For ultra light lure addicts

Completely off topic!
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Hvalross
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For ultra light lure addicts

Post by Hvalross »

I just found ( taken a while) Gekka-bijin whilst browsing Trellys at Laverton.

Amongst the top end ultralights was a heavily discounted 7' Gekkabijin rod. Sports minimalist handle hardware and AIR guide...carbon fibre with sic inserts and really out there cosmetics. It felt so good I just could not resist :shifty: and upon getting home put a 1000 Stradic on it and started casting a hookless 3B Puppy Dog around the paddock.
The lightness of the rig was apparent as I was thrashing the thing through the air like there was no tomorrow. As soon as I slowed and relaxed into the "feel" of the combo the cast both flattened out and made better distance.
From memory the Puppy Dog is about 3.5g with hooks so I imagine the lure sans hooks is a bit lighter...it is not a distance rig in my hands, and reviews suggest that may be the case for others too. However, when it comes to control and accuracy at snags and structure it really starts to shine even at the ultra end of lure.
Bounced the purchase off a few folks and found that some others had one and others had seen them. Consensus was that it great for tossing unweighted SP's at the banks and structure.... the action is fast but somewhat parabolic, its that bit of softness in the bottom 1/3rd that sets it up as an effective Ultra light.
I was so impressed that I went back and ordered the matching reel a Daiwa Gekkabijin 2004.......that cost more than the rod!!!
But again as soon as I put it on the rod and started flicking it became a bit obvious that the folks at Daiwa had done a bit of homework as its mainly aimed at the Japanese market. The 2004 is mag sealed twin overhead sumps and blaster exhaust specification that simply speaks to tackle nerds and is as its name implies 2000 size, apparently the "4" at the end signifies its finesse reel with a max drag capacity of 2kg. To me that is mega drag, and will stop far bigger fish than this combo is designed for.
That puts this combination into the Bream, EP, and Bass market for dedicated light liners. As one might expect its light in the hands, the reel is ultra smooth and the very different winding knob is easy to adapt to. BUT like almost every shop bought rod reel combo I have handled its balance point is just at the front of the reel. With this light rig and my style of stand up fishing that is as near to perfect as one can get.........just a few grams more in the butt cap would have made it just outstanding.

The guide placement is outstanding on the copy I have and the backbone is where it should be so there will never be any rod twist under load. The 1000 Stragic was not as good a balance as it is with the 2004 and I am not going to buy into which brand is better.......I have both Daiwa and Shimano, neither has let me down yet and the oldest best made reels I have are ABU's bought in the early 70's..........but then these oldies dont have the smooth 'balance' of the current crop of top end reels they are deffinately more wobbly ( a technical term rarly used these days :roll: )
When all else fails........read the instructions!
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