DAIWA PRODUCT FOCUS: Black Gold Heating up the Tropics By Mark Bargenquast

Finally the time had come, after weeks of gruelling, day in day out guiding with some new untested tackle sitting in the room I was just hanging to get it out and give it a run! New lures, line, leader, rods and reels had arrived and even though I love placing the latest and greatest gear in clients hands to bend, I like to try it for myself before it gets the real stress test.

Tackle required for everyday guiding operations like the one we run on Cape York needs to be tough, dependable, have superior performance and be well priced, after all clients use the tackle for a trip of a lifetime often come back next year with their own of the same make!

Enter the new BG series of reels, I had one years ago when I was a young teenager, back then they were box shaped, heavy and agricultural but they did end up with a somewhat cult following due to dependability. Now 30 years on the BG series have new designs, materials, looks and features that  match some top end reels, and still with dependability!

Sitting in the boat today things were hot, November in the tropics being the buildup to the wet can be uncomfortable, with sweat running down my back and temperatures just a smidge under 40 I had plenty of trips under the front cast deck to the engel fridge for cold drinks!

I was up early this morning spooling one of my ‘just out of the box’  BG 4000 reels with 30 pound J-Braid, matching the reel I had the new Daiwa Saltist 70H Coastal spin rod, a 7 foot rod rated from 7 – 12 kg, possibly a bit over gunned with 30 pound but its  my personal preference to slightly over line a rod up here in the tropics.

 

I certainly don’t recommend it for novice anglers as any highsticking  (bending the butt past 90 degrees to the fish) can explode the rod and is one of the leading causes of rod failures I see every day in the field, any make any model it will happen trust me! Use commonsense drag settings and keep the rod tip low and this will never be a problem.

We had a good early run out tide this morning so I knew a spot where we could chase a few fingermark, jacks and possibly barras around some boulders as the tide slowed. Even though I had my ever faithful zillion baitcasters , freams and black label rods the BG/saltist combo was getting baptized today.

We fished hard with a variety of hardbodys and plastics with some great success, first fish was a giant groper about 40 kg on the saltist/BG combo, a tough 45 minute tug of war I had him boatside for a pic before release, after that small fingermarks, a meter queenfish, various trevally, 2 nice coral trout, big grunter on vibes and I lost a nice longtail tuna boatside on the trip home, and yes my mate scotty had a cast and nailed an 86 cm salty barra with my outfit……..bugger!

 

The outfit performed beyond expectations when fishing a variety of techniques for different species and is well suited to the varying fishing styles we encounter on the cape, at the end of the day I had racked up quite a score with the new rig!  I’ll certainly be putting the BG reels through there paces over the off season…………..stay tuned.