A friend of mine and I are looking at a recent edition of Sportfishing Magazine, and they are talking about heavy jigging rods. These are set up with the Shimano Stella spinning Reels that provide up to 65lbs of drag. Wondering what type of blank would make one of these? The price of the rods are $950.00? They are using 100-130 lb braided line. The size of these blanks look very small (not a pool cue), can anyone make a recommendation or provide any insight??? Calstar? Seeker? Super Seeker?

MOst of those are JApanese blanks. Smith, Zenaq, Carpenter, JiggingMaster, TunaMax. RAndy at Angler's Pro Shop in Brooklyn, NY stocks most of these Factory rods, but I'm not even sure they have blanks available. i do know the TnaMax & JiggingMAster blanks ARE avialble as blanks from Randy, as well as Paul REyburn who often posts here on .org. As far as I know, these are the SOLE sources for these blanks in teh USA, and Randy is the lone shop stocking these factory rods. I may be wrong though.

Hi John
After speaking with a charter operator in Fremantle Western Australia about what jigging rod would be the best for an up coming Samson fish trip a few years ago. I built a jigging rod on a Calstar Graphiter GF760L cut down from the butt 5'8". On the 2 trips I went on in Western Australia just about everyone who was a regular jig fisherman was using one as a jig rod or had one as a back up to there $1000 japanese jobs. I run about 15kg to 20kg of drag on mine and they can take a lot more (If you can hang on). To date I have never heard of one breaking nether has anyone else I have spoken with. Over the last couple of years I have collected about a half a dozen heavy jigging rods and it is still my favorite go to rod for chasing the big stuff in deep water with heavy jigs at home. Perfect for 80lb+ braid and 300 to 600gram (10 to 22oz) jigs. I hope this helps regards
Simon



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/14/2007 09:30PM by Simon Oakley.

I have used the GF760L as deep ocean jiggers but used them mostly for multipliers on a simple spiral basis. Even when I cropped 6" from the butt, the blank is still fast and IMHO it's more suitable for overheads than spinning. Most of the heavy spin jiggers here are built on either Jigging Master or Matagi Fixer blanks.

[www.rodbuilding.org]

Anthony Lee

the jigging master are great blanks. i have been working on the 760L.still not sure if i like it. (anthony i have sent you a few e-mails) ,,Billy, from a few posts i have seen, randy is not selling blanks..he was looking for someone to wrap them for him..i offered..LOL.. but i guess being 100 miles away, was to far he was looking local...i have to see if i can find that issue of SFM to see the 950$ rod.. even a custom JM dont sell for that much..

NERBS

Do you have a month to read? Check out ONE of many posts on vertical jigging.

[www.rodbuilding.org]

The SFM, article was about an Australian mother ship with two sportfishers and a couple of center consoles that go out by day. I mislead you a little, the rods were not in the SFM article, but actually on the website for the mother ship that was featured in the article.

I hope I am not viotating rules by posting the info for others to look at the rod info. I do not know this company or endorse them in any way. I went to the main page and then went to the tackle store and looked at the rods. www.nomadsportfishing.com/au

Paul,

I could have deleted your emails as I get many unwanted mails everyday. Appreciate if you could title your emails with a familiar subject like "Rod Blanks" etc., and I will surely read those.