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capatain asparagus Trying out some new toys… BY STU CAWKER I stopped in on my way to places tropical earlier this winter to pick up some new toys to play with – namely some of the new Penn Spinfisher reels from Purefishing. The Penn Spinfishers have for a long time been the standard rugged workhorse of the spin fishing world. These latest incarnations seem to have moved properly into the current millennium, they certainly look very nice, so I wanted to see just how they would perform. The critters I bought were the 7500, the 5500 and the 3500 Spinfishers, loaded with 50lb, 20lb and 10lb fireline, in that order. I also grabbed a Live liner 4500, that is the bait-feeder style Spinfisher, loaded with 15lb nanofil line. That was for general bait fishing here in New Zealand. My first look at these reels "in hand", showed them to be very nicely put together units, with (I am told) O rings around the joins in the gear bodies making for sealed gears, which hopefully will keep as much water penetration as possible from the gears. If not "waterproof", at least hopefully spray-proof, excellent drags on them, and something I liked very much, big thick "air" bale arms. Bale arms are something of a phobia of mine with spinning reels. When you travel overseas with reels packed in suitcases, these delicate bale arms, little scraps of wire that they are, are prone to being easily squished by the gorillas in baggage handling at the airports. As I know, and to my dismay, the very best super-duper spinning reel, even those with price tags with three zeros on them, are rendered useless if a bale arm is crushed en route to the destination. This is why I am always a proponent of cheaper, yet good quality, spinning reels, with spare reels, not just spools, taken along as insurance against luggage mis-handlers. I would have to say, the Penn Spinfishers fit these criteria very, very nicely – rugged, reliable, strongly built, with awesome drag systems, and at a couple of hundred or so per reel, way easier on The little 4500 liveliner h ease handled nice snapper wit 56 Professional Skipper September/October 2013 Spinfishers are ide al for thumping GTs the pocket th reels costing fi ti th k t than l ti five times as much. h The first of these Spinfishers I was to play with was the live liner. Before I headed overseas, I was able to have a quick evening fish with my old mate Bill Hohepa and the boys in the Stinky Bait Fishing Club, and I was able the break the 4500 in on a string of nice fat snapper in the gulf... Perfectly normal fish for this size reel, it performed flawlessly, as I expected it to. The next test for the reels was a trip over to Western Australia, up to shark bay, where my standard light bait fishing rig was my little 3500SS. Only a light line meant I did get stitched up a few times, but that was not a surprise in a place so loaded with sharks and coral, but this little set still did the job on some very nice fish as well, such as the fat 6kg diamond trevally pictured on the opposite page. The reels had performed just fine, as you'd expect of course, but the big test was to be taking these reels up to the Solomon Islands. The Solomons are something of a special case for reel performance. Nothing I have found will kill a reel faster than life in the Solomon Islands. The combination of high humidity, heat, high salinity and constant use (when I am there, that is) means that fishing stresses reels to their limits. Of course, add to this the huge range of fishing opportunities, everything from light tackle spin fishing to heavy duty game fishing, and the Solomons also give you the chance to test a whole range of gear in the one blissfully warm, sunny and calm spot. The Spinfishers I was planning on using for this trip were the smaller ones, the 3500 and the 5500; aiming to use them for working small lures and poppers around the reefs and bommies. I was taking along a selection of the Sebile Flatt Shads too, I was keen to see just how things would go with these sexy little lures. How did they perform? I was up at Zipolo Habu resort for a month, fishing every day – bar three, you have to have a day off every so often, crikey! The reels were not washed or rested at any point, pretty much as bad a level of abuse as you can offer a poor unsuspecting reel, and they emerged at the end of the trip looking as immaculate as when they started. I am truly impressed. www.skipper.co.nz