Budget telescopic rod?

[Lord Letto]

So I still have gift cards in my wallet, $20 from Canadian Tire & $50 from Walmart, 1 thing is was planing on getting at some point is get a telescopic rod to put in my backpack along with tackle & take the bus somewhere I can go fishing (Grand River through K-W most likely), I'm just looking for opinions, checking the Walmart & Canadian Tire sites, here's what I'm currently thinking:

Rod: Zebco Ready Tackle Telescopic Spin Rod, $14.84 from Walmart, out of stock online & shows almost sold out at the local store I plan on going to : https://www.walmart.ca/en/ip/zebco-ready-tackle-telescopic-spin-rod/6000095749318

Reel: Either a Shakespeare Durango 2235RB Spinning Reel for $10.97 from Walmart: https://www.walmart.ca/en/ip/durango-2235rb-spinning-reel/6000016935292

or the Zebco Advanced Spinning Reel for $15.99 from Canadian Tire: https://www.canadiantire.ca/en/pdp/zebco-advanced-spinning-reel-0785555p.html#srp

 

I'd like to have a decision made before the June 29-July 7, 2019 family fishing week so I can try it out before spending the money on my licence for the year.

[smitty55]

Buy the best one you can find, you will likely regret buying an el cheapo.

 

Cheers

[cuzza]

From the looks of your sig, you already have a reel so why not just use that on the telescopic rod? You then have about $50 to spend on lures/plastics etc. which will probably make more difference to your catch rates. 

If you really want a combo Canadian Tire have a few around the $30 mark but you'll probably want to budget to change out the line as it'll probably be cheap stuff that has lots of memory and tangles easily, something like a spool of Trilene XL would be fine.

Telescopic rods are all pretty much the same performance wise unless you're into the $100+ ones but they're great to keep in your backpack/car/desk/locker to be handy. I've had a few over the years and they all worked just fine for anything from trout to sea fishing.

[misfish]

The Dollar store has them as well. Now thats cheap.