PLUSINNO Telescopic Combo Honest Review: Packable, With Trade-Offs

It took me two months to stop being irritated by the PLUSINNO telescopic combo and start understanding what it is actually for. I bought it this fall with one job in mind: a rod that lives behind the seat of my truck, comes out for twenty minutes at a creek on the way home, and goes back without any fuss. Not a replacement for anything hanging on the garage rack. Something for the gaps between real fishing trips.

Two months in, that is still the job. It has caught fish. Nothing has broken. It rides behind the seat through heat and a couple of thunderstorms without me worrying about it. But there are things about it I wish somebody had put in the listing, and most of them are not in the photos. So here is the honest version, including the parts that annoyed me.

How I've Used It, and What It Has Actually Caught

I fish two or three mornings a week now that I am retired. Mostly Lake Norman for bass and crappie, the Catawba below the dam for catfish, and a neighborhood pond with my grandson Tyler on Saturdays. The PLUSINNO has not been the primary rod at any of those places. It has been the rod in the truck when I pulled off at a creek, and it went into a duffel when Denise and I drove out of town for a long weekend in October.

What it has caught: six or seven small largemouth out of a creek that feeds the lake, a pile of bluegill, and one channel cat around three pounds that made the whole setup feel briefly ridiculous. Nothing big. Nothing that tested the rod. Two months is not long enough to tell you how it holds up over a season, and I am not going to pretend otherwise.

That is the first thing nobody tells you about a telescopic combo. A review written after a week is a review of the unboxing. The joints are what fail on these rods, and joints fail slowly, usually in the second or third year, usually on a cast you cared about. So take the two month window for what it is.

The Reel Is the Weak Half

The rod and the reel arrive as a set and they are not the same quality. The rod is the better half. The reel is a size 3000 spinning reel, 5.2:1 gear ratio, with a CNC machined collapsible handle that swaps to either side. That last part matters if you are left handed or if a kid picks it up.

The listed line capacity is 0.20 mm at 240 meters, 0.25 at 200, and 0.30 at 140, rated for monofilament. That is a normal spread for a 3000 and it has held what I put on it without trouble. What the listing does not tell you is how the reel feels after a month of riding in a truck, and the answer is looser than it felt new. There is a small amount of play in the handle stem that was not there in September. Not broken. Loose.

I rinse every reel I own with fresh water after a trip and put a drop of oil on it once a month. That is the floor, not a special effort. This one has had that treatment and still loosened up, which tells me the reel is built to a price. If you are the type to leave a combo in the truck bed for a month and forget it, this reel will not forgive you.

The Rod Itself Is Better Than the Reel

The PLUSINNO rod is 1.8 meters, which is 5.91 feet, medium heavy power, rated for 10 pound line, and built from 24 ton carbon fiber reinforced with a fiberglass composite. It telescopes down small enough to lay flat behind a truck seat or drop into a duffel. The listing puts the whole package at 267 grams, and it feels about like that in the hand.

Medium heavy at five foot eleven is an odd animal, and I want to be straight about it. A short rod in that power is stiff through the middle and does not load the way a seven foot medium does. You can cast a Texas rig with it. You are not going to throw a spinnerbait into a headwind and be happy about it. Where it works is flipping and pitching around docks and brush, because you are not swinging a long lever under a pontoon.

The guides are the part I expected to be junk and they are not. They are not fancy. They are straight, they are aligned, and two months of monofilament running through them has not cut a groove. The finish on the blank still looks like it did out of the box, and the reel seat holds the reel tight without any creaking.

Where the Telescoping Actually Costs You

Every telescopic rod gives something up and with this one the giveaway is feel at the tip. The rod does not transmit a light bite the way a one piece rod does. You feel the thump when a bass eats a worm. You do not feel the tick of a crappie mouthing a jig the way you would on my seven foot medium. If I were chasing crappie with small jigs, this is not the rod I would reach for.

The second cost is the joints. Every section has to seat fully or the rod develops a flat spot and eventually a crack. Out of the box, two of the sections needed a firm twist to seat. One of them worked loose on the third trip because I had not seated it well enough, and the tip went from stiff to floppy in the middle of a cast. My fault. Still worth knowing before it happens to you.

The third cost is balance. The reel seat is functional and holds tight, but the foot sits a little proud of the blank and the whole rod feels slightly top heavy with the 3000 mounted. A lighter reel in the 2000 range would balance better. The combo comes with the 3000, so that is what you fish unless you swap it out.

None of that makes it a bad rod. It makes it a rod with a specific job. I have owned cheap telescopics that were worse in every one of these ways and also snapped, so understand the bar I am comparing against.

It has caught six or seven creek bass, a pile of bluegill, and one three pound channel cat. Two months is not long enough to tell you how the joints hold up in year three.

Line, Setup, and the First Trip

The box has the rod and the reel. It does not have line and it does not have lures, which the listing says plainly and which people still miss. I spooled mine with 10 pound monofilament to match the rod rating, and that has been right for what I do with it. Go heavier and the rod gets more tip heavy and the reel holds less of it.

First trip out I over-spooled it and spent ten minutes picking loops out of a spinning reel, which is a special kind of embarrassment for a man who has been doing this since he was eight. Spool it to about an eighth of an inch under the lip and you will skip that. Also check the sections before your first cast, not after.

Collapsing it takes about fifteen seconds once you learn the sequence, and it goes back down without a fight. That matters more than it sounds. A travel rod that takes two minutes to break down is a rod that stays in the truck. This one gets used because getting it out is not a chore.

The October Trip, Which Is Why I Bought It

Denise and I drove out to the mountains for a long weekend in October. I wrapped the rod in a towel and threw it in the duffel, mostly because there was room, and pulled it out on a Saturday morning at a small public access on a lake I had never seen. Twenty minutes of casting from a dock got me two small bass and cost me nothing but the time. A two piece rod would have stayed in the truck. That is the entire case for a telescopic rod, and it is a good case.

It did not turn the trip into a fishing trip. That is not what it does. It turns dead time into a few casts, and if you fish the way I do, that is worth something. The rod came home with creek mud on it and it wiped off straight.

How It Compares to the Rods Already on My Rack

The honest comparison is to the two piece rods I already own. My seven foot medium spinning rod fishes better in every way that matters. It casts further, it feels more, and it does not have joints to worry about. It also does not fit behind a seat, and that is the entire argument. The PLUSINNO gives up performance to gain a footprint, and for the truck rod job that trade is worth making.

Where I would not make the trade: as a first rod, or as the only rod a kid learns on. A stiff medium heavy with a reel that needs attention is not a beginner's setup. My grandson does better with his own push button spincast, and he has been using it since early spring without me untangling him every ten minutes.

What Two Months Has and Has Not Shown

What it has shown: the rod casts, the reel retrieves, the finish is holding, the guides are fine, and nothing has broken. What it has not shown: whether the joints stay tight after a full season, whether the reel holds up after fifty trips instead of fifteen, and whether the blank survives a year of being bounced around in a truck.

I can tell you the rod has ridden behind a seat for two months and still looks straight. I can tell you the reel loosened a little. I cannot tell you it will still be fishing in three years, and anyone who says otherwise after two months is guessing. Buy it knowing that.

What It Is Not

It is not a replacement for a real rod. If you fish twice a week like I do, this is a fourth rod, not a first one. It is not the rod I hand a ten year old, and it is not the rod I take out on Lake Norman when the wind is up and I need to feel a bite at thirty feet.

It is also not a surf rod, despite the listing putting surf down as the fishing technique. Five foot eleven of carbon fiber is not going to get a bait past the bar. Whoever filled in that field was not thinking about the rod in the picture.

What I'd Change

Two changes. Put a lighter reel in the box. The rod wants something in the 2000 range, and the 3000 that ships with it is more reel than a five foot eleven medium heavy needs for creek bass and panfish. The reel is the mismatch in this combo and it is the reason I score it where I do.

The other is a spare tip section. On a telescopic rod the tip is the part most likely to get stepped on or closed in a truck door, and you cannot walk into a local shop and buy a replacement. A spare tip would cost the manufacturer almost nothing and would turn a two year rod into a much longer one.

Who This Is For

This is for the angler who already has a rod they like and wants a second one that lives in the truck or the travel bag. It is for the guy who pulls off at a creek for twenty minutes on the way home, or the one who drives to see family twice a year and would rather fish than sit. It is for someone who will wipe it down, seat the sections firmly, and put it back down properly. If that is you, the PLUSINNO earns its spot behind the seat.

Who Should Skip It

Skip it if it is going to be your only rod, if you fish heavy cover with big baits, if you need to feel a light bite, or if you are buying for a kid. Skip it if you want something you can throw in the truck bed and forget. And skip it if a loose handle stem after two months would bother you, because that is what happened to mine.

My bottom line after two months: the rod half is worth owning and the reel half is something I will replace when it finally gives out. I will keep the PLUSINNO in the truck either way, because the thing it does, it does well, and nothing else on my rack does that thing.