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At Baywater Anglers, being a family club, we have a lot of children that are new to the sport. These come in a variety of shapes and sizes but they tend to have similar qualities, like inexperience, heavy-handedness and an impulse to heave for all they're worth whenever they get the chance! This means that, over time, we get through quite a lot of outfits so we are always on the lookout for rods and reels that are cheap, reliable and yet still light enough to enable the children to have an exciting fight from the fish that they catch. We were therefore delighted when we came across the GP devil outfit.

The outfit that we bought - and we have bought about twenty of them now, both for prizes and for children to use, which gives you a pretty good idea how highly we rate them - combines an eight foot spinning rod with the reel that is pictured above. The spinning rods, which combine a fibreglass tip for strength and bite detection, have handled everything thrown at them with flying colours. They cast very well - surprisingly well in fact for such a cheap and cheerful outfit - and we have used them for spinning, legering and float-fishing. In every case they have done the job well although we have kept the lead weights down to two ounces or less, which is higher than the rod's rating suggests but has proved to be well within the rod's capabilities. (We found that one and a half ounces was ideal.) The reel is a no-nonsense piece of kit which is tough enough to handle most of the abuse that nimrods (newcomers to angling) put their tackle through and, so far, has stood up to everything that has been thrown at it. It casts well, has very little backplay when you wind with the anti-reverse engaged and gives off line pretty smoothly when a fish is pulling back. All in all, I think that this is one of the best newcomer kits that I have ever seen. It is rugged but still a pleasure to use. It doesn't look bad either, being finished in black, grey and red livery with the reel accented with red to match the rod. It is a great first outfit for newcomers and will do well as a holiday rod for something to sling in the boot and take with you when you visit the coast. I really liked it.

Features: 8 foot spinning rod with 5 lined intermediate rings, screw winch reel fitting and solid fibre glass tip. Reel has skirted spool (ported with line clip) front drag and interchangeable left/right hand wind. The handle folds upon demand and is fitted with a power grip. The spool, which comes pre-loaded, holds 255 yards of 12 lbs line.

Overall Impressions: (taken on the outfit as a whole) Performance 8 Balance 7 Value 10 Reliability 9 Total Score 34/40