Game Fishing with Bent Butt Rods

If a few years ago someone had said the words ‘bent butt rod’ to me interest levels would have been zero. Because the only ones I was familiar with were those used for heavy game fishing often from a chair mounted in the boat. But aware of the revolution in fishing tackle over the last ten years – with quality gear getting lighter, stronger and cheaper I was keen to test a sample of a new model our supplier was offering. The rest is history… (I always wanted to say that.)

Ours is a five feet six inch two piece (meaning it can be mailed) weighing just 800 grams. It has a solid aluminium butt for strength, heavy overbound guides, and a roller tip. Foregrip is chunky and fills the hand, just the way you want it. Parabolic slow action meaning that the load is distributed from tip to foregrip. It is absolutely incredible, the weight this rod can take on a big fish. Many is the time we’ve had the rod tip underwater (with the rod itself in the rod holder) bringing up a big fish, using electric reels. And as you’ll see in the reports below, it’s just as good for game fishing. The big plus with a bent butt rod is mechanical advantage. Whoever invented them is a genius because the angle allows you to drop your rod bucket a little lower, bringing the reel in closer to your body and giving a mechanical advantage you can’t get, with a straight butt rod.

Price: $160 delivered anywhere in Australia, making it such a bargain.

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Darryl and I grabbed the opportunity of a calm winter’s day to head to Browns Mountain. I enjoy fishing for makos so when I saw one swim up to the transom it didn’t take long to get a bait over. No gemmies had been boated so no belly strips available for bait. Instead I  grabbed four pilchards and threaded them onto a 15/0 Tuna Circle. Out the back that went and it wasn’t long until the ratchet started the steadily accelerating click we’ve heard so many times this winter. Tried to fob it off to Darryl but he insisted it was my turn. So up went the lever drag and into it. The shark opened its innings with a crash dive:

Then it turned into your typical mid water slug fest:

Solid fight, maybe 45 minutes with the shark coming to the surface but not actually jumping. When we got him boat side he was tail wrapped which might have been why, but that made for an easy release.

Short video of the fight

Nick Beehag got into some of that action on Saturday using our 20W bent butt combo:

Hi Andrew, thought this might be of interest. Caught this Yellowfin off Heatons whilst cubing on Saturday. Brought him in on your 20W  game reel. Took over an hour to bring in and was 1.5 metres in length and about 50 kilos. We were very lucky and just happened to land on top of them. We only cubed for quite literally 2 minutes and saw them come up. After the capture, we gave the coordinates out but by the time the other boats came over, they went down deep. Made the two hour trip back a slow and happy one rather than the slow and sad ones we have been experiencing in recent times.

Out to Browns in October 2014 where we fed out a gemfish belly strip on a 13/0 Eagle Claw, and got the berley going:

It wasn’t long until the ratchet growled and Ollie went got stuck into a solid thresher shark:

After 45 minutes or so we had the shark settled down and swimming boatside:

Just about to cut the 300-pound mono leader when it went nuts, and crash dived. Ollie now into a real slug a thon:

After nearly another hour he put the reel into low gear, locked his feet under the side pockets for maximum leverage, and pushed the lever drag to sunset. That ended as you’d expect:

Greg Buchanan pleased with the bent butt setup:

We took local evergreen Kembla based jockey, Jon Grisedale, for a days trolling out of Wollongong onboard the "Real Therapy". Rigged up 3 of your 50lb combo's along side a couple of TLD's. Shortly after finding the 23.4c current, Jon hooked up with one of the combo's & boated the 90kg striped marlin after we realised it couldn't survive. Not bad for a jock who had never held a game rod in his life. The jock's one up & reckons the 500kg thoroughbreds are easier on the body.

Wow. What a great first marlin! Congratulations to both of you Greg, and glad to hear the rod delivered the goods. Zac took a nice mahi on his combo too:

Russell writes in, maybe interesting for those fishos who haven’t tried bent butt rods yet:

I have two of the 24kgs bent rods already & I love them, they are so much more fun to fish with than the heavy 24kgs stand-ups. They put the same amount of pressure on the fish with 1/2 the amount of hurt on your back,  I hope to end up with a full set of 5 one day. Regards Russell

Tony King fishing wide of the Gold Coast, October 2015:

Also attached are photos of the Yellowfin caught on your 24kg bent butt/20W spooled with your 24kg Braid and Mono top shot while trolling, the two Mahi Mahi in the photos, one was caught on the troll, the other was on a pilchard cast out on 15kg spin gear when a school followed the hooked fish to the boat.

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