Reading Your Rod's Own Label
Almost every rod carries a small printed panel of its own, an inch or two long, on the rod itself just forward of the grip. It states a lure weight range in ounces, a line strength range in pounds, and usually the length and a power word. Read the lure weight first. It is the one rating that makes a rod flatly wrong for a bait instead of merely a poor choice.
Every page on this site assumes you can tell it what your rod is. The guided steps ask for the word printed above the handle by name, because that word is the fastest route to an answer and because most people have never been told it is there. It is there on almost every rod made in the last thirty years, in the same place, saying the same four things in roughly the same order.
Where to Look
Hold the rod as though you were about to cast. Look at the length of rod just above your hand, between the reel seat — the fitting the reel clamps into — and the first ring the line runs through. On a two-piece rod that is still the lower section. The panel is printed straight onto the rod in light ink, and it is easy to miss on a dark finish. Turn the rod slowly. It faces one way only, and on many rods it faces the reel and not the sky.
What you are looking at is the manufacturer's own claim about the rod. That is why this site treats it as fact and treats everything downstream of it as judgment. Nothing on this page is a reading of your particular rod. It is a reading of the panel that is already on it.
Two things are commonly printed elsewhere and are not part of this panel. The model name is usually on the opposite face or on the reel seat, and it tells you nothing reliable about the rating. Two rods in the same model line differ by exactly these numbers. A line-capacity table belongs to a reel and never to a rod.
The Four Printed Lines
The panel is dense and unpunctuated, which is most of why it goes unread. Taken one line at a time it is short. The order below is the order this site puts them in, and that is the order they rule a rod out. A rod does not bend properly against a weight it was not built for, whatever else is right about it.
Lure weight: a range in ounces, sometimes grams
Printed as two numbers with a dash, most often in fractions of an ounce. This is the weight of bait the rod is built to bend against and cast, and it is the first thing the matching engine on this site checks. A rod asked to throw something under its range never bends enough to cast properly; asked to throw something over it, the rod is being pushed past what it was designed for.
Grams and ounces are both used, sometimes on the same rod, and a range printed in grams is easy to read as a much heavier rod than it is. If the numbers look implausibly large for the rod in your hand, check the unit before believing them.
Line rating: a range in pounds of test
The second range, usually the larger pair of numbers. It describes the strength of line the rod and its rings are built to fight on. That decides the fish, not the bait. A rod's line rating is the reason a light rod cannot simply be used on a big fish with heavier line: the rod gives out before the line does.
A braid rating is sometimes printed separately and is not interchangeable with the mono figure. Where only one range is printed, it is conventionally monofilament, and braid of the same stated strength is thinner and less forgiving of a sudden pull.
Power: a word, not a number
The word this site and every tackle shop will ask you for. It describes how much the lower half of the rod resists being bent, which is what moves a fish and what drives a hook home. It is the one entry on the panel that is not measured, so it is comparable within a manufacturer and only roughly comparable between two.
One brand's medium is another's medium-heavy, and there is no standard behind the words. Where a rod prints both a power word and a lure weight range, the range is the more reliable of the two. Trust the numbers over the adjective when they disagree.
Action: where the rod bends, if it is printed at all
Often on the panel, often not, and frequently only in the model name. It describes how far down the rod the bend runs. That decides which hook the rod suits, not what weight it casts. The rod profile pages carry a paragraph on what each action does, because this is the entry most often left off the printed panel.
A rod with no printed action is not a rod with no action. It is a rod whose maker did not print it. The answer is usually in the model name or the manufacturer's own listing, not anywhere on the rod itself.
When Two Lines Disagree
This happens more than it should, and it is usually not a misprint. A power word is a marketing decision made about a family of rods; the ranges are measured against the rod in front of it. When the two point in different directions, the ranges are the better evidence.
The most common version is a rod printed as medium that carries a lure range a shop would call medium-heavy. Read the range and use it. The engine on this site does the same thing. Given both a stated casting weight and a power word, it works from the weight, and it says so on the result instead of quietly picking one.
A second version is a lure range and a line range that do not belong together: a very light casting weight against a heavy line rating, or the reverse. That combination is real on rods built for one specific job. Read it as a signal, not an error. A rod rated to cast very little and fight a great deal is not a general-purpose rod, whatever the word on it says.
If the Printing Has Worn Away
Older rods and inexpensive ones often carry no panel at all, and on a rod that has been fished hard the ink goes before anything else does. This is the case the rest of this site handles least well, and saying so is more useful than pretending otherwise. Without a casting weight or a power word there is no rating to measure a bait against. The honest answer is that the rod cannot be assessed, not that nothing works on it.
Three things recover a usable answer. The first is the model name. If it is still legible anywhere on the rod or the reel seat, it will usually find the original specification in the manufacturer's own listing, and that is a stated rating. The second is a rod of known rating fished alongside it, which tells you more than any rule of thumb. Two rods of the same length that bend the same amount under the same weight are close enough in power for the purposes of this site.
The third is to work backwards from what the rod already casts well. If you know the weight of a bait that bends the rod properly and lands where you aim it, that weight sits inside the rod's range. That is a stated fact about your rod, not an estimate. It is not the whole range, but it is enough for the matching engine to work from, and the guided steps will accept it.
What none of this supports is guessing. A power word assigned by eye is not a specification, and every recommendation built on it inherits the guess without carrying the uncertainty. Where the rating cannot be recovered, the species pages carry the same gear answers without asking about your rod at all.
Where This Decision Goes Next
Every term on this site, one sentence each
The words printed on rods and line packages, the names for hooks, and the words for water. Each is defined in a sentence, with a caution, and points at the page that treats it fully.
7'0" medium, fast action spinning
A worked example of everything on this page: 1/8-5/8 oz of lure rating and 6-14 lb of line rating on medium power, with what that combination throws and what it cannot.
7'0" medium-heavy, fast action casting
A worked example of everything on this page: 1/4-1 1/4 oz of lure rating and 12-20 lb of line rating on medium-heavy power, with what that combination throws and what it cannot.
Every rod shape on this site, with its ratings side by side
Six profiles in one table, each with the lure and line ratings this page has been describing. The fastest way to place a rod you have just read the label on.
Turn what your rod says into what it throws
Five questions, four of them skippable. Name a fish and give the rating you have just read off the rod, and the answer comes back as the baits that rod already casts — and the ones it cannot, which is the half a shop will not tell you.