A
New Legend for Anglers Who Want it All
Legend X packs every technology at St. Croix’s
disposal to deliver unrivaled performance
Park Falls, WI (May 3, 2018) – The Senko
spiraled toward the bottom of a gin-clear lake, turning the reel on the
opposite end ever closer towards the end of its spool. Twenty feet down and
dozens of yards from the boat, a thin strand of four-pound fluorocarbon traced
a line from fish to man. On a sunny day at this depth and distance, the line
was impossible for the angler’s eye to see — then, a thump.
“I could feel it in my
hands,” said angling guru Dan Johnston. “It blew my mind.”
Johnston, National Accounts
Manager for St. Croix Rod, was in the midst of a three-day video shoot with
Jarrett Edwards of Jarrett Edwards Outdoors. The gin-clear water belonged to
the mystic desert fishery of Lake Powell, where a maze of clear water channels
crisscrosses the Arizona/Utah border in a dance with time and nature. At Lake
Powell, the ruins of an Anasazi empire and exposed fossils of plesiosaurs line
the same canyon walls where bass loiter for food, feasting on shad in the
shadows of legends.
It was here on Powell that
Johnston and Edwards had come to document a legend of their own — a battle test
for the St. Croix Rod Legend X.
“I was basing bite detection
off of that thump in my hands,” Johnston said. “Usually, all of the conditions
have to line up to feel that hit. Here, Jarrett and I were throwing a light
soft plastic almost as far as we could throw, getting a bite at the very end of
the cast, and in 20 feet of water you could still feel it.”
Adds Johnston, “You can
write that, but people reading it will roll their eyes. They won’t believe you
until they do it for themselves.”
Legend X rumors began to
swirl last summer, just before the rod made its official debut at ICAST 2017.
There, retailers got their first look at the production models which would
eventually find their way out to the desert with Johnston and Edwards.
Featuring Relentless Olive blanks with cork, split-grip handles and a familiar
name, it didn’t take long for consumers who hadn’t seen the rods up close to
dub Legend X a ‘Legend Elite with split grips.’ But Johnston says only part of
that moniker is true.
“It does have the same SCV
blank as the Legend Elite, and it does have split grips, but this is a rod
built with every single technology St. Croix Rod has at its disposal. It’s a
rod for the ultimate, discerning angler who understands that 32 pairs of hands
have touched this rod during the manufacturing process. It’s for the angler who
wants the ultimate in sensitivity and light weight. It’s for the angler who
wants all of St. Croix’s rod building technologies. Every one of them.”
An 18-year veteran of St.
Croix Rod, Johnston is no spring chicken when it comes to rod design. He’s
fished nearly every rod the Wisconsin-based company has produced in almost two
decades with the company; and in a field with many favorites, he says Legend X
stands above them all.
“It’s a dream rod for me,”
he elaborates. “A lot of people have been waiting on a SCV blank with split
grips. Legend X is unbelievably impressive.”
The rod’s list of technical
features reads like a laundry list of high-performance rod specifications:
Integrated Poly Curve® (IPC®) mandrel tooling technology; Advanced Reinforcing
Technology™ (ART™); a Taper Enhancement Technology (TET) blank; super high-modulus
SCVI graphite with Fortified Resin System (FRS) in its lower section for
maximum power and reduced weight; high-modulus/high-strain SCV graphite with
FRS and carbon-matte scrim for unparalleled strength, durability and
sensitivity; Fuji® Torzite® tangle-free guides with titanium frames; a Fuji®
TVS blank-touch reel seat with a built-in hood on spinning rods; a Fuji® PTS
blank-touch reel seat with a built-in hood on casting rods; anodized,
machined-aluminum wind check and trim pieces; a Kigan titanium hook-keeper; two
coats of Flex-Coat slow cure finish, and its signature split-grip super-grade
cork handles.
Asked about the relentless,
madman’s list of features, Johnston had a simple explanation.
“St Croix exists to provide
every angler with the upper hand. That explains Legend X. That explains the
engine behind the brilliance, the fuel behind the idea, the execution, and the
final product. We wanted to give people the ultimate advantage on the water.
Everything about Legend X is distilled to that. St. Croix Rod wanted to go
all-in.”
Just a few short months
after its ICAST 2017 unveiling, Legend X is starting to fill the dealer
pipelines. Soon, Dan Johnston and Jarrett Edwards will have to share their
legend with the rest of the angling world. Johnston swears Legend X is the
ultimate fishing rod come to life.
It’s a tale that may seem
hard to believe — but like the mysterious landscape of Lake Powell—is 100
percent true.
#stcroixrods
About St. Croix Rod
Now in its 70th year, Park
Falls, Wisconsin based St. Croix Rod remains a family-owned and managed
manufacturer of high-performance fishing rods with a heritage of USA
manufacturing. Utilizing proprietary technologies, St. Croix controls every
step of the rod-making process, from conception and design to manufacturing and
inspection, in two company-owned facilities. The company offers a complete line
of premium, American-made fly, spinning and casting rods under their Legend
Elite®, Legend® Xtreme, Legend Tournament®, Avid Series®, Premier®, Wild
River®, Tidemaster®, Imperial® and other trademarks through a global
distribution network of full-service fishing tackle dealers. The company’s
mid-priced Triumph®, Mojo Bass/Musky/Inshore/Surf, Eyecon® and Rio Santo series
rods are designed and engineered in Park Falls, Wisconsin and built in a new,
state-of-the-art manufacturing facility in Fresnillo, Mexico. Founded in 1948
to manufacture jointed bamboo fishing poles for a Minneapolis hardware
store chain, St. Croix has grown to become the largest manufacturer of fishing
rods in North America.
No comments:
Post a Comment