Thanks, folks, for all your suggestions and advice. For a variety of reasons (including a Cabela's gift certificate for my 60th birthday ), I went with their LST model. In its first outing -- one hour this morning -- it worked nicely on 5 microbass and 3 decent crappie. (A typical "bluegill outing" for me. ) Just for the record, JC, the faster action LST seemed less "noodly" at 9 feet than my medium action 7.5-footer.