When I heard of the sale at Fish and Dive, a JDM rod and reel shop here in Manila, I grabbed the opportunity and got myself an 8ft PE .6-1.2 rod purposely built for eging or squid fishing. At 50% off, the Daiwa E-GEE rod was a steal and I just can't pass up on the chance. Eging rods are really rare here in PH and the only other way to get them is from this shop, which I can't afford if on a regular price, or by ordering online. I still don't have a matching reel but getting the rod is the hard part. There are plenty of reels locally available. The only problem is the cash. It's a good thing my daughter has a decent ultralight spinning reel that I can borrow.
A week after getting the eging rod, Bong, our fishing mentor, got himself an eging rod with a matching reel -- A Daiwa Neoversal and a Team Daiwa Z 1500 reel -- all JDM. He got it really cheap from a Japanese surplus shop. After hearing about his recent purchase, I convinced him to go out and try our gears. Unfortunately, eging spots are quite far so we decided to try a relatively near river just up north of Manila. But instead of eging, we tested these rods with other applications such as ultra-light poppers, spoons, jigs and finesse plastics.
We left just before 5am and arrived at the spot almost 7am. We immediately tried the small spoons and poppers. And, it was an instant blast. Small predators just can't get enough of the very small lures. Bong got some bagaong (Terapon) and a mangilo bidbid (Ladyfish) using 2inch poppers while I got a nice sized Kandule and a bagaong on a 1.5 inch spoon. Aside from being able to throw light lures, the beauty of the very light and long rod is that you can feel every small nibble and bounces on your lure. I know some BC fans may frown on the small fishes on very light gear, specially spinning gears, but I began to appreciate the absolute fun we got from using them.
In between using the light spinning gears, we still got to cast bigger lures using our trusted casting outfit. At the end of the day, I ended up with 2 threadfin salmons (pics to follow).
Next stop --- squid fishing (eging) and asohos or bakoko fishing (whiting and bream) , either south or north (Subic perhaps). We can probably cast some small spoons and poppers in between. It's really good to have light spinning rod and reels in your arsenal especially when fishing salt. It's an absolute fun to use.
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