First update for a little while, sorry for the delay. Just to close off on the Cornish Lure Festival, suffice to say I caught a few fish, but didn’t win! That honour went to local angler Craig Russell with a magnificent 10lb 4oz fish! A great weekend though and I’m already looking forward to next years….big up Art of Fishing for putting this on!
Since then I’ve had a bit of a “firesale” of some tackle to raise funds for a couple of new purchases, the first of which arrived on Friday…a 9’6’’ Megabass XOR Shadow XX 8-32g. I’d been hankering over a new 9’6 rod for a while now, the Red Dragon, whilst fun to build was not cutting it for me as fishing tool and was simply to powerful for what I want from a rod.
So, after making a shortlist of replacements rods, this came out 2nd but after failing to be able to source the rod I really wanted from Japan (at least not in my impatient timescales) I ordered the above.
So on to Saturday and a trip down to Dorset to give it its first test. Thankfully, summer appears to have arrived at last, so glorious sunshine and crystal clear calm seas greeted me. Not the best conditions but after weeks of wind and rain I didn’t care it was just lovely to be out by the sea in the sun. The tide was low and flooding when I arrived at my first mark. My strategy for dealing with the bright conditions was to try and get a reaction bite, so Chartruse based lures and fast retrieves were the plan and on with a Zonk in “hot shad” to kick off.
My first impressions of the rod were that it was a bit heavy, but in fairness it’s not really, it’s just I am used to my 8ft Branzino which is feather light so anything feels heavy after that!
Casting wise, the more progressive JDM style action of the rod took a little getting used to, but I soon had it sorted and was firing the lure out nicely. Actually casting with the rod is a real pleasure, you just need to let the rod load and do the work which makes for easy effortless casts. Distance wise they were a little up on what I can normally achieved with my 8ft rod, but nothing to shout about until I put on a Tide Minnow 140, which really flew out, a good 20 yards + on my normal efforts. The rod also made easy work of a Patchinko and it was simple enough to work surface lures effectively.
The rod struggled when it came to fishing soft plastics “HRF” style, the additional length and lack of feel and balance point well forward of the reel made it a not very pleasant experience, but to be fair it’s not really designed for this sort of fishing and that’s not why I bought it.
Overall I’m really happy with the rod, it does exactly what I was after and all in all it’s a very good tool for fishing HP’s that’s will cope with all conditions without being overly powerful. I do particularly like this JDM style action on a rod I’ve decided, the action is more forgiving than some of the “Euro” top end rods and it make playing fish an absolute dream.
Talking of fish, I did manage a couple, or 5 to be precise two at dusk on a Sammy and three after dark on a Komomo II of Joker FP. Again I’m learning the lesson that it really pays to fish into darkness during these summer months, I must do more of it!
I forgot to mention my other purchase, a Diawa Caldia 2500 reel which I haven't tried this yet. Until this point I have been a sworn 8ft rod + shimano reel man so I’ve broken all my own rules with these buys, hopefully the reel will be a similar success to the rod!
