Daiwa BG MQ 4000D-XH spinning reel, around £200 - initial impressions after a month of fishing with it

I know it’s highly unrealistic, but tie me down and make me fish with lures for bass, wrasse and pollack with one spinning reel for evermore and it’s going to be the Penn Slammer IV 2500. Money no object and I’m sliding towards the far more expensive Penn Authority 2500, but the fishing so many of us do is not remotely stressing a spinning reel like the Slammer IV 2500. I can easily live with the various quirks because of what the reel does for me. On most lure rods I would use or test I am fine with the bit of extra weight to the Slammer IV 2500, and of course I like the robust nature of the reel and I don’t remotely obsess about ultra-smoothness when I am actually out fishing……………

But I do enjoy trying out and fishing with other spinning reels, and I do think that some lure rods benefit from a lighter reel strapped to them (a review of a rod like this is coming soon). It’s hard not to have a thing for Shimano spinning reels and how the line lay is always perfect right out of the box and so on. I haven’t fished with a more expensive Shimano reel than the Vanford range for a fair while now, but with how much seems to be crammed into those lightweight reels it’s pretty bloody impressive. I also have had a lot of very good Daiwa spinning reel time with my bass fishing over the years, but up until last month I hadn’t fished with one of their reels for a good while. I know how highly they are rated but I have always had a bit of a niggle with their magsealed technology and what was (wrongly?) implied, and how it seemed to be attracting expensive servicing costs. I ignored the magsealing on the last Daiwa spinning reel I used and just treated it like any other reel I would fish with - which meant that I greased and oiled a few parts which I believe you are not meant to be getting at. What a rebel.

So I was intrigued to get hold of this good looking Daiwa BG MQ 4000D-XH spinning reel because it hasn’t got any magseal technology in it. I believe it’s got nine (non-magsealed) internal seals instead, which the cheaper and slightly heavier plain BG version doesn’t have. I see that there is also a BG Magsealed version but as I said I am perfectly happy not to have Daiwa’s magseal technology in a spinning reel. Loaded up with braid this Daiwa BG MQ 4000D-XH weighs 301g if that is any help (it has a 6.2:1 retrieve ratio), compared to 326g for the Penn Slammer IV 2500, 340g for the penn Authority 2500, and 232g for the Shimano Vanford 4000XG. The Daiwa BG MQ 4000D-XH is not what you might call an ultra-lightweight spinning reel, but I simply couldn’t care because it’s bloody lovely.

For a while now I have kept an eye on a number of US anglers especially shouting very positively about these Daiwa BG MQ spinning reels, and with what a lot of their inshore and shore based saltwater fishing often entails, I’d be daft not to take notice of this. I also believe that this Daiwa BG MQ 4000D-XH hasn’t got a line roller bearing and instead has a bushing which to me is one less thing to worry about seizing up. It looks like you can buy 3rd party bearing upgrades online, but all seems good on the reel I have here. I grease any line roller assemblies and have done for a few years, indeed the more recent Shimano reels I know seem to be prone to line roller bearing failures and/or going raspy a little too quickly - greasing them up has prevented any of this for me.

Out of the box this Daiwa BG MQ 4000D-HX had a perfect line lay. Initially I loaded it up with the bright red 24lb Berkley Sick X8 braid which I have come to know and seriously like. For the price I think the Berkley Sick X8 braid is outstanding, but then I got a spool of the brand new Sufix 91 braid to try out so I stripped the Sick X8 braid off and loaded up with 21lb Sufix 91 in the bright green colour. My understanding is that this new Sufix 91 is designed to sit right in between their very good X8 and their awesome 131. You know how much I trust Sufix braids and this new Sufix 91 is faultless so far.

As indeed is this Daiwa BG MQ 4000D-XH spinning reel. It’s as smooth and effortless to fish with as you’d imagine it might be, with no hint of any wind-knot issues or anything like that. I always set any spinning reel up with some specific greasing and oiling before I fish with it, and from the off this thing has been a joy to fish with. The conditions might well have been pants for a good while now, but I have had a fair few bass on it. The drag feels smooth when you pull braid off it, but I have donated no line to any bass so far this year, indeed with how I set my drag it’s going to take a proper fish in a strong current to be troubling the drag system anyway.

I have mainly fished with this Daiwa BG MQ 4000D-XH spinning reel on the truly outstanding and too cheap for what it is Savage Gear SGS6 9’ 7-35g lure rod. I reviewed this rod here the other day, and the more I fish with it, the more I believe that this roughly £200 lure rod sits in a small group of what I think are THE best 9’ lure rods I have come across, whatever the price. I can’t get enough of the thing. I have also fished a bit with this Daiwa reel on the APIA Foojin'RS Lynx 93M 9'3'' 6-42g lure rod (review coming soon), and then yesterday I strapped the reel onto another 9’ lure rod which has crept its way into my head as quite possibly the best 9’ lure rod I have ever fished with. A bold statement I know, but this Penn Conflict Elite 9’ 7-38g lure rod is something else (review here) - “perfection in tension” which I know makes no sense when written down, but it makes all the sense in the world to me when I am fishing with this rod as indeed I was last night. What a combination.

So my initial impressions of this Daiwa BG MQ 4000D-XH spinning reel is that it’s a peach. Some reels feel okay, some reels feel good, and a few just feel really good to fish with for some reason - this one is in that category for me so far. I am not really up on the Daiwa reel sizing these days and I remember getting a bit frustrated with their different codes/sizes of LT reels I think it was? I would put this Daiwa BG MQ 4000D-XH at roughly the same physical dimensions as the Penn Slammer IV 2500, and it kinda feels like it sits sort of in between a Shimano 3000 and 4000 - closer to the 4000 though. I reckon the 3000 version of this Daiwa reel could be rather lovely as well. A month of fishing with a spinning reel tells us very little about its potential longevity, but so far so good and I will report back in due course. It’s not going to get a thrashing in the surf like I would put a Slammer or an Authority through, but it will get a good bit of use so let’s see where we end up……………….

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