Penn Spinfisher Fixed Spool Reel: SSV3500 Spin

So, another season and another new reel! What I hear you cry? Are you mad? What happened to all the others you've had?

Truth be told, is that the supposedly waterproof Alcedo lasted longer than most, but ultimately failed (twice). First time the spool jammed (and what else I don't know). Secondly the handle broke (rivet actually wore out, therefore unfixable). Italia fishing charmingly charged me £4 to send me my old handle back. Thirdly, the spool head lifting mechanism, that basically is a piece of metal with a groove in it for a pin on the main cog, shattered into pieces. This last one can only be down to poor quality alloy casting.  Quite a mess, as you can see:

The wrecked gears of a two year old Alcedo Aluminum MTC Match Reel

Now I could send good money after bad, thinking along the lines that having one wrecked reel will do for spares for the new one. But what if this is a design fault? Can't buy spares for them. To be fair to Alcedo, their Marine Spin reel (also reviewed on this site) has fared much better and is still going OK. But I felt it was time for a change.

Never really got on much with Penn fixed spools in the past. Always seemed a bit like dinosaurs from another (all metal) age; strong but too heavy, with a somewhat agricultural line lay and gearing.  But last year Penn released a new watertight version of their Spinfisher series.  The new spec has one or two nifty features, and I feel the time has come to have another look at their latest reel.

Penn SSV3500 Spin

The baby of the series is still a pretty hefty beast. Penn seem to think their sizing should be a size larger than everybody else's for some reason, so for most of us a 3000/3500 size reel might be around the 300g mark or less. Not the SSV3500, on my scales this reel comes in around 412g mark (without line), so around an extra 4oz will be in your hand all day when casting. But does this matter, if we get five years out of it?  Is the extra weight a sign of robustness? Only time can tell, and I must admit that I don't really notice the extra weight so far.

SSV3500 between the Abu Cardinal Saltwater 174i (left) and the Alcedo Marine Spin 5000 (right).  The Penn reel is heavier than both and just marginally smaller than the 5000 sized reel.

The Penn SSV3500 feels smoother than previous Spinfishers that I've owned. Annoyingly, there is still a bit of play on the reel handle, something that you don't tend to find with brand new reels around the £100 mark (admittedly the SSV3500 is just short of that) but overall the reel is smooth and feels hefty and strong. The reel has the usual number of bearings, though Penn do stress that these are sealed and corrosion resistant.  However, I've never had the bearings on a reel fail.  For me, it's always the internal gears that go first, and saltwater ingress is the problem there. Hopefully the 'watertight' construction of the Penn SSV3500 will stop that being the first point of failure.

The reel's drag is also sealed and seems smooth.  This is important, as the reel has no reverse, it's in permanent anti-reverse mode.  If you like to play fish using the reverse rather than the drag, this might not be the reel for you.  For me, I grew up trout fishing and have always played fish using the reverse gear of the reel. This was partly down to the poor quality of fixed spool drags 30 years ago. They were unreliable, sticking things that were best screwed down tight and forgotten. But modern sealed drags are different. They are reliable and smooth, and the arguments for maintaining a reverse gear on the reel are not as strong. Finally, it must be said that playing trout out on a mountain river using your reel's reverse is one thing. Trying to control the heart stopping plunge of a big pollack at sea using a reel's reverse gear is not going to happen.  What is certain to happen is a breakage of something!

There is one killer feature I love on this new reel (other than it being watertight): a friction stop on the spool head when the bail is open. This is such a simple idea, but it effectively stops any chance of the reel handle swinging round and triggering the bail arm to close during a cast.  For the vigorous casters out there, we've all had to suffer snap offs with expensive braid and watched our expensive Japanese plugs disappear into the distance. I reckon this should cure it. Yes, it's a friction stop. So you can force the handle to turn and it will trigger the bail arm to close as normal, but it encourages you to flick the bail arm over yourself after casting which I have always considered a good habit to get into.

The reel itself comes with a nice parts plan and helpful instructions on filling the spool / line lay (more below):

Ah yes, the line lay. This is probably the only weak point of the reel. Never been a strong point of Penn's in my opinion compared to the Japanese competition, and frankly it is a bit "rustic" if you get my drift. To be fair, Penn do supply some washers with instructions on how to fix the line lay if it tapers in either direction. But I'm mystified why they can't build it so that the line lay is straight? Most decent reels just work straight off, with no adjustment needed. I'm not sure what's going on here, and sure enough, I filled up my reel with 13lb Grauvell Teklon Gold Mono that has a diameter similar to most 8lb mono and the line lay ended up tapered with a slight gap under the top lip of the spool and narrow at the top than the bottom:

The less than stellar line lay of the Penn SSV3500.

I did as suggested and fitted a narrower washer to the base of the spool and we'll have to see if it rectifies the line lay over the course of the next trip. It might not be an issue, but it does seem a bit odd to have to do this on a brand new reel.

So do I recommend the Penn SSV3500 for sea kayak fishing? Not yet, it needs to last a couple of seasons first! But from the spec, the reel ticks most of my boxes for sea kayak fishing.  It needs to be watertight and saltwater proof. These are the absolute minimum requirements for sea kayak fishing, as our reels get splashed every minute or so when trolling, either by paddles or waves. There's no way to avoid this, so any reel has withstand this treatment. Then there's the price. True, the Penn isn't the cheapest reel out there. But it is the cheapest watertight (not waterproof) reel out there.  Penn do have a good reputation for making reliable, robust reels, albeit at a weight cost!  But if you're considering a new reel for sea kayak fishing, there are very few around that can do the job if you want one that you can use for more than just a season and I'd definitely check it out.

As always, I'll update the review at the end of the season (which is pretty soon now) to let you know how the reel has performed on the sea.

Saltwater-proof spinning reel? First look at the Alcedo Hokkaido Marine Spin 5000

Some of you who know this blog will be wondering if I'm not a glutton for punishment, after previously having difficulty with another Alcedo reel that claimed to be waterproof.  Thing is, firstly their agent for the UK did replace the reel after it jammed, clearly having got saltwater inside. Secondly, the reel was pretty good otherwise.  When I got the replacement, I ignored the silly "you'll void your warranty if you open it up" warnings and applied plenty of good quality reel grease to anywhere I thought the brine could get it.  And so far, it's held up much better than its predecessor.  Not that difficult, I suppose, given the first lasted less than a season.

So why, you might ask, have I gone out and bought another reel from them?  Well, Bill (their agent) did say that they were working on making a saltwater resistant reel (notice the careful wording).  The new reel, the Marine Spin 5000 is pretty much the same reel as the Aluminium MTC, other than its supposed saltwater resistance.  Which means it could be a good thing, given that the Aluminium MTC failed in just a few weak places.  That reel was never waterproof, which is why when the salt got inside, it was doomed to fail as the materials weren't saltwater proof.  The spool jammed, the reel pretty much seized up solid.

Yeah, the handle's big, but it's not that big!  Sorry for the weird "phone camera" perspective!

Anyhow, here we are again.  The Marine Spin is a bigger reel than the Aluminium MTC, so it should handle the hard work of many hours plugging and soft lure work, particularly as some of the lures get up to an ounce  or two.  Surprisingly, the reel is only 100g heavier, which means it works as an ideal replacement for light jigging work where you would generally use a multiplier. Hence I guess the enormous power handle, which looks purpose made for jigging and was one of the reasons I bought it, having lost my previous set up over the side!  But I've also come to the conclusion that even with a spiral ring placement on your rod, using a fixed spool to jig rather than a multiplier is just a lot easier.  The problem to date has been the reliability of fixed spools is nowhere near that of multipliers, particularly in hard marine environments.

Weasel words or the genuine article? We'll see in a few months time.

The Marine Spin 5000 certainly looks the part, handsomely finished in orange and black.  It feels pretty beefy and it should be with a compromise gear ratio of 4.9, which isn't the fastest nor the slowest but should be low enough for winching those scaly beasts up from the depths.  The reel is perhaps not as smooth running as the smaller Aluminium MTC but is perfectly acceptable.  I might feel differently if this was going to be my main spinning reel, but it going to be mostly used for jigging for cod and pollack, so it won't get the huge number of hours of use that a spinning reel gets.  

The handle looks great for hanging on when those heart-stopping pollack-thumps strike without warning.  The clutch seems silky out of the box.  We'll see if starts to stick after a few months of being drenched in paddle and wave splashes.

The line lay with 33lb braid (15kg Power Pro Depth Hunter) is good, no evidence of bedding even when pressure is applied on the retrieve.  The drag seems particularly good, but they always do straight off the production line!  Let's see how smooth it is after a few dunkings in the brine...  :-)  

Although Alcedo, like all reel manufacturers, like to shout about how many bearings etc. the reel has (it has 8), the only thing that really counts for sea kayak fishermen is whether it can keep out the salt.  That remains to be seen.  My new Shimano boat rod has a long handle (so long I took 4" off it - see here), which keeps the reel pretty clear of stray waves.  Of course, when sea kayak fishing, reels always get splashed with sea water, particularly if you're doing a lot of trolling.  They have to be able to withstand that one basic requirement and I'm hopeful that the Alcedo Marine Spin 500 will do just that.  

Like always I'll be reporting back on the reel at the end of the season with an update on how the reel has performed.  

5 trips update!

So far, so good.  Reel has been dunked and splashed in saltwater and is still turning smoothly.  It gets rinsed with freshwater after each trip but I'm pleasantly surprised.  The drag remains pretty smooth (slight stickiness on higher kg loads, but hasn't failed me when getting hit hard by big pollack) and it's proved itself capable of winching up some big cod..  No visible signs of rust anywhere yet and the body coating has taken a far battering.  

The end of season update will follow in the winter months.

End of season update

Done ok this reel.  Slight stiffness on picking it up after the winter period, but used it all through 2014 so far and it seems fine.  Had several dunkings in the brine, still holding up.  Thumbs up so far!

Battered but hanging in there, so far so good after its 2nd season.

Shimano Vengeance Slim Boat Rod 6-12lb: review

After losing both rod and reel over the side, it is time for a new rod.  There isn't a huge choice out there for sea kayak fishermen.  Most of the UK market is concerned with boat angling, which implies you're fishing 4 feet or more out of the water, hence the standard length of eight and half feet.  Rather oddly, the Japanese and French boat rods are often much shorter, between 7-8ft, which makes them a good length for a kayak.  Unfortunately, many of these are very expensive, in order of several hundred pounds and for kayak fishing that just spells madness, as it's (ahem!) always possible you might lose it over the side in a moment's carelessness or through no fault of your own.

Slim?  American slim you mean?!

Sea kayak fishermen ideally want cheap rods that can stand a good deal of rough treatment.  As we all know, there's no worse environment for tackle than on a sea kayak.  If the salt doesn't get them, then the sand and grit will!  The second requirement is length.  You can't use a long rod (i.e. 9ft or more) comfortably on a kayak, as you are so close to the water it can make trying to land a fish nigh on impossible except by grabbing the line and hauling it in by hand.  The maximum length you want is just enough to get the tip of the rod past the nose of your kayak, for those cases like when you're trying to free up a snag on a quick drift, when you quickly need to move the line over to the other side.  For my new kayak (Stealth 575), this unfortunately means I'll have to fish with something around the 8ft mark. Far longer than I would generally recommend.

The handle is far too long on this rod.  Think about it, for a 6-12lb rod, do you really need the extra length to stick in your belt so that you can winch fish up?  No, the handle need be no longer than your down to your elbow.  As you can see, the blank is anything but slim, particularly at the tip.

My final requirement was that the rod should be less that £70.  Even that is pushing it a bit. After all, we're talking about a stout stick to haul cod, pollack and mackerel out of the North Sea, not some state of the art carbon wand to flick feathers at an overfed trout in a chalkstream! Given all of these, there isn't much out there. Again, many rods are broken at the handle, rather than mid-length.  This is supposedly for reasons of action.  Please see my argument about winching cod up.  Most of us are just not that bothered.

So what did I end up with? Shimano Vengeance Slim Boat Rod 6-12lb from Gerry's (great service, BTW).  For £44 you get a bog standard parabolic action boat rod.  Surprisingly for a UK rod (well OK, a Japanese rod!), the rating is actually pretty close to what it says.  Most UK boat rods are way too stiff and strong.  Would I recommend this rod for sea kayak fishermen?  Yes.  It's not great, it's cheap and cheerful. You pays your money, you gets what you asked for, see?

Pros:

• Rated 6-12lb, and it actually is 6-12lb!
• Duplon / EVA foam type handle
• Cheap

Cons:

• Handle is way too long.  I had to cut 4" off mine to make it usable in the kayak.
• Slim?  This rod blank is not much slimmer than any other boat rod.
• Two piece?  Not really, one very long piece, one short piece.  Makes storing and fitting it into the boot of your car difficult.  In fact it won't go in my boot.
• Soft parabolic action.  Why do manufacturers think this is what boat anglers want?  How does a soft through action help when you're trying to jig a cod lure 100ft down?  It doesn't.  Give us tip action rods, please!

You might think there are more cons than pros for this rod.  But as I say, it's about the best out there for the price.  There isn't much to choose from in all honesty, so until a rod manufacturer sits down with some experienced sea kayak anglers and asks them what they want, I guess we'll still be in this situation for the next few years.  Things will change I hope, but kayak fishing is still relatively young as a sport.  It's time will come!

 Tight lines to all those fishing.

UPDATE!

Well after just several trips over a few months, the tip eye broke its lining.  Unbeknown to me, I lost three full rigs and about a hundred yards of expensive braid due to the broken tip eye lining having a sharp edge and cutting through the line.  Very unhappy, as you can imagine.  And I wasn't that happy with the rod to begin with!  Not impressed with the quality, but I guess you get what you won't pay for and it ending up costing me half the price of the rod in lost tackle.  I look over the rings shows that many of them have also started to rust.

Given the poor quality components, I'm changing my recommendation on this rod to "Don't buy".   It's just not tough enough for kayak fishing.

The Stealth Pro Fisha 575: first impressions in the wet

So, the day finally arrived with almost no wind, bright sun and Bank holiday to boot, meaning I got the chance to dip my new Stealth Pro Fisha 575 in the sea for the first time.

Before I start this "wet first impressions", I must say that I'm constantly surprised at how light such a long SOT kayak is, the boat is over a metre longer than a Scupper Pro but weighs less. I can lift it on and off the car without a problem with regards to the weight, but its length is another thing. The yak is so light and long that when the wind catches it on your shoulder it can easily catch you off guard, and once something so long starts to swing it can take a bit of stopping!

I had spent weeks rehearsing how my various paraphernalia would fit in or on the Pro Fisha 575.  The 575 has a truly cavernous interior, accessed by a huge front hatch.  However, this is not quite as large as you first think.  For example, a C-Tug has to broken down to get it into the hatch.  But because the space in there is so big, I decided I could fit my C-Tug, my insulated fish bag and my tackle boxes all inside the hatch!  This does work, but it means that if you want to squeeze your rods in to go through the surf, you might find it difficult to get them past all the various bags.

Plastic bath tub vs. fibre-glass arrow!

First thing you are made aware of is the presence of the rudder. This means you can't easily put the kayak down on tarmac or any hard surface, or at least if you do then it has to rest on its side. You'll notice this most if you try and land on concrete slip ways or pebble beaches, as you have to drag it on its side to avoid the rudder.  Even on sand, you have to drag it on its side. Rods in their holders either fall out or go into the ground when it's on its side, the paddle will fall out of its clip and so on, and it doesn't somehow feel right to drag the yak up a concrete slip on its side...  The on-land aspect of having a permanent rudder is the one thing I don't really like about the yak, I wish Stealth had thought about a retractable system, such as that found on the Epic V6.

Once on the water though it's a different story: the rudder is great.  Almost no drag and very sensitive to careless adjustment by my unthinking feet!  Indeed, for the first hour or so I struggled to remember which foot did what and not to casually push forward in my footrests to stretch my legs, then veer alarmingly to one side! I generally dislike flip down rudders, they add a noticeable drag which means you don't tend to want to use them and when you do need them they can be a major hassle, often jamming in position.

The Stealth 575's rudder has none of these issues, there's no drag and it's always there. It doesn't seem to catch the bottom even on very shallow landing sites. For someone who's been used to constantly correcting their direction using paddle strokes, having a good rudder was something of a revelation. You can just concentrate on your paddle strokes and let your feet correct your course. Love that!

Despite the length of the 575, I found I could spin it round with the same ease as my Scupper Pro, possibly even easier. I was very relieved to discover how manoeuvrable it was.  It's quite impressive in that respect and it might have something to do with the boat having a more pronounced rocker than first meets the eye.

As a paddling vehicle, the 575 seems perhaps at the max about a third quicker than my Scupper Pro. That doesn't sound a lot, but it makes a massive difference when you want to get somewhere in a hurry. On several occasions I looked to see where my mate was before thinking "that'll take about ten minutes to get over there".  But the 575 just eats up the metres once you get the speed up. I found that whereas with the Scupper Pro I quickly reached a sense of the maximum speed of the kayak, beyond which paddling harder doesn't make much sense, with the 575 there seems to be smooth progression that doesn't seem to top out at a maximum. The harder you paddle, the faster it seemed to want to go. When I paddled back to the launch with my mate in his Ocean Kayak Big Game, I was literally taking two or three strokes then waiting 10-15 secs for him to catch up! I'm really looking forward to trying the Pro Fisha 575 out on some of the long distance marks to get a better sense of how much better it is, particularly in rougher conditions. The conditions we had were practically windless at times, and so I didn't get any chance to test paddling across the direction of the swell, or with a following sea.  I'll save those for a later report.

For me the biggest difference between the Pro Fisha 575 and my Scupper Pro was that the 575 is a far, far better fishing platform.  In fact there's no comparison really, the Scupper Pro is horribly designed in terms of fishing space and layout, whereas the 575 is pretty much perfect. I've always been something of a minimalist, but the Scupper Pro was frankly a pain to gut fish on and store tackle securely - my fish bag had to be right behind me and I have lost a couple of fish from them slipping out of my grasp as I reached behind me, missing the opening of the bag and then having them slide off into the depths! The Pro Fisha 575 has everything there within easy reach, secure and protected beneath a hatch. That's a big improvement, and I'm sure I'll appreciate it even more when I come into land with a bit of surf.  The only thing I didn't really like is the paddle clip, which barely holds the paddle in place.  Don't fancy trusting that in rough water...

Perfect fishing platform, shame about the lack of fish!

Fishing wise, it's still a bit early for clear water. The sea had that green murk we associate with the May Bloom, and generally it's a killer for the fishing. There was no sign of diving birds and everything looked pretty lifeless out there.  I tried my new weedless rig fitted with the Fiiish Black Minnow 160.  The rig worked pretty well, but on a fast drift 60g is just a bit on the light side and struggles to hold bottom.  But the big issue I had was that I didn't make sure all hook points on the lures were well inserted into their soft plastic bodies.  If you don't check this, they can work loose to expose the hook point and then snag up.  Ouch! Nearly a tenner's worth left on the bottom!  Didn't make that mistake twice and the rig managed to winkle out a couple of little coalies:

One thing you need to watch out even with a weedless rig is that flourocarbon is really pretty crap when it comes to abrasion resistance - I'm sure it's not as tough as something like Amnesia.  After an hour or so, I noticed the section close to the Black Minnow was within a whisker of breaking:

But today was not about the fishing, it was all about a practice paddle in my new yak. The final thing to do was to try out some self rescues.  We came right into the bay where the water was marginally warmer and shallower.  It's still bloody cold - this is the North Sea after all!  After watching Big Paddle's review and self rescue on the 575, I thought it looked pretty easy.  He certainly made it look easy in his video!  True, I had the Stealth Deluxe seat fitted, which does get in your way a little, but eventually I got the hang of it.  I definitely need more practice though!

In summary, the Stealth Pro Fisha 575 is a brilliant fishing platform.  It's a long, light, quick and responsive boat on the water.  It may not have the agility of a smaller boat in the surf, but that's not something I generally ever need.  It's eats up the kilometres with ease, and I've heard it actually performs better with a load of fish on board, so bring on those big catches of cod and mackerel in the summer months!

All in all, I'm really pleased with the kayak.  It's everything I hoped it would be and some things I didn't think it would be!

Review of Sakura Meiho Lure Box - SK9243

Some of you may have read of my various attempts at trying to sort out the saltwater lure box problem on kayaks (see here for my review of the Savage Gear Hang Bag).  In fact, it's a series of problems.

1. You need to be able to fasten to the kayak.  If you roll, what happens to your expensive lures?  Will that lid open if under water?
2. The box should fit between the legs and be easy to open with one hand, and give quick simple access to the lures.
3. Ideally a lure box would be waterproof.  However, for most kayak anglers that presents a problem, in that you can't guarantee to keep salt water from splashing your lures.  When that inevitably happens, then you need to be able to easily rinse the lures in freshwater when you get home.  Removable trays, mesh-bottomed drainable tubes, I've tried them all.  Never found one that dried off properly afterwards.
4. It should allow a mix of lure types, soft and hard, to be carried along with small items like snaps.  If you use hard lures, then the box should have a tangle-free method of storage.

Simple, right?  Wrong!

Such a box doesn't exist.  Never mind.  

In the absence of such a box, we must make do with boxes that fulfil part of the criteria above.  Granted this  is lot easier if you only carry one lure type.  The easiest lures to find boxes for are soft lures and that's what I'm focusing on today.  

By virtue of their design (single hook, separate heads and flexible bodies), soft lures can pretty much fit into any box.  Because they generally have just one hook, tangled lures are rarely a problem and the jig heads or fully assembled lures can be laid flat in sections.  This means the only remaining requirements are whether you want a waterproof box or one that drains easily to allow rinsing the lures, some means of fastening it to the kayak and one-handed opening.  Size is a personal preference - I tend to go for the biggest I can get in the limited area between my legs on the yak.  Long and thin is an advantageous shape here, and the box should be too tall so that it remains stable on a choppy sea.

There are probably many boxes that meet these criteria.  But I wanted a heavy duty box, and one that would allow me to fasten it to the yak without drilling a hole in the box compartments.  This is what I found:

Very strong ABS, one handed operation possible with sturdy catch.

Internal compartments with plenty of options.

Comes with some odd stickers and pads for the bottom.  Suspect these won't last long!

There's some limited room to drill holes for a leash to attach the box to the yak:

But perhaps the box's best features are its simplicity.  Nothing to go wrong here.

The box has a pretty tightly fitting lid.  Certainly shaking it upside down I wasn't able to spread the snaps or hooks around into other compartments.  My only criticism is that there's no easy way to rinse the lures if salt water does get in, which let's face it, on a kayak is a certainty.  But the risk of hook corrosion is obviously less when you're using single hooks.  We'll see.  As always I'll post back how the box did after its first year.

Sure looks pretty filled with my two favourite soft lures of the moment:  Savage Gear Sandeel and Fiiish Black Minnow!

Now, trying to find a box that would work as well for hard lures is much more of a challenge.  Any suggestions please let me know.

Tight lines to those fishing.

Snap judgement

To allow quick and easy changing of lures, I use a clip or snap link on all but the smallest of lures.  The principal advantage of using a snap is that you can keep rotating your lures without retying knots. In theory they also give the lure the greatest amount of freedom to move, as some anglers believe that tying a line directly to the lure hinders its action.

Sometimes lure manufacturers will add a split ring to their lures, especially to small plugs.  This is really a poor man's snap, as tying directly to a split ring is asking for trouble.  Knots such as blood knots can "slip" easily around the square form of the ring and the ends of the split ring are often poorly finished and can be sharp.  If your knot slips round to the part of the split ring that has one of the two ends and rubs against it, for example when a fish is twisting and getting tangled up, then it can cut the line.

It's far better to take the split ring off the lure (if there is one) and replace it with the correctly sized snap.  I'll review a selection below, though please note I'm not saying these are the best snaps available; everyone has their favourites, but there are some designs that I really don't like and I'll give my reasons why.

There are basically three types of snap mechanism: simple hook, cross locks and wind ons.  You can also choose whether the snap is included as part of a swivel.  I personally never bother with swivels for the simple reason that they don't work under tension, which is when you need them to work!  If you don't believe me try tying a 200-500g weight on a short length of line, then a swivel, then another short length of line.  Hold the last length of line up, spin the weight and watch to see if top part of the swivel stays still while the bottom rotates.  It won't.  Swivels are pretty much pointless.

Snaps on the other hand, are useful.  They allow you to rapidly change your lure; if they fail in this one basic function, the snap is next useless in my opinion.  You may as well employ the Rapala knot or simple loop direct to the lure.  The strongest style of snap is definitely the cross lock style.  Unfortunately that strength comes at a price: cross locks tend to be the fiddiliest to attach to a lure.  Whichever you choose, beware of choosing a wire gauge that's too light for the style of fish you're after.  Stainless steel wire is strong, but if a fish gets tangled up it can put strain on a snap in directions they are not designed for and when that happens they quickly get bent out of shape and break.

First up on today's review is the bizarrely named Owner Cross Lock Snap Swivel in size #1.  Bizarrely named, as there is no swivel on this snap!

OK, it's a daft name, but it's a very strong snap, one of the strongest for its size I've come across.  It is can be a bit fiddly to attach, but it's bombproof once it's on.

Next up is Savage Gear's Egg Snap in medium.  This is a black-finished stainless steel egg snap in the style of the original Decoy Egg Snaps.  

Again this is a strong snap for its size.  However, it's not as well designed as the Owner model (see below, click photo to view text), and it's frankly a nightmare to attach to lures with cold hands in driving rain.  

The above shot shows the Owner snap open next to the Savage Gear.  Small differences make a difference here.  The Savage Gear snap when open remains "trapped" behind the wire of the clip.  In fact, on one I opened it actually clipped to the main wire of the inner loop and was difficult to get off.  You really don't need any extra hassle when you're fishing, so while the egg snap here is strong enough and a good size, it's just too awkward to attach for me to recommend it.  The Owner snap is much easier, but it'll never be as easy as the simple hook or wind on styles below:

The first snap on the right is the Owner cross link snap I included just to compare its heavier wire gauge.  The middle snap is a free one that was given away by Monster when you placed an order with them last year.  This particular one is a pretty typical, nasty, cheaply constructed snap that has failed on me numerous times and I don't recommend using this style of snap.  Both Quantum and Spro produce snaps in this style, as do Yo-Zuri.

Their biggest advantage is that they are the easiest style snap to open and change a lure.  The number 2 size by Yo-Zuri is about right for UK sea bass fishing, but the lighter wire ones can twist out of shape after a fish or two.  I once found a cheap one had opened by itself after a dozen casts!  Despite being the easiest to attach a lure to, I no longer use this style of snap as I just don't trust them.  Their overall strength and the hook that latches the snap isn't anything like as secure as a cross lock.

The final snap on the right in the group of snaps in the previous photo is the Delalande Agrafe Rapide Inox No. 6, as recommended by Henry Gilbey.  This is supposed to be the easiest style of snap to attach to a lure.  I personally don't like them, I find they're no easier than a standard snap to be honest, and I've again had this lure fail on me after a few fish, as you can see below:

A mangled Delande Agrafe Rapide No. 6 - bit lightweight if you're landing a lot of fish.

Luckily I saw the lure was behaving oddly in the water and retrieved it to check out what was wrong.  But you don't want this to happen to you in the middle of an amazing session when the fish are going mad.  I've decided to replace all my Delande snaps with stronger cross links - you may find you like the wind-on style, and in a heavier gauge than the No. 6 that Mr. Gilbey recommends they might be more reliable.

So there you have it.  Owner Cross Lock Snap Swivel #1 wins for me but only by a narrow margin.  

Though I'm generally a big fan of snaps there are some snaps out there that should be avoided.  Snaps are there to make life easier when it comes to changing lures.  They should never make your fishing more difficult, neither should they jeopardise catching a fish by threatening to break or twist out shape.  There's more than meets the eye to snap design, and I think Owner have clearly put some thought into their snaps.  Granted they're not the easiest to put on but they're still far easier than a knot, and I'd rather lose a little convenience in the knowledge that my snap was reliable.

Tight lines.

Savage Gear Hang Lure Bag: a decent lure bag for kayakers?

Some of you will have seen my review of the ill-fated and badly designed Sukara Lure Bag from last year.  The Sakura bag was designed for boat fishing, so it is less than ideal for kayaking, sitting a bit too high on the deck making hard to secure the bag to the deck in the event of capsize and which might impede trying to get back onto the kayak after such an event.  So less than ideal, but the Sakura bag scored low in several other areas.

Despite being advertised as a "lure wash bag", the Sakura bag failed to get lures dry after rinsing the salt off.  Plugs stayed wet for days unless the clear plastic tubes were physically taken out of the bag and left somewhere the air could circulate through them.  The bag also had some annoyances, such as a lack of space for soft lures, no dedicated small pockets for clips etc, and nowhere for items like the pliers.  The mesh bag on top was difficult to access and exposed to sea water.

However, I lived with these issues, using the bag all last season.  What rendered the bag unusable was that even with rinsing, all the zips corroded and eventually broke off.  Leaving me with a useless piece of junk that lasted less than a single season.  Not impressive.  So, a new lure bag needed for the kayak.

Before I begin, I must state that in all honesty, I have hunted widely across the internet and I've yet to find a purpose-designed lure bag for saltwater fishing from the yak.  One that allows easy access for both soft and hard lures, that prevents lure tangles, has exterior pockets for small items like clips and pliers, and most importantly of all, allows easy rinsing and drying of those expensive lures.  It goes without saying that it should be completely saltwater proof.  Which generally means no zips.  It would help if the manufacturer also provided something to fix or tie the bag onto the kayak - but now I'm really asking too much, so let's see what I found instead!

Savage Gear Hang Lure Bag - first impressions
The bag's a nice colour for freshwater fishing though for sea fishing I generally prefer something more visible.  The size looks like a reasonable compromise, this is not the bag to store racks of 200mm butterfly jigs or pirks, but it should take most hard lures up to 175mm.  Anything longer than that can still be stored in the separate plastic lure box that comes with the bag (see below).  The bag comes with a shoulder strap not shown in the photographs.  I'm afraid I can't report how comfortable it would be to wear over any distance, as the first thing I did was remove the shoulder strap!  But I'd be surprised if it was great.  At the end of the day, it's a big square box banging against your hip, so it's never going to be particularly comfortable.

The bag has a single Velcro fastening.  While I generally approve of Velcro in saltwater environments, the design of this "flap" does mean that you can't get a really tight closure on the bag.  In theory it should be fine for larger lures, and I don't see anyone using the lure tubes for anything other than lures over 65mm.  Smaller than this and you probably want to store them in the box, as there is a slight gap when you pick up the bag (especially by the handle, less so if you use the shoulder strap) between the lid and the top of the tubes.

On one side of the bag is a large open pouch made from a hook-proof mesh / netting material.  This pouch looks like it'll be great for items like pliers or a priest, as it can be accessed quickly and easily.  But if you do capsize, anything that's in there will end up decorating the sea bed.

  

On either end of the bag are smaller pockets. At first I thought these might be handy for pliers, as one of these will face me when fishing. Unfortunately they are an odd shape, quite narrow with one of them obscured by the shoulder strap fitting, a pair of pliers "disappears" out of reach, so probably not particularly useful.

Inside the box, there are the standard lure tubes.  This time with heavier duty plastic than with the Sakura bag, with both square and large triangle tubes.  This seems to be the only solution anyone has come up with storing long hard lures.  However, hanging lures vertically isn't great for access.  Savage Gear, to be fair, have cut some of the tubes at angles to try and let you see a bit more of lure, but the solution is still a poor one.  In addition to this, tubes are hopeless if the bag is dropped or banged, as half of them fall to the bottom of the tubes.  One solution to this by American manufacturers is to cut "v" grooves into the top of the tubes, so the hooks will rest in there and not swing around the tubes quite so much.  Savage Gear haven't bothered, in my drop test, most of the lures ended up at the bottom of their tubes.  Another issue with big tubes is the waste of space, which encourages you to try and put two lures to a tube.  Tangled treble hooks await.  But what can a man do with 30 or 40 hard lures to store?

One feature I do like is the inclusion of the traditional lure box.  This is much better than having just tubes - gives you somewhere to put soft baits and other small terminal items.

The lure box is well made, with removable partitions inside, giving you quite a bit of flexibility.  I put loose items and shook and dropped the box.  No damage and no "migration" of even small items, like clips and split rings to other compartments.  Good strong box that I suspect is pretty waterproof at least against splashes and I'm pleased to see this included in a hang bag.

With the box out, you can see the mesh used for the body of the bag.  Like the Sakura bag, I guess the idea is rinse your lures in the bag.  My experience with this is not a happy one; lures just don't dry out.  But the mesh on the Savage Gear Lure Hang Bag does look like it will let the air flow better, so we'll have to see.  

One thing I don't like about the lack of a stiff partition between the section of the bag is that once you take the box out, the bag loses all rigidity and the lure tubes are prone to falling over.  This is certainly going to be a nuisance on the kayak, where things need to stay put.  Just a little stiffening of the central partition would have made all the difference here.  You really don't need anything that can make life complicated on a kayak, and if the tubes fall over in rough weather while you're trying to find a lure in the box, well, you can guess the rest...

The large triangular tubes are good for grouping lures of a similar type together, there seems to be enough space to separate them as this little shoal of Megabass Zonks demonstrates...

The square tubes cut at an angle don't permit sharing so comfortably, and this looks like a tangle waiting to happen.  If there were "V" notches cut into the tops of the tubes, it would help hold the lures in place.

The underside of the bag shows how the strap passes underneath the section carrying the box - something to bear in mind if you take everything out of the bag after a rinsing (i.e. don't put the tubes in that partition).  The strap is probably the best place to try and sew a couple of loops on so that the bag can be secured to the kayak.  However, the lack of fastening points on this bag, coupled with the lack of rigid sides, are perhaps the two weakest features of the bag for kayak fishing.  The whole bag goes a bit floppy when the box is removed.

Verdict
Without doubt the Savage Gear Lure Hang Bag is an improvement of the Sakura Lure Bag for kayak fishing.  It pretty much beats it in every compartment, though perhaps that isn't such a great compliment given how badly the Sakura Lure Bag dealt with a salt environment.  However, the Savage Gear bag is far from perfect for kayak fishing and it has one or two areas that could be improved.

Particularly for the kayak angler, I'd like to see the whole bag a bit more rigid with the addition of some fastening points on the bottom  of the bag to let it be securely attached to the surface of the kayak.  I'll obviously end up creating my own solution for this as I did with the Sakura Lure Bag, but for example,just a simple loop (or doubled section) on the carrying strap that goes under the bag would let you tie it to the kayak to prevent it getting washed overboard.  This is an important consideration; after all, these lure bags can easily contain several hundred pounds worth of lures and it would be nice to see manufacturers think more about the different contexts in which lure bags might be used.

Of course, if your kayak has a large central hatch, none of this matters and the Savage Gear Lure Hang Bag is probably a good choice.  For example, it fits perfectly into the front hatch of my new Stealth Pro Fisha 575 kayak.  These days I have replaced the triangular lure hangs with another box for my softs, but the bag itself is a good size for that hatch.

The good:

• versatile combination of lure tubes and a quality lure box (excellent for soft lures)
• zip-less design, therefore presumably salt proof
• good size for kayak fishing
• mesh netting should let air pass through bag to dry lures after rinsing (not tested)
• large mesh panel on side will be handy for quick access to things like camera, pliers, etc.

The bad:

• no fastening points on base of bag to attach to kayak
• no stiffener between partitions means bag loses rigidity when box is removed, in fact the bag is something of a liability without the box in it
• lure tubes lack "V" notches to help lures stay in place
• slight gap between lid and top of tubes when lifted by the handle

I'll be updating this review at the end of the 2012 season to let you know how the bag performed, until then, tight lines to all those fishing!

Last year's winners and this year's hopefuls

Well, better late than never.  I did promise I'd do a review of what worked for me last year, and as this is that time of year when lure fishermen start to browse wistfully through catalogues of shiny bits of plastic, I thought I'd list some perhaps surprising winners from last year.

Perhaps the most surprising revelation, and a dirt cheap lure into the bargain, is the Savage Gear Sandeel.  I have never done great on the smaller size, but for me the 42g is king from the kayak.  I had several good fish last year on the natural sandeel colour:

It can be fished on a continuous retrieve, or bumping along the bottom in a sink-and-draw style.  It saved me a blank on more than one occasion and took this nice early bass:

You can see how they really try and swallow the lure deep.  This year I'm branching out into some new colours, but I might as well use it to move onto another great lure.  This time, an old favourite:

The Daiwa Saltiga Minnow comes in two lengths: 120 and 140.  They're both excellent lures for the money, the Saltiga 120 can be had for just £12 delivered from monstertackle.  I had an absolutely storming afternoon, when it seemed every bass in the sea was after that minnow.  Great lure, with just two extra strong hooks which makes unhooking much quicker and reduces damage to the fish from stray trebles, an increasing problem I'm finding with many high end Japanese lures that use three fine wire trebles on all their lures over 100mm.

After this, we get to my old favourites that keep on going year after year, mostly because when you get desperate in the search for fish, you have confidence in their fish catching abilities so they keep getting used instead of the newer, flashier plugs!  The first, and still one of the cheapest, toughest plugs around, a plug that was practically made for kayak fishing:

The Rapala X-Rap SRX10 in blue mackerel.  This is by far and away my most successful colour, tried all the others but this one is tops for me in Yorkshire waters.  We do on occasion get hordes of tiny mackerel on certain stretches of the coast, and I reckon this is the bite-size morsel that no bass can resist!  Second on the all time list has to be the Megabass Zonk 120:

French pearl does for me.  Yes, I wish the silly hinged lip didn't keep breaking off, and I don't like all those trebles, and on more than one occasion I've seen this zonk spook fish.  But all these failings aside, this lure still catches too often to leave it out of my box.  Last year I also had a lot of (smaller?) fish on the baby zonk 77:

Lovely looking lure, but I'll probably stick to the 120 versions in future.  Finally, from Duo I got chance to try a couple of tide minnows that both worked nicely:

Both of these caught, possibly with the paler version being the better of the two in some of the murkier conditions we had to suffer in the first half of the season last year:

But I didn't get the lures until late in the year and wasn't able to test one of my theories that dark lures work better in hot sunny conditions, if any lure works at all!

What about for the coming season?  I'm very keen on trying out two more Duo lures:

The Terrif series comes in two lengths, both look good and reminiscent of other near top water lures, such as the Feedshallow or Komomo II, neither of which I had much success on last year.  But I'll be doing a full test of these near top water lures in the coming season, so watch this space!

Tight lines to those fishing.