I was in two minds as to whether to still post this report as (unbeknownst to me) the majority of my photos had already been posted up here by my guide – but thought I would post up a quick report anyway.

Earlier this year my company Adventure Angler, added the Jigging Master range of products to its range. Many people know about the Power Spell and Monster Game range of jigging reels, but I hadn’t heard much about the Arrester 630 baitcaster reels aside from a couple of positive reviews out of the US.

As I’m living in London for the time being and thought it would be a product that would be popular here, I decided to grab some to put to the test. I wanted to give it a solid workout on a number of different species but didn’t have a whole lot of time to do so, so picked Thailand as the destination. I’d done a previous trip there, and had found it easy to get large numbers of fish in a short amount of time, without being dependant on the weather like you would be for sea fishing.

Originally we had a large group of anglers, however due to the coup being announced 48 hours before the start of our trip, many pulled out – leaving just myself and a mate Patrick. This was a shame, but it did however mean more fish for us!

It is possible to do trips in Thailand without the use of a guide, however as with my last trip, I booked John Ang (BKKGuy) from BKK Fishing Tour so we could maximise our days. We did also do some fishing with another guide for one day, but that day was a non-event in terms of fish caught (1 fish for the day between 2 of us), so I haven’t mentioned it here.

To start off with we had booked a day of Toman or wild Snakehead fishing. This is the type of fishing that the reel is aimed at, so seemed like a sensible place to start. After picking us up at 2am, John drove us out to one of his spots, and we were on the water before first light.

At John’s insistence I’d pulled off the 30lb Sunline casting braid I had put on the reel for the trip, and replaced it with some PE3 which I had handy. Heavier than I would have used for the reel generally, but he said it was advisable given the drag we’d be running over the few days fishing and I still found the casting distance to be fine.

It was Pat and my first attempt at Toman fishing so we basically just had the target of getting at least one fish on the boat. We did get there, but it took a lot of casts! We ended up with 4 fish combined (all on surface lures) with the best weighing in at 14lbs. The reel performed faultlessly on the hundreds of casts we put in, but at the end of the day I hadn’t yet given it the workout I would have liked – but I was assured, that would come tomorrow. After a tasty late lunch, we headed back to get some sleep ahead of our 4am pickup the next day.

The next couple of days’ fishing were by no means ‘purist’ fishing trips, in that we were fishing in stocked ponds. Cheating I know, but where else can you have a realistic chance of catching monster arapaima on lure using a baitcaster?!

Things started out slower than we’d expected, with John telling us the heat was a factor putting the fish off the bite, but it didn’t take too long until I was on. This pond contains a number of species so on first strike we didn’t know what I’d hooked, but after the fish did a tarpon-esque jump in the air, the call of ‘big arapaima!’ was made – a first for me.

Now kilo for kilo arapaima don’t fight that hard, but these were heavy fish, and I was fishing on a reel best suited for PE 1.5 chasing fish in streams or inshore species. To its credit though, the reel never skipped a beat. The drag remained smooth and consistent during the whole fight, even with it screwed down pretty much to max drag throughout.

This was a great looking fish with plenty of red on the side, which the others we caught later didn’t have. I’m not sure the reason for the difference in colouration.

After that we had a couple of strikes (but couldn’t set the hooks) and then things went quiet again. We changed spot a couple of times and before too long, Pat was onto his first. As we’d seen how they fought, we immediately called this for an Arapaima, and no more than 20 seconds into the fight I was on too! Double hookup of Arapaima on lures. My second fish fought significantly harder from the get-go, and I could tell it was a better fish than my first. It took long run after long run, stripping the line off the reel even with as much thumb as I dared to give the spool. Eventually though the fish was subdued, and a few more pics were taken before the release.

We knew the pond contained a number of Alligator Gar, which is a species I’d always wanted to land. We had a heap of takes where we just couldn’t set the hooks – and John called these for Alligators. They have a long, narrow, hard mouth – and I think the trebles we were using on the lures just weren’t getting traction. If I chase this species again, I’ll try out an assist hook rigged off the nose of the lure, as I’ve used this to good effect on Sailfish when we had similar issues.

A bit later on I caught a third Arapaima, and then hooked up to something that fought completely differently.

Early in the fight John (correctly) made the call that this faster fighting fish was another Amazon native, being a Redtail Catfish. Given how hard it fought I was surprised it wasn’t bigger when it came up, as it certainly gave a great account of itself. Once again the reel (albeit not the right tool for the job) was great fun, never faltered and even after having landed roughly 200kg of fish for the day and was performing like it did straight out of the box.

For our last day of fishing, Barramundi was the target species. Again we were to be fishing in a stocked pond, but our aim was to throw as many lures and land as many fish as we possibly could in a day – and that we did! I don’t know how many barra we landed – I think I may have gotten close to 50 before getting bored (with a lunch break in the middle) with the fish at some points coming almost a fish a cast. The reel was lobbing out casts almost to the other side of the pond, and had plenty of guts to keep the Barra under control and away from the many pieces of structure/equipment located around the pond. The fish were taking anything from poppers, to minnows, sinking stickbaits, floating stickbaits, it didn’t seem to matter – but dark coloured mid-water swim baits seemed to win the day.

All in all the trip was great fun, and something I’m keen to do again for a change from the sea fishing. The Toman fishing in particular is really addictive, and the lure of the big one will no doubt bring me back.

So far as the reel was concerned, I was really happy with it. Particularly for the price, I thought it was a great piece of kit and something that’s going to now take up a permanent place in my reel cupboard. If weather permits I’m hoping to give it another workout along with the Jigging Master PE2 reel and the Temple Reef Mytho rods, on a wreck jigging trip off England’s South coast this weekend. Will post a report if I get out, though with 6 of these trips in a row now having been cancelled due to wind, I’m not holding my breath!

Below is a link to a video on YouTube prepared by John, showing some of the action.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hn86nYIbRs4

For those of you not located in Australia (I can not ship to Australia) the Arrester 630 and many other products can be found at www.adventureangler.net

Cheers for reading,
Dan

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