabass and Evergreen. Today we take a look at a stick that skirts the very fine line between being bait-finesse and all-purpose, introducing Evergreen International's TKLC-66MFX Black Racer.

Performance: I've been fishing the TKLC-66MFX off and on for the better part of two years. I have it paired primarily with a Daiwa PX68L (JDM) spooled with thirty pound Suffix 832 braid topped with a ten pound Seaguar Tatsu fluorocarbon leader.

I fished this stick primarily with a Daiwa PX68L (JDM) spooled with thirty pound Suffix 832 braid topped with a ten pound Seaguar Tatsu fluorocarbon leader.

Casting: The line and lure ratings for this stick put it in the general realm of "medium" powered rods though usually that means a top end lure rating of about five eighths of an ounce (5/8 oz). The Black Racer comes with a rating up to three quarters of an ounce (3/4 oz), but typical of a medium powered rod, this stick's sweet spot is right in the three eights to half ounce range. The tip loads equally well in both pitching and casting duties.

The Ti/SiC guides on this stick are double footed all the way to the top .

Sensitivity: There's something about medium powered rods with extra fast tapers that gets me excited to throw rip baits. It's counter intuitive as you'd think the first thing someone would tie onto a rod like this is a soft plastic or jig. But matched with the PX68L and a bait like Megabass's FX9 rip bait, this stick performs wonderfully.

You want sensitivity? Evergreen Kaleido is difficult to top.

But naturally, we're not quite at the section where we talk about applications. In order to determine how the Black Racer stacks up in the sensitivity department, I did tie on a jig and a couple of Texas rigged soft plastics. Thing is, I already knew what to expect. There's not one stick in Evergreen's Kaleido series of rods that's disappointed me in the area of sensitivity and the Black Racer was not about to be the first. If sensitivity is your ultimate gauge of a high end stick it doesn't get any better than Evergreen Kaleido.

Fig 1 : This chart illustrates the deflection characteristics of our Evergreen International TKLC-66MFX Black Racer. As you can see from the red curve, aligns very well with our Search for One baseline rod despite its medium powered rating from the factory.

Power: Thanks to that extra-fast taper, the TKLC-66MFX sets up very quickly and has a very good backbone, but remember, this isn't a heavy or extra heavy powered rod so you're not going to be horsing a seven pound bass out of heavy cover with this stick. If you check out the rod's performance on our RoD Wrack, it stacks right up there with the MBR 783C GLX in terms of power.