Is anyone familiar with the japanese style of jigging rods? i know they are short and very specialized. if anyone could recommend a builder, or has any information on the rods i would really appreciate it.

Don,

When the Japanese first started jigging, they used long rods up to 9ft that are very heavy. After few years of R&D they started to build rod that are very short and light, some as short as 4'8" and only 300gm for a 40-60lb! Jigging rod are mostly made from very slim diameter blank, some as slim as a 10-25lb rod but they are rated 40-60lb and able to handle jigs up to 10oz. They can be a spinning or conventional rod. There are two ways of setting up a jigging rod to accomodate different ways of presenting the jigs.

a) These are the most famous kind of setup. These kind of jigging rod are built with a longer rear grip of abt 21 inches. These setup are for under the armpit style presentation where the rod butt is tug under the armpit while presenting the jigs.
b) These kind have a shorter rear grip, maybe abt 1ft. These are for use with a gimbal belt when presenting the jigs.

For the guides setup on multipliers, just follow the normal way of setting up guide spacing. It can even be spiralled.For spinning setup, because you r not casting with the rod, the butt guide can start with as small as a size 30 using the shimano stella 20000. Most rods end with a size 10 tip. On most rods, guides are double footed and they are reversed mounted.... Hopefully this will help!

Thanks for the reply. It will be interesting if such rods catch on here in the US. I see shimano has started...but there are still some differences between the trevala rod series and the Japanese counterparts.