By Mike Holliday
Americans have a love/hate relationship with travel rods

On one hand, they need a quality rod that’s versatile, and also breaks down into four or more sections for their vacation/fishing trip needs. On the other hand, most travel rods are neither of good quality, or versatile. In fact, most travel rods are just short of a broomstick with a handful of metal washers wrapped on.

Face it, travel rods are a niche market, so the major rod manufacturers don’t put a lot of effort into the products that cater to such a small demographic. And that’s EXACTLY why Fox International targeted the travel sector—because there are no quality products out there.

The second you remove your Fox Sport Fishing Trek Rod from the protective tube and cloth holder you know they are not only well made, but also well thought out, with features like a long rod grip for making those long two-handed casts and to allow the rod to be tucked under your arm for extra torque when muscling big fish. You don’t see that kind of thought go into the construction of most production rods, much less a travel rod.



The handle is EVA, and all the guides are FOX SIC guides, so the quality of the components are top notch. More importantly, the rod is designed with a fast taper, which is great for flinging lures or baits (even small baits) long distances. But the most important quality of these rods is in the lifting power and ability to move big fish, which is super important when fishing saltwater in Florida. I can’t tell you how many rods have soft tips that transfer into the entire length of the rod, so the rod either pretzels in one giant arc that puts all the stress into the angler’s hands and arms, or they just don’t have the lifting power to move fish.

Any time you’re fighting big fish on light tackle you’re going to get the scenario where the fish holds relatively close to the boat, but out of range of the net or gaff. I’ve seen fights where the angler and fish spent hours fighting over that last 10 yards of line, and most of the time it was because the rod didn’t have the lifting power to move a large stationary fish closer to the boat. These rods do! While there’s a bunch of great qualities to these rods, this is the single best feature, and one I don’t see from a lot of rod manufacturers.

These are extremely progressive rods—the type you find from a custom rod manufacturer in California, and certainly not what you expect to find in a travel rod or from a rod manufacturer out of the UK. These guys have nailed it!

The 5-15 pound bonefish spinning rod weighs less than half a pound and less than two pounds in the travel tube. They’re designed and manufactured as travel rods, but are so well designed I plan to use them for my daily fishing. They’re just the perfect rods for the fishing that I do.



So let’s talk a little about my fishing. I live in Southeast Florida in the town of Stuart, which is a small town on the Indian and St. Lucie Rivers that borders the Atlantic Ocean. The Indian River is one of the most diverse saltwater estuaries in North America, and at 192 miles long the home to over 400 saltwater fish including snook, spotted seatrout, redfish, pompano, flounder and tarpon. Heading out the inlet into the open Atlantic, I regularly target everything from migrating tarpon and spinner sharks to giant jack crevalle, king mackerel, sailfish, dolphin and wahoo. In other words, we have some of the best fishing in Florida at our doorstep. I catch well over 1,000 snook a year, and probably 50 seatrout over 8 pounds, so our inshore fishing is World Class, and for many species, the best in the world.

In the spring and fall, I spend most of my days fishing inshore with either spin or fly tackle for snook, tarpon and seatrout, but any day that the ocean is calm, you’ll find me running the beaches looking for big schools of jack crevalle from 15 to 35 pounds, or casting to cobia up to 80 pounds. In summer, the tarpon migrate out of the Keys and up our beaches at the same time the big permit are coming our way, so I spend a lot of days trying to catch snook, tarpon and permit in the same day.

Summertime is also when the ocean is flat, so I spend a lot of time live chumming and fly fishing offshore for little tunny, king mackerel, blackfin tune, dolphin and wahoo. It’s a great way to spend a few hours, then run back in and target the permit, tarpon or snook when the wind picks up in the afternoon.