I have owned the 8’ and 8’6” Heavy. Both are excellent all around rods, and handle everything south of big rubber. The shorter version shines for topwaters and twitching duty. The longer version is an excellent 8 / 9 bucktail and crankbait stick. I have LT rods too, and while they are better these give you most of that performance at a far lower price. They load and cast well, are time-proven and a great overall value. Particularly if you favor a traditional cork grip and trigger-style reel seat.

After recently deciding to get into fishing for large pike and musky exclusively, spending all my time and energy on that one pursuit in order to get very good at it, it became obvious that I needed a rod that was capable of throwing baits between one and three ounces. My St. Croix Premier (standard series) medium-heavy tips out at one ounce of lure weight, which is simply not enough for even the smaller sized musky and pike lures.

After deciding that I wanted a short rod of around 7’ and absolutely nothing over 8’ because I generally fish alone and from a canoe, and determining that I also wanted one of St. Croix’s Medium-Heavy powers because of the versatile weight range of 3/4 to 3 ounces. Most topwaters, bucktails, cranks, and small swimbaits are in that range, it’s perfect for me.

Well I went to the nearby Cabela’s and, low-and-behold, they’ve got a 7’ M-H Premier Musky rod on the rack next to two of the new 2020 Mojo Musky rods, 7’6” M-H models. I compared the two designs, and although the Mojo has a supposedly-better blank and a more modern ergonomic setup, I decided to stick with the classic Premier.

This is a VERY nice fishing rod. The guide train is lazer-straight, the overall length is absolutely spot-on for people who have to land fish alone, and the handle setup is significantly thicker and more roomy than the standard Premier series rods. Extremely solid tool, absolutely worth $200, especially considering that I’m buying from fellow Wisconsin citizens.

I purchased two St. Croix Premier Musky Rods for fishing sturgeon this spring in Minnesota and musky this summer in Ontario, Canada. Last weekend my son caught a huge 60” sturgeon using this rod on Rainy River fishing out of Ballard’s Resort, Northern Minnesota. It took an hour to bring it in! Estimated between 90-100 lbs. The 8’ medium heavy/fast action St. Croix Rod could not have preformed better! My other son had another huge sturgeon on for 10 minutes that broke water and in the current of the river broke 65 lb. braided line. Once again, the rod worked perfectly! My sons also doubled on 30” and 29” walleye fishing for the sturgeon. Great Rods, great buy!!! Can’t wait for Canada musky fishing this summer! Thank you St. Croix Rods!!!