Daiwa Ryoga 1016HL

To go along with my newly found fondness for bait caster set ups, I recently acquired a sturdy, no nonsense salt water safe reel in the form of a Daiwa Ryoga 1016HL. This is a Japanese reel, from the Japanese domestic market, not readily available over here in the UK.

I do tend to go for fishing gear that not only performs well, but also has to look good, and make you feel good when using it. Part of this is my liking for round bait caster reels. This Daiwa sits next to another, smaller round reel in my collection, the Shimano Calcutta Conquest 51DC. The Daiwa really is a nice bit of kit visually, the strong looking machined frame, with the milling marks still visible on the surface, definitely meets my liking. This is the left hand wind, high gear version, with a retrieve ratio of 6:3:1, with the standard model being a 5:3:1. Similar to the Calcutta, there is a really pleasing click to the spool adjust and the drag, so it sings when a decent fish takes line.

In addition to the reel in standard form, I decided to go for some aftermarket bling, in the shape of an RCS carbon 90mm handle with clear cork RCS knobs. The carbon handle does make the total weight a little less (fairly heavy little reel), but it's more for the looks than performance. The clear cork knobs match well with the cork grips on the Nories RockFish Bottom TR rod, upon which this reel will sit. To help with the performance, I added a RCS 1012 shallower spool (100m of 12lb opposed to 135m 12lb on the original). The second spool also means I can run with a braid and also fluro, being quickly interchangeable.

So on the 1012 spool, I have loaded up with some Sunline Castaway 8 strand 25lb / 1.5PE line, and on the factory spool, a new fluro mainline to test out from Sunline, in the form of Siglon Flurocarbon 10.3lb. I will be giving this new mainline a good going over in the coming sessions, so will be able to post my thoughts and impressions of it soon. Comes on a nice big spool, with 275m of line, more than enough to fill most reels or two.