I find myself becoming a bit of a fan boy when it comes to the Shimano Japan lure fishing gear that I have fished with so far, so it’s even more frustrating that Shimano Europe in all their “in touch with what’s going on in modern bass fishing” wisdom are making so little of it available to us lure anglers. I am currently fishing with two Shimano Japan bass lure rods that are by a distance the two best 9’ and 9’6’’ weapons that I have ever used (reviews here and here), many of us here fish with Shimano spinning reels, I am currently fishing with a Shimano Japan braid that is utterly sublime, and I have even bought a small selection of Shimano Japan hard lures for bass fishing that are incredibly well made and the components on them just aren’t rusting.
So whilst Shimano Europe are now making a selection of four rods from the new Shimano Dialuna S range of lure rods available to our marketplace (and I’d love to know more about who chooses which four rods to offer and why), for whatever reason they haven’t included this new Shimano Dialuna S90L 9' 5-25g lure rod in there - check here for a company over in Ireland that is now selling this particular rod (there are more Dialuna S rods on their website here), and it’s thanks to them for kindly letting me to have a proper play with this rod. I don’t know the people at JDM Fishing Tackle in Ireland, but damn they are listing some fishing tackle on their website that I am doing my best to pretend I haven’t seen! I am not aware of anybody else selling these stupidly good Shimano Exsence Infinity lure rods for example - not cheap, but as per those reviews of mine, for me they are the ultimate lure rods.
I got to fish with a 9’ rod from the previous and now discontinued Shimano Dialuna range and I thought it was a lot of rod for the money (review here), so I was really interested to see how this slightly lighter 5-25g rod from their new JDM Dialuna S range might or might not work for me and how I tend to go about my bass fishing - which I might add continues to vary the more I learn and the more locations I fish. As much as I tend to err towards the one “do it all” lure rod, in reality I can’t do it all with the one rod because of where and how I am increasingly bass fishing these days. A rod that I might use on a bouncy north Cornwall day isn’t the same rod as I’d want to use for stealthily fishing a local estuary and so on, and some years ago I never would have even looked at a 9’ long lure rod which was rated to cast “only” 5-25g. How things have changed though…………
And this 5-25g is an interesting rating to me - it’s neither an out and out lighter lure rod, yet it’s not quite a say 7-28g or 10-30g rod that I would guess a lot of us use. If the bigger Xorus Patchinko is one of your go-to hard lures then yes this rod will cast it, although you can’t exactly lash into the cast but it doesn’t really matter because if you need to regularly use that lure then you’d be fishing with a slightly more powerful lure rod anyway. Put the new and smaller Patchinko 125 on this Shimano Dialuna S90L 9' 5-25g lure rod though and it’s about as sweet a casting and fishing experience as I can imagine - a smooth cast and good timing proves yet again me just how impressively the smaller Patchinko 125 goes out on a good rod like this. Of course a rod rated this relatively light isn’t going to be a poker, so yes it bends, but I don’t like sloppy, slow lure rods and I am happy to report that this Dialuna S is rather lovely indeed.
I happen to think that with how increasingly important that soft plastics are becoming to so many of us these days that a light and crisp lure rod like this which is rated 5-25g is in fact a rather useful weapon - there’s enough there to push things a bit yet you can also go nice and light and touchy/feely with ease. I would hope that this Shimano Dialuna S90L 9' 5-25g is a bit of a peach with a soft plastics like the 6’’ or indeed 4.5’’ OSP DoLive Stick - and it is. I have been fishing with a 3000 size Shimano spinning reel on the rod and in my hand it just feels right. I absolutely love the handle design and would cheerfully have this exact design on any lure rod because it’s that nice to fish with. As good as a lure rod might be, we won’t be drawn to it if it doesn’t sit right when you pick it up, and from the off this rod felt right in my hands. I don’t have enough experience of Shimano Japan lure rods to be able to say definitively, but the four I have fished with so far leads me to believe that they are making rods that for various reasons seriously suit how I like my lure rods to be.
I’m not sure that there’s a whole lot more to say here. I’m not going to take a rod like this up to the north coast of Cornwall when conditions are bouncing and I am not going to buy it if all I was going to do was whack out a bunch of bigger hard lures and crank them back in. Nope, to me this stunner of a lure rod is asking to be used beyond simply whacking and cranking - work soft plastics with it, let the rod sit loosely in your hand as a DoLive tumbles about in a bit of white water, twitch various surface lures back, night fish with it, and grin like a gimp because to bass fish with a rod like this is quite simply a pleasure. It frustrates me how seriously Shimano Europe and UK could go at the growing bass lure fishing market, because if a rod as good as this Dialuna S90L 9' 5-25g can be had for what I think is pretty reasonable money, and then with their high-end rods like these two almost stupidly good Shimano Exsence Infinity lure rods I own and fish with, with the name Shimano and all that this brand implies, surely there are plenty of anglers out there who would want to see more of their specialist lure gear in our tackle shops? All credit to JDM Fishing Tackle over in Ireland then………..
I am off to Ireland today for a week of fishing and photography around Dungarvan, so as per usual I will do my best to keep this blog updated when possible.
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