Yamaga Blanks Early test drive

I met up with Jamie in Troon to swap some gear ahead of next week as well as taking my new rod out for a local test drive. It was a nice night with an onshore breeze a little stronger than was forecast. We looked at the water and straight away didn’t fancy our chances of catching any Pollack or Wrasse as it was the colour of dark tea.  After having a chat with Jamie he headed off and I proceeded to play around with my new toy.

First impression, for its length at 10 ½ the rod is light at just over 200g set up with Fuji anti tangle stainless K guides it feels almost fragile compared to my HPR. It’s the first JDM action rod I’ve tried and on flexing it I can’t say I was overly impressed. I put on my reel via the screw up reel seat and it balanced up nicely and felt comfortable. Although I didn’t have my HPR with me the butt felt roughly the same length, some might say short but I can’t say I have an issue with that. I worked through a selection of lures starting with a 28g Savage Gear Physco Sprat. This is the first time I’ve seen my backing on the Certate and the lure flew out about the same distance as I can put a set of feathers on my beach gear…that was nice. I worked through my lure box experimenting with different lure weights, styles and length of drop. I had no issue working any of the lures and the rod responded well walking the surface lures easily enough. Some cast a little further than with my 9ft’r and some flew a considerable distance further including a 15g Bombarda with  7 inch SP. The Feed Shallow is handy lure for the shallow stuff but on this rod with my casting on the night it was hopless for some reason.

I settled with the Hart pencil and worked my way along the rocks practicing a few casts when the pencil was hammered by  this Pollack. I was genuinely surprised!

I dropped the fish just before I took this picture but it swam away strongly enough. I looked at the rod while playing the fish and it had a nice curve to it. When the fish got directly below me and as Pollack tend to do it had a last couple of crash dives. The Yamaga has a totally different feel to the HPR and I was surprised by how much the rod hooped over which put a smile on my face. It will be interesting to see how much power there is when its needed with a better fish and some tide, more smiling I think as it should cope well enough.




Shortly after this one smacked the lure which I was working just subsurface. It dived into the weed and snagged me but after a bit of moving abround and free spooling the fish came out.

The last fish of the night had ideas above its station.

So  the Yamaga Early? It’s given me a longer reach, slightly heaver casting weight rating, light, crisp and sensitive its a very nice rod and these are pretty much the reasons I bought it. It meets my expectations in this  respect. Did I really need it? Probably not but it will have it's uses. My HPR has been welded to my hands since I got it and seems to do just about all that I need it to. Two totally different rods . Both are head and shoulders above anything I've used in years gone by.  At the moment its just too Yamaga Early to tell how much I will use it.