 Well fishing tips are back and Ray and Mandy are back this week to give you some tips on the overwhelming process of choosing a rod and a reel. There are hundreds and hundreds of rods and how do you know what kind of a rod to buy? And basically it's not that complicated. If you really are into fishing you probably have a special rod you want to get to, but if you're not, if you're just a family and you want to figure out what kind of rods to get, let me give you a few tips. First of all, the rods have gotten longer in the last few years than they used to be. There are now 10 and 11 foot rods for fishing everything from crappies to musties and the old days they hardly ever got over six foot long or six and a half foot long. So now, there's quite a little variety. This is an ultralight. And an ultralight simply means there's a lot of flexibility into the rod. It's a small rod and it's important to match your rod and the reel to have the weight balance so that it feels good. And a medium, this is kind of a medium, this is another medium here, medium light. I would say for most families who are going to be fishing the medium to medium light to medium heavy would be the range of what you want to look for. If you get much heavier or lighter than that, it's probably not something you need to do. If you get into the heavier things, musky rods, heavy duty, you're underneath those unless you're fishing musties. So of all the selections you have, probably go with a medium or a medium light. Men is going to talk about reels. So we're going to talk about the important aspect of matching the right reel to the right rod. So we're going to start with one of the most simple ones. This is called a spinning reel. You can see it. They have different ball bearings. The nice part with the spinning reel is you can actually take the handle off and put it on the other side if you reel with the other hand. Next we've got bait casters. So two different styles with bait casters, though, you specifically have to buy them for whatever hand that you reel with. And also looking at the bait caster, you'll look and if you can see there's a number on the side. It may be a 7-3. It could be a 6-1. It could be an 8-1. That means the speed at every time you reel, how many revolutions it goes around. So the higher the number, the faster you'll reel in with less revolutions. I'm Ray Gilbaugh with an Israel Guides League. And I'm Mandy Erick, the Basin Biologist. If you enjoyed this segment of Lakeland News, please consider making a tax-deductible contribution to Lakeland PBS.