For the past twenty five years my go to panfish rig has been a 6 ft. Berkley Lightning Rod in lightweight using 2 lb. test mono. It was a rod I never would have bought for myself that was given to me on our first Christmas by my wife who was helped by her father in picking it out. That cheap Lightning Rod has been my favorite. Worked great as long as I remembered not to set the hook (bad habit from my green trout days) and had my back reel timing down. But occasionally a hard strike from a fish, or my reflex action, would pop the light line. Recently I tried an ultralight rod to see if there was any noticeable protection given to the line with the more flexible action and found that it was convincingly better even with the cheap Cherrywood rod I used to conduct the experiment.

Now a believer, I just bought a TFO Trout-Panfish UL in a one-piece 6'2" length. Also a two-piece Diawa Presso UL at 6 feet. Bought a Diawa Revros LT 1000 to go on the Presso. Just going to move my Diawa SS700 reel over from another rod to the TFO. For the Lightning Rod I bought some 6 lb. braid so as not to have to be so careful with it in the future. Looking forward to putting a bend in the TFO and Presso hopefully sooner rather than later. Not ready for the JDM stuff just yet though.