Discipline

Traina (Mediterranean trolling) Rods

Traina is the Italian word for trolling, and it covers everything from a small boat drawing a live bait along a rocky coast to serious offshore work for tuna. The rods are short, most of them close to two metres, because a trolling rod is a lever for fighting rather than a tool for casting. They are rated by line class in pounds, the international convention for tackle built around the fight.

Rods: 110
Makers: 3
Type: Trolling / Spinning
Length: 5.7'–19.7'

Filter database by this discipline Back to database

How traina is fished

The boat does the work of finding fish. Baits or lures are set behind it at chosen depths and distances and the boat holds a speed and a course, so the angler's job begins when something takes.

The fishing splits by where it happens. Coastal traina works close in along rock and drop-offs, often with live or dead natural bait at slow speed, for bonito, leccia, bluefish and sea bass. It is fished light, and the bottom of the class ladder, 1-4 lb and 2-6 lb, belongs to it. Offshore work runs faster and heavier for tuna and larger pelagics, which is where the 12-20 lb and 20-30 lb rods and their gimballed butts come in.

Because the rod is short and the fight is long, the equipment is arranged around leverage and around the angler's body. A butt that seats into a belt or a chair turns the fight into something the legs and back can do, and the rod's bend is matched to the drag the class allows. That is why the line class rating is the central spec: it is the number that keeps the rod, the reel's drag and the line working as one system.

A small part of the range is built for kayaks, which is the same idea scaled down to a boat with no chair and no crew.

Reading the numbers

The number is a line class, not a lure weight

The lb figure is an IGFA line class: the line the rod is matched to, not a lure weight
The ladder runs 1-4 lb through 20-30 lb, with 6-12 and 12-20 the common classes
It does not convert to a UL-XH power rating, and no power class is published here
A separate gram figure, up to 300 g on some rods, is the trolling weight. Different number, different job
'Unibutt' means a gimballed butt for a fighting chair or harness

How traina rods are rated

Line class across the 69 rods in this discipline that publish one.

Line class (lb)

69 rods with an IGFA line class · busiest at 16-22lb

⚠ This is the line the rod is matched to, not a lure weight and not a casting weight.

Where it comes from

Traina is the everyday boat fishing of the Italian and wider Mediterranean coast, and it sits in this catalogue as its own discipline for a specific reason: the word carries the tradition, and a generic label did not.

This value used to be called trolling. The problem was that trolling in English covers an enormous, mostly American population of rods that have nothing to do with Mediterranean practice, so a broad label pulled in tackle the layer was never meant to describe. Renaming it to traina fixed that permanently, because a tradition-specific name cannot accidentally match a generic rod. American trolling tackle stays on its own technique tag; these rods keep a page that is actually about them.

The tackle itself follows international big-game convention more closely than most European disciplines do. Line classes are the IGFA ladder rather than a local invention, and gimballed unibutt fittings are the same ones used on heavy tackle anywhere. What is distinctively Mediterranean is the light end: a substantial part of this range sits at 1-4 lb and 2-6 lb for coastal work on small pelagics, which is a scale of trolling that barely exists in Atlantic big-game catalogues.

Lengths reflect all of it. The range concentrates between 1.7 m and 2.4 m, with 2.1 m the single busiest size, which is a stand-up rod meant to be held and fought rather than left in a holder.

Choosing a traina rod

Choose the line class for the fish and the drag you intend to run. The ladder goes 1-4, 2-6, 4-8, 6-12, 8-15, 12-20 and 20-30 lb. Coastal work on bonito and bass lives at the light end; tuna and larger pelagics need the top. The class is what keeps rod, drag and line consistent, so match the whole system rather than the rod alone.

Do not read the lb figure as a casting or lure rating. It describes the line, and some rods separately quote a trolling weight in grams for what is dragged behind the boat. Two numbers, two questions.

Take length as given. Nearly everything here sits between 1.7 m and 2.4 m and 2.1 m is the commonest size. These are short because leverage over a long fight matters and casting does not.

Look for a unibutt if you are fishing the heavy end. The gimballed fitting seats into a belt or a fighting chair and puts the load through your body instead of your arms. On a 20-30 lb class rod it is the difference between a fight you can finish and one you cannot.

Check the closed length if the rod travels. Several models quote one in the notes, which points to a build that packs down. The telescopic marker is unreliable across this range, so the closed length is the more useful number.

The traina cohort at a glance

Length, rod weight and maker across every rod declared for this fishery.

Length

110 rods with a length

Rod weight

65 rods with a published weight

Makers

Tubertini46
Colmic35
Trabucco29

Featured traina rods

One rod from each maker that builds for this fishery, drawn from the ideal envelope above.

Colmic Aventador Top Class Acid 7'2" 30lb

Trolling 7'2"

Tubertini Sea Master 7'0" 1-4lb

Trolling 7'0"

More traina rods

A selection from the 110 rods declared for this fishery.

Tubertini Vitality 2 6'11" 20-30lb

Trolling 6'11"

Tubertini Ashent Light 7'10"

Trolling 7'10"

Trabucco Skipjack Skipjack Live Trolling 2.2m 12-20lb

Spinning 7'3"

Trabucco Neptune XT Neptune XT Trolling 6' 20-30lb

Spinning 6'

Trabucco Windrose Windrose Acid Plus 2.15m

Spinning 7'1"

Colmic Medina 6'1" 20lb

Trolling 6'1"

Show all 110 traina rods →

Related disciplines

Bolentino (boat) Drifting Bombarda Beachcasting (continental surf) Iso (rock shore)