Hi everyone, hope you all had a good Christmas.

My best mate bought me a 7ft, 3000 reel D-Shock for Christmas and I was wondering if this would be decent enough as an everyday rod for catching whiting off the beach and some bream and flatties from the river. It's my first brand new rod, everthing else I've used has been 'temporarily acquired' from my dad and I'm pretty sure he just picks them up from garage sales.

I'm on a pretty tight budget for a little while (trying to save up for uni books  ) but I can probably add a few bucks to upgrade it if I take it back to BCF for something a tad better. Also, what line should I have on the spool? I was thinking of re-spooling it with some braid, but I wasn't quite sure on what weight I should use.

Thanks guys!