Since coronavirus pandemic we were also forced to stop coming back to Japan for years unfortunately.
But finally, most of flight lines are coming back and we could land back to Japan and had game fishing trip over there!
Today we introduce you our experience with some of nice product information.
New Products from Valleyhill / Ja-do / Whiplash Factory
Over than these 3 years we finally came back to Japan and had nice catch-up with anglers people in Japanese fishing industry – “Staff K” from Taniyama Shoji – the company owns those major game fishing brand, Valleyhill / Ja-do / Whiplash Factory etc.
These brands have really unique products for variety of type of fishing, and also releasing more new items as well, and here we picked up some items that we really liked or were keen to try out.
Valleyhill Cyphlist – HRX Pro Spec – Hard Rockfish Edition / Flatsaber
These are the new rods from salt water rod brand of Valleyhill – Cyphlist, HRX Pro Spec – Hard Rockfish Edition for rockfish game fishing, and Flatsaber for sutf flatfish game fishing.
HRX Pro Spec – Hard Rockfish Edition is high-spec rockfish rod.
Rockfish game fishing is really famous in Japan, and when you hook those species, they then try so hard to get down to the bottom, therefore rods need to have tough and strong butt section to pull them up as quick as possible.
We tried bending the rod and felt this HRX Pro Spec has really strong and powerful blanks, that can easilly pull up rockfish.
Moreover, this rod has really interesting gimic – comfortable balancer system.
The grip end is able to be taken off by screw, and you can actually place some weights, up to 30g.
Reel and rod weight balance is pretty important to keep flicking lures, and it can be different person by person.
This system lets you select your desired weight balance, so if you feel your desired reel is a bit too light against the rod, then add weights at the grip end, so the weight point becomes more torwards the grip end.
By this system, you have more choice what reel you use.
This rods have variety of length, strength for both spinning and baitcaster.
Flatsaber is targetting flatfish fishing, especially from surf area, therefore they only have long length models.
This is a renewal model of prevous Flatsaber, which one of our staff – me loved using from surf, but drastically updated.
Previous model had regular tapered blanks, which can use blank power to cast longer, but when I used for middle – large size fishes the blank was a bit too bent and slightly harder to pull up, especially from rock surf area.
But this model has slightly regular-fast taper (although the spec sheet says regular taper), so the bending point is slightly becoming towards tip side.
Butt power is drastically increased so we imagined this would have quite enough strength to pull up, which previous model did not have.
Also, I used the previous model in our Youtube channel with 21 TwinPower XD, and mentioned the rod was a little too heavy with this reel.
The rod weight is not that different for this new models, however weight balance is also updated and gained, therefore it can even be matched to SHIMANO 18 STELLA C3000 – 210g, which was even lighter than 21 TwinPower XD.
Ja-do Ranga 65
This is a new lure from Ja-do, which is a seabass fishing brand from Taniyama Shoji.
This is a hard body vibration lure, but this is also designed for wide darting by jerking, unlike normal vibration lures.
As of the action movie above, this Ranga slides left – right by sharp jerking, but it also vibrates when you retrieve normally.
And as of pro angler Fujisawa mentioned – this lure is designed not to pickup the line by the hooks at darting.
This lure lets you create “aggressive” game plan for your game fishing.
Whiplash Factory – Flutterin’ Wire
This is a blackbass lure from Whiplash Factory.
Flutterin’ Wire is a topwater lure but with bottom blade, therefore this stands still even by slow retrieving.
The blade appeals to fish strongly, and gives nice body balance on the water.
This can even use for dog-walk action nicely, which can immitate baitfish trying to run away from aggressive fish eaters.
Major Game Fishing in Japan – “Chinning” Breaming and Seabass Fishing
Firstly, we are really sorry that we don’t have much photos for those fishing-in-Japan report as we can’t open wide the fishing area offically.
At first, we went to one of river entrance for breaming “Chinning”.
The season is a bit in middle of spring and summer, which is as anglers said – “very hard mode” season.
This time, we tried top water game with bass lure – Flutterin’ Wire, with Ja-do special edition rod, Arbalest 8605LMF Friar. Reel is DAIWA 22 EXIST PC LT3000-XH with VARIVAS Avani Seabass PE Si-X #1.0-150m.
Arbalest Friar is high-spec seabass fishing rod from Ja-do. Light weight, but strong butt and supple tip, really easy to cast and make lure actions.
As said, breaming in Japan is really close to freshwater bass fishing, therefore a lot of methods and tackles can be shared in those type of fishing.
Topwater breaming works especially in summer season, when fish become more active, and this Whiplash factory Flutterin’ Wire does really work for it.
Blades can make noise like buzz lure with right swimming form on top, even for slow retrieving, so I could see it could work well in high season.
Dog walk is easy to be actioned, by jerking and sliding a little longer than normal pencil / popper types.
We found out the day was not really in the topwater season just yet and not really active, but this lure could have couple of bites each.
I could imagine it’ll be really interesting to use this lure in middle of summer season.
Tough Seabass Game Season
The main target of the fishing trip is Japanese “Suzuki” Seabass, which is really famous game fishing target.
This seabass game fishing is easy-to-enter, but super delicate fishing that I have never heard in overseas.
This day was nearly end of season called “Bachi Nuke” which sandworms are the main bait of them. This is spawning season for those sandworms and they swim in the water really actively, and that makes seabass very active as well.
But as they only eats worms not fish, bites are not really strong nor sharp, so you can have lots of bite signs but super hard to hook them.
Firstly we used Ja-do Envy 95, which is designed especially to immitate those sandworms.
Nowadays seabass fishing is super delicate, they eat only in certain, particular points they decide, so if you drag your lure 10cm out of their eating spot, they won’t chase your lures.
This “10cm” is all around, which means if 10cm deeper or shallower than the area they eat, they won’t bite either. Therefore, seabass angler thinks where to pull their lure really sensitively, delicately.
For example, if you use this Ja-do Envy 95, you can drag this just under the surface with tip-up, then try 15-20cm tip-down to sink the lure 5-10cm. Then try completely tip-down to sink your lures slightly deeper, or use Ja-do Yaruki Stick instead to target even deeper.
Like this, even only for vertically, they try to hit the right range 10cm each from top to bottom, until they get reaction from their target.
This is also thought horizontally too, those Japanese anglers chase the biting point horizontally and vertically, little by little, and that’s what they do to catch fish.
I was really impressed about those tactics.
This day, we tried Envy 95 from top to bottom, left to right and had plenty of bites from fish, but not really hooked just yet.
As “Staff K” said this season is super tough, easy to bite, super hard to hook and I could really see what he meant. Sometimes bite was strong, and felt the lure was dragged, but as soon as you tip up it’s gone. To be honest, it was super fun, although we did not catch fish.
After trying hundreds of casts with different range, point, dragging speeds, at nearly picking up the lure – finally hooked!
Yeah.. It was a baby seabass as it looks..
But you know, this is not about size, you think a lot of tactics and tried so hard then finally got the answer, this is a pleasure of the fish.
(Of course bigger is better, yes lol)
While we were playing like this, Ja-do pro angler Takuya Shin and some other staff members joined to this fishing, and then..
Yes, professional is different!
It is really interesting what they thought to catch the fish really, for example – Mr. Shin Pro was walking really wide, checking those sandworms and found the spot where no anglers were fishing but they are hanging around. Then his effort paid off as above.
Another angler told us that he used super light rod, which is mainly used for small saltwater game fishing, to catch little bites better – because those lighter rods have softer tip, so fish could feel less discomfort at biting to swallow deeper, to hook more. Then it also paid off as below:
Of course, people in fishing industry can and is trying to fish hundreds of times harder than pleasure fishermen, but such their efforts are actually shaped as fishing tackles from their brands. Not only from Taniyama shoji but other brands, too.
Again, we learned a lot of things from them through this fishing section, not only about their products but how to get closer to your dream fish.
Of course it is not only from Japanese companies, but at least, we received strong passions of Japanese fishing industory and found where those high quality fishing gears are made from.
