Real World Tests: Originally I had hoped to bring one of the Zombie rods down to the Amazon and target some river monsters but unfortunately our trip was postponed and we had refocus our attention on our main target species, largemouth Bass. We fished the Zombie rods on the California Delta where they were actually designed, Lake Pardee, Clear Lake and Lake Falcon Texas.

The details in this rod are excellent, plenty of use of metals and carbon fiber

Casting: Though designed for pitching into heavy cover the lure range tempted me to try a variety of baits when it came to casting the Zombie 7’3” rod. I tied on everything from jigs and punching rigs to hollow bodied frogs and even swimbaits. The rod was able to handle all of it when it came to casting and though the rod is designed primarily for pitching it was certainly good for much more than that, thus it was included in our “Search for One” roundup, and while it really can’t be compared to our baseline G.Loomis test rod as it is on the heavier action end of the spectrum it is capable of so much more than just short casts into heavy cover.

The rod makes use of a Toray blank

So just what makes this rod so heavy? Some of it is due to the blank itself but the main reason is all the use of metal components on this rod. Zombie wanted the rods to not just look like an enthusiast product but hold up to the abuse of power fishing, for this reason they used steel frame SiC Fuji guides as the guides hold up better to braided superline and they had previously seen a lot less of the SS frames come back than the titanium ones through their past custom rod building experience. But it is not just about the Fuji hardware on this rod the winding checks and highlights in the foregrip, while very cool looking, do add significant weight, but again it is all done with a purpose of better overall balance and to this affect the company achieves their goal.

The guides are stainless steel and the inserts are SiCs

Retrieve: I’m not sure what you think about when you hear the name “Zombie,” but one of the first images conjured up in my mind is an undead figure with arms outstretched walking with stiff legs. I kind of half expected this rod to be just another power rod that fished like a metal pole, especially when considering the rather robust ˝-2oz. lure weight specification. My assumption couldn’t be more wrong. While the Zombie 7’3” rod is capable at casting heavy lures when a fish is on the line the tip does have some give, just as our lab tests indicated.

Not your typical flipping and pitching rod this stick can handle a wide range of lure weights

There is enough bend in the rod to protect the line and keep things exciting but not enough that the rod feels sloppy or underpowered when it comes time to drag a fish out of the weeds. This was further illustrated when I rigged up a punch rig and went to town on the mattes on the Delta. The rod does a good job catapulting those 1oz. weights so they dive straight into the vegetation and don’t get hung up on the surface. When it came time to set into fish the response was relatively quick and the rod’s long handle provided good leverage in which to pull fish through the mats. This long 11” handle also proved to be quite good while working sub-surface swimbaits. I found that I could cast and retrieve everything from paddletails to Huds with no problem and hard multi-jointed swimbaits like the Tru-Tungsten also paired well with this rod.

Pro Angler Kent Brown checks out the casting action on the Zombie rod

Sensitivity: The 7’3” Zombie rod proved to be average in sensitivity. While I didn’t have any problems discerning bites from contact with structure in shallow water when fishing deeper the rod was not as sensitive as some of the competing rods. Part of the reason that the rod just doesn’t feel as sensitive is because it is not as light as some other rods and we found we had to grip it tighter which is more distracting than the simply cradling the rod in hand.

Fishing jigs for both largemouth and smallmouth on Lake Pardee