HANDING Magic L BFS Rod 2-Piece Ultralight Casting & Spinning Rod

After using this rod for over a year, I can honestly say it has been one of the best investments I've made. In terms of price-to-performance, it's simply outstanding. Casting ability: 10/10 Weight: 10/10 Build quality: 10/10 I've been able to cast lures as light as 2.5 grams with excellent accuracy and distance. The guides are well aligned and perfectly match the rod's excellent construction and overall quality. I've even landed hard-fighting fish like tarpon, pushing this rod close to its limits, and it performed flawlessly. It has shown impressive strength, sensitivity, and reliability every time I've used it. I would buy this rod again without hesitation and highly recommend it to anyone looking for exceptional performance at an incredible price.

This is a good quality little rod. I bought it for dad to use for crappie and panfish. Got the 6’0” ultralight casting version. It is well made and seems to be of a very high quality fit and finish. The cork handle is smooth, and the reel seat has a faux woodgrain graphite seat base with gray gunmetal colored aluminum parts for the trigger and rings to secure the reel to it. It is also trimmed out with metallic green and purple accent rings. The front foregrip of the handle is a twist lock design, and it ratchets! Never seen a rod like this before with a ratcheting locking reel seat. This will secure the reel very well. There is a hook keeper just in front of the handle. The line guides are Fuji O-ring guides and about half of them are micro sized out on the tip of the rod. They’re SUPER TINY! The rod blank is not slick like a lot of others. It is textured. That is becoming more common on rods nowadays. But the blank feels like it has good backbone for fighting panfish, crappie, and trout. It is plenty rigid, and has a fast tip, but it is also very flexible so it is definitely not overkill for smaller fish. Every catch will feel exciting. This rod is a 2 piece design, and the ferrule is designed to NOT fully seat together on purpose to allow for wear over time, and therefore room for the joint to close up as this wear happens. This is a good thing. One thing I noticed however is the lure weight rating is wrong on the website. The lure rating was one reason I chose this rod, the other being because a good quality casting style ultralight is hard to find. Most all ultralights are spinning. Dad needs a casting rod. Since it was rated at 1/32-5/16 ounce lure weight (online) then it meant it would do well with baits like a Trout Magnet or Panfish Magnet, which both only weigh 1/64 ounce. But when I received the rod I saw that the rating on the side is actually printed as being 1/16-5/16 ounce. Not a real big deal, only 1/32 ounce difference, but this rating is more inline with a light rod instead of an ultralight. That small difference can make all the difference when you’re trying to cast a super tiny bait. If the rod is too stiff, that is. But this is truly an ultralight rod, regardless of lure rating. It also performs fairly well with those baits as far as casting. Dad has not fished with it yet, and I have only casted it a few times while doing some “yard fishing”. I added a Lew’s Wally Marshall spincast crappie reel to the rod and spooled it with 4 pound fluorocarbon line. This reel is perfect for this rod. Size and weight are just right, the whole rig is super light, and the position of that drag adjustment it just right for adjusting with your thumb while fighting a fish. With this reel and the 4 pound line, it will cast a 1/64 ounce Trout Magnet about 30-35 feet. That’s enough for panfishing. If dad uses a 1/32 or 1/16 ounce bait then I suspect it will cast a bit farther. If he tied on a 1/8 ounce inline spinner then it would probably cast that thing into the hills. I could also gain some more distance by dropping down to 2 pound line, and this rod is actually rated for 1-4 pound, so with 4 pound it is actually on the high end. So I feel that 30-35 feet of cast with 4 pound line and a 1/64 ounce bait is fine. Overall it should make a wonderful little panfishing rod, and it’s gonna be absolutely epic if a bass takes the bait!

This is a well made, even beautiful rod. I really like the design and feel, and especially like the micro guides. The cork handle seems really nice, and the reel mount seems really high-end. However, the rod isn't very flexible/fast, so you're going to need to drop some major $ on a pretty high-end reel in order to make a castable combo for BFS. I first paired this with an Anatono Sphinx BFS reel (admittedly an inexpensive reel that was also on sale as part of the Big Spring Sale here on Amazon), and the combo is simply not castable at all until you get up into the 1/8oz lure weight and even then the distance is horrible. There's just not enough flex/action to the rod to properly load up the cast and get any kind of distance. I also own KastKing Zephyr BFS reel. This is also a relatively inexpensive reel, but I've upgraded the bearings to ceramic and really like and enjoy the performance of this reel. I tried it on this Magic L rod and got just about the same poor results as with the Anatono Sphinx BFS reel. Normally I have the KastKing Zephyr BFS reel on a 7'0" Shakespeare Ugly Stik Elite Ultralight/Fast BFS rod and get fantastic results from this combo all the way down to 1/32oz. So it's definitely the rod that is the problem since the Zephyr BFS reel works so well on a different rod. I think the rod is just too short and unflexable to be a good BFS rod. I think this rod in medium-light with a regular baitcasting reel on it using much heavier lures could be a good combo, but this rod really has no place in the BFS arena. It is a truly beautiful rod appearance wise, but that beauty just doesn't do anything to help the performance of actually fishing it, especially not BFS. All that being said, Handing is an excellent rod manufacturer with truly excellent and responsive customer support. Handing has reached out to me on several occasions to ask for feedback on their products and they have offered very helpful suggestions of their other products that would better suit my needs. If you want a truly superior BFS rod, I would recommend going with Handing's Wandering Ultralight rod, which is truly ultralight power and fast action, while still being a truly beautiful looking rod like all their others.

Great rod, but tip snapped when I was putting my lure on the hook keeper with the absolute minimum pressure on the tip. If getting the 4'6", casting be very careful with it. This would be way more acceptable if the rod was still around 30 dollars, but 60 bucks for it to snap on the 3rd outing not even fighting a fish is an absolute farce. To be fair, the Pioneer from Handing has been amazing, this rod not so much. Avoid this one.

The Fuji guides, carbon fiber blank, cork grips, and reel seat are all very nice and high quality. The epoxy job is decent, not as nice as on high end rods, but certainly better than what you’d expect at this price point. This is my second BFS rod, so I’m comparing it to my other rod, a very expensive JDM Daiwa BFS rod. That Daiwa rod costs over 5x what the Handing rod costs. For lures in the 1/8 to 1/4 oz range, my Daiwa rod consistently casts 5-10 ft farther than the Handing rod. I did this comparison by swapping the reel and lure, so all factors other than the rod were the same. To me, that extra 5-10 ft of casting distance is a big deal, but only you can say if it’s worth hundreds of dollars. For lure weights 3/8 oz and heavier, the Handing Rod casts about as far as my Daiwa rod. With an SLX BFS spooled with 20 lb braid, the Handing Magic L (light power) casts everyone’s favorite 3/16 oz twitch bait about 60-70 feet. Sensitivity is good, balance is good, it fishes well. For the price, you can’t go wrong. I mostly cast 3/16oz twitchbaits and ned jigs with this rod. I bought the Light power, based on the listed weight chart, but I think the Ultra Light would have cast these lures better.

If I could give this rod a 10 star review I would. I have been on the hunt for a rod for bfs fishing and seen this one on tiktok. I was skeptical at first so I bought multiple rods (20) ranging in price from 30 to 180. And this hands down is my pick every time on every category I was looking for in a bfs rod. First off is the price. You will not find one better in the price range at all. At the time of purchase it was 60 which was really cheap for the quality you get. The action is perfect and perfectly described. Comes in multiple lengths and i got the shortest. Casting rod. Extremely lightweight perfectly balanced and feels really good in your hand backed up with a low profile reel. Definitely recommend for anyone looking for a high quality fairly priced rod.

There aren’t enough good things to say about this rod: 30 ton carbon blank, Fuji guides, extremely sensitive, double-a cork: this is a WILDLY good rod for the money! I have a BFS and a spinning version and I’ve caught more fish than I can count. My biggest fish so far is is a tilapia over 5lbs, but I just got a new Doviello GKA200 and got this 2.5lb bass on the first night out. This rod has NO trouble with big fish but at the same time it’s sensitive enough to still have a blast with bluegill. Someone made a review saying the Magic L isn’t appropriate for BFS fishing and that’s just patently false. I got a spinning version first because I read that review and loved it so much I decided to try the BFS version and I’m SO glad I did- I LOVE this rod. Everyone I have let try this rod wants to buy one… What does that tell you? Listen, for $50 you are not going to buy a better rod; the components this rod has are found on rods $100+ usually. If there is any question, just hit order. This will probably become your new, versatile, all-time favorite. P.s. - It works great for freshwater and saltwater. I have caught redfish up to 19 inches with it! You’re going to be blown away with this rod!

Wow.. amazing rod for the price perfect for trout and panfish

Okay