The Samurai range of blanks and rods, though only a small range, have gained the confidence of tackle store owners around Australia due to the blanks’ consistency and reliability. The new release NV8 and NV9 have grabbed the attention of tackle shop owners in the west and to the north as a blank that could handle the tougher and bigger fish that these areas are noted for.

The most obvious choice for these 7’ blanks is as a spin rod for casting poppers and lures at pelagics. There are, however, many other uses for these blanks. In their design it was taken into account the need to create a variety of different rods from the one blank, both at the standard length and as a shorter rod.

One good application is in the dams of North Queensland, many of which are home to 20-30kg barra that hold out around heavy timber. It’s quite difficult to stop them busting you off; you need 30-50lb braid to even stand a chance of slowing the fish down. There have been plenty of anglers left trembling at the sight of a big barra erupting from the still water with their lure hanging out of its mouth.

Away from the freshwater, it’s often nice to have a lightweight outfit that can handle big fish. Instead of your heavy fibreglass short stroker with bulky runners and the likes of a TLD25 strapped to it, this same Samurai blank can be used with say a Calcutta 700 for many of these mid-weight bluewater fish.

The outfit is about a third of the weight and more than capable of doing the job. You end up with a first class rod for those big heavy barra of the dam, a lethal weapon on larger estuary fish and a rod to nail those offshore fish, not to mention a black bass rod.

Once you get a rod that’s over 5’6” in length the northern anglers don’t want to know about it, which is one of the reasons we see this rod cut back to 5’6”. Nothing is cut from the tip of the NV9; the whole 18” section is removed from the butt (the off-cut can be made into a nice little gaff). Being a decent sort of a graphite blank it is reasonably stiff, so don’t expect a soft whippy tip to flick out little lures. This is a heavyweight for larger lures and trolling. Its merits come when you hook onto that fish as you can put plenty of hurt on the fish with the confidence that the rod isn’t going to let you down.

When it comes to the make-up of the rod, we’ve run with cork grips as we want to continue to keep the outfit light. An overall butt length of 20cm has been used, which includes the butt cap. You will need to ream the cork out to around 14mm on the butt grip. The foregrip needs to have an ID of 12mm”.

Take your time with a rat’s tail file. Alternatively, if you have a few blank off-cuts you might be lucky enough to have the right size to make a reamer with some emery tape glued and wrapped around the off-cut.

A FUJI TPSM 17 trigger seat has been used to take the slightly larger reels that may be used, or you may even opt for a standard FUJI reel seat in an #18 if you are going to use a reel that clamps to the reel seat.

There are a few choices in guides. In the FUJI Alconite range there is the BLNAG which run from sizes 8-16, while the heavier BMNAG run from 8-40. In Silicon guides the MNSG are the same guide frame as the BMNAG only the insert ring is silicon.

For most of your work the BLNAG guide will do the job without a problem. If you intend getting a bit heavy handed, use the stronger BMNAG or MNSG.

As far as tips go the MNST 8 is ideal. It’s a good strong frame that won’t catch the line, and most of the leaders and knots you’ll be using will pass through without a problem. If they don’t, for that heavy stuff, just step up to a #10 tip, and also use #10s as your first few runners instead of #8s.

You can expect to see more and more of these rods around the creeks, in the dams and offshore as anglers discover the benefits of fishing with this and other Samurai rods. Quite a few years of development have gone into both the blank and the grade of graphite cloth used to deliver the end product.