Samurai Stickbait rod

[Andrew_P]

Hi guys and gals, 

I’ve just finished building a PE 6-8 stickbait rod for a mate chasing barrel yellowfin tuna and the odd mackerel using surface lures. I pulled on a few blanks before settling on the Samurai SB8 which is 8’ and 2 piece (butt join). It’s got a softer tip (=faster action) than an equivalent popper rod as it doesn’t need the resistance to generate the popping/splashing out of the lures, and this translates better for the angler fighting tuna who tend to fight dirty under the boat vs gts which you can muscle on the surface (or so I am told!). I went for all Fuji components (rubber gimbal, duralon grips, locking reel seat, pipe extension, stainless steel Fuji SiC guides and bind-on tip) and kept the colour theme classic black with a little bit of bling in YFT colours. I’m pretty happy with the result. My mate will put a Saragosa 25k on it spooled with 60lb exact depth braid and cast 100-200g stickbaits at anything he comes across. I hope I get to see this rod in action!

[Huxstang]

Very nice.  Throwing 100-200gm lures for a few hours will certainly give his shoulders a good work out 

[crazywalrus]

Bloody hell, they must be epic sized mackerel to use PE 6-8 

[Andrew_P]

36 minutes ago, Huxstang said:

Very nice.  Throwing 100-200gm lures for a few hours will certainly give his shoulders a good work out 

More of a case of coming across a school on the surface and having a few casts while out wide trolling for marlin. The rod is actually quite light overall - it’s the reel that will be a killer - weighs almost as much as a Nokia 5110

[Andrew_P]

24 minutes ago, crazywalrus said:

Bloody hell, they must be epic sized mackerel to use PE 6-8 

Not the target species but would come in handy on reef edges which he hits once a year.  The tip is soft enough to keep the hooks in a Mack I reckon.
 

My mate believes in the “one rod, many purposes” theory. I have actually seen him tee off with a putter…

[Neil Stratford]

Very nice work on the binding and components ,  those saragosa’s are a tough reel ,pity they’re so dam heavy

[mangajack]

Good work Andrew.

Nice selection of components and finishing.

[Andrew_P]

2 hours ago, Neil Stratford said:

Very nice work on the binding and components ,  those saragosa’s are a tough reel ,pity they’re so dam heavy

Website says 960g without braid so definitely around the 1kg mark

Ive got a 6k (first SW model) and a 10k (latest SW model) and they are tuff as nails. much nicer to use than the old Penn spinfishers!

[Andrew_P]

1 hour ago, mangajack said:

Good work Andrew.

Nice selection of components and finishing.

Thanks MJ. I use a range of high quality blanks and components from various companies and Australian retailers. For this build the Samurai blank/Fuji components were preferred. At AFTA last year i was able to pull on the SB6 (PE 4-6) and SB8 blanks as well as fully built Samurai rods built on the same blanks. I'll be building the SB6 for my own use soon, matched to a gosa 10k and 40lb tasline. i'd be well over the 100 rods built since i started in 2020 - as they say, the first 100 are the hardest!

[Rebel]

Well done.

Super rod.

[AUS-BNE-FISHO]

Great looking rod Andrew.