First Look: The Spooligan Wingman

At its core, the Wingman is a clever tertiary rod rest that clips securely to your tripod leg. Sounds simple enough, right? But where others have fallen short, Spooligan have nailed the design with solid materials and clever engineering. If you’ve tried other versions of this in the past, you’ll know the frustration – they twist, slip, or worse, completely give way under pressure. Not ideal when you’re relying on the thing to hold your pride and joy six feet above the rocks. Resorting to tape is not a good way to go, as much as I’ll tolerate a temporary bodge along with the next guy, I don’t mind paying a little extra for something that I know is going to last. 

The standout feature for me has to be the adjustable teeth mechanism that lets you lock the Wingman firmly onto the tripod leg. It’s incredibly satisfying – using both thumbs, a firm press engages the locking teeth, giving you a rock-solid hold. No movement, no wobble. Even better, the contact point with the tripod is rubberised, so once it’s in place, it’s not going anywhere – even under the heavy pressure of a roaring tide and excessive strain on the rod tip. The best bit about all of this though is that you don’t need to awkwardly slide the Wingman up the tripod leg when you want to use it. Tripod legs get muddy, bent and generally beat up, so it’s a real pain in the backside to attempt this. The fact that the Wingman can be opened up and attached direct to the leg at the point you wish to use it really does save a load of hassle. 

The head itself shares the familiar profile of the popular Spooligan Grippa Head – which I’ve used since its release and rate highly. Its shape keeps the rod snugly in place with no chance of it potentially sliding out to the side, as with some designs on the market. The majority of tripod heads offer a closure on one side, but an opening end at the opposite end of the V, meaning that when fishing in strong tides, a lot of anglers will unlock the head and spin it around at different stages of the tide to ensure that the rods can’t be pulled from the open end of the head. Again, this is more faff that we can do without. That same practical Spooligan design has been incorporated into the Wingman, giving you extra peace of mind when your rod is in place. And to me, that makes perfect sense, to utilise a concept that works, across each relevant product in the range.

What really elevates the Wingman is a clever feature borrowed from Spooligan’s Riggle – a small integrated rig holder underneath the head of the Wingman for storing a spare rig. It’s a small touch, but incredibly useful, especially during busy sessions when you might have several rigs baited up and ready to go on the tripod. Simply slide the top swivel of your rig in to the gap, and it is securely held in place until you need it. It’s always puzzled me why the traditional rig hanging wire beneath the tripod is where it is. Okay, so arguably this was originally placed here to allow for a bag of stones or something else of weight to add to general stability, but many use it as a point to hang up spare rigs. Surely the tripod head was always the better option for attaching clips of some kind, and it took a company like Spooligan to finally do it. The added bonus of this whole Riggle idea is that there are no protruding wires to get tangled up in rod guides whilst it’s all in your holdall, or worse still pierce the upholstery of your vehicles interior. They do say the cleverest ideas are the most simple; they’re really not wrong.