Red Dragon Ticks The Boxes

Out to Brown’s Mountain on Sunday in James Taylor’s beautiful 32 Black Watch:

The plan was to test our new light electric reel combo, fishing 450 metres deep:

When we arrived conditions were just about perfect. Wind and current both light and manageable. Because the reel is spooled with 30 pound braid I only used a single hook rig – with a lumo bead and a small California squid, for bait. Anything you add to the business end slows the rate of sinking. As soon as the line stopped going out I clicked the reel into gear and brought the bait and sinker up five metres to avoid snags. One big plus of the light overhead rod used in this combo is that its sensitive tip shows bites well. In this case there was a tap-tap-tap on the rod tip within a couple of seconds of the rig reaching the bottom. I let a little line out to give the fish a chance to get the bait down, then slowly brought the power lever up and watched the tip load - but only lightly. Just a small – but delicious – rock perch. For years I threw these back over the side until one day a new crew member said, “Andy! What the hell are you doing? They’re the best tasting thing on fins’:

It made a great dinner for crew member Chris that same night:

Next drop - and the one after that – produced gemfish. But nothing big:

We used our big gear too:

And that’s first preference for Browns considering some of the big blue eye and bass groper we’ve caught there over the years:

The Tanacom 1000 combo is no longer stocked.

But I was super pleased with the new light Dragon electric combo. Would you believe an electric reel and rod weighing 960 grams? The Penn Spinfisher 950 reel alone weighs 980 grams:

Not only did it do a great job at 450 metres, I was jigging with it in 100 metres at Twelve Mile Reef. The best part? When you want to bring your 420 gram jig up from 100 metres at the Twelve, or your bait and heavy weight from 450 metres at Browns, you just push the UP button. You don’t even have to watch progress. The reel will automatically stop retrieving when your bait or lure is 3 metres from the rod tip. But when I got home an email had arrived from our supplier with even better news:

Yep. They have a battery that integrates with the reel! In the pic above, battery on the left, charger on the right. Meaning the rod and reel completely portable. No separate battery and no power cord needed. The battery plugs straight into the power plug on the reel:

This is a game changer. The combo is 1. light and, 2. inexpensive. Now you don’t even need a battery or power cord. You’re totally self contained. There’s a lot of fishos out there with bad backs and shoulders from old football injuries. This is the answer. Here’s specifications:

Send me a text or email if you’d like to know more? Thanks for reading
Andrew Hestelow

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