Fishing on a Budget

Hey guys Jason Medcalf here to give you a run down on what I’ve been up to of late, I get to speak to allot of people at the various shows I attend and when I speak about soft plastic fishing I usually field allot of questions about entry level tackle to get started into plastic fishing on a budget, now I have to come clean here I fish allot and use the best gear I can get my hands on so when I was recommending the cheaper gear from Berkley I really was only relying on what I had herd rather than actual experience.

So I rang JB at Berkley and asked if he could send me some of the outfits that weren’t to much of a strain on a budget, he sent me two outfits the first is a Berkley Attack 7 foot 2-4 kg spin rod with a ABU Cardinal 102 reel I loaded this reel with Spiderwire EZ braid this outfit ready to go retails for around $150.00. The second was a Berkley Dropshot IM6 6’8 3-5Kg spin rod with a ABU Cardinal C702LX loaded with 2.7Kg Spiderwire Stealth Code Red Braid this outfit retails for around $250.00. On my first trip fishing with these outfits I headed to one of favourite systems with the aim of fishing my new gear as hard as I could, unfortunately the weather was shocking with rain and strong wind but we soldiered on.

I fished a Berkley Frenzy Sinking Rattler Lure in the AYU colour and the first thing I noticed was how far the Code Red was casting and how neat it lay on the spool and when we started to catch a few fish how strong it was for its breaking train. At first I had to wrestle a few little estuary cod out from their lairs which takes some doing when you cast the lures across the oyster covered rocky bottom. I then rigged a Gulp 4 inch Shrimp in new penny on a 1/4 heavy wire Nitro jig head and fished it slowly down a rock ledge then after a gentle take all hell broke lose and the 6lb code red screamed from the reel, I had to put as much hurt on this fish as possible stretching the rod,reel and line to the limit and the gear handled it easily and after a few more anxious moments I landed a sensational 55cm Fingermark. I then started fishing the Attack rod and was impressed firstly by the distance it was casting then the the fact I was fishing in windy conditions and didn’t have any trouble with wind knots and when we found some trevally it to really got a work out and performed well with the rod absorbing the many lunges trevors have around the boat. I will say that both outfits have been great to use but there are reasons why they are the price they are I wouldn’t expect they could handle allot of this style of fishing and the rods do cast well but as you would expect the dearer models are more responsive and you can cat more accurately with them but for entry level outfits they cast well enough and can handle most of the fish your going to encounter in our southern estuary’s.