How in touch are the big tackle companies with “modern” lure fishing for bass? It will be interesting to see what Shimano Europe does with these new Shimano Japan “Lunamis” lure rods……….
Somebody on Facebook tagged me into a Facebook announcement on the Shimano-PredatorEU page, and this was it: “We have a very special saltwater inshore spinning rod, coming straight from our Japanese domestic market, at the beginning of February! The Lunamis is the elite spinning rod designed specifically for saltwater and in particular to target seabass”. From what I can tell the Shimano Japan “Lunamis” range of lure rods has just been updated and relaunched in Japan, and Shimano Europe has obviously decided to put some of these “elite spinning” rods onto the European market in a week or so………….
And I wonder what rods within this huge range the grownups at Shimano Europe decide to make available to what is a very varied “sea bass” market throughout Europe. I have asked the question on that Facebook page but have had no answer yet. Look at what a lot of the bass anglers do say on that wild northern coast of Spain and then compare it to the bass anglers in the Med or us lot in the surf or over shallow reefs in calm conditions and so on. We all want and need different lure rods. It doesn’t make a blind bit of difference to me which of these new Lunamis lure rods are actually made available in Europe, rather I find it to be an interesting window into how in touch one of the really big tackle companies actually is with what’s going on in a smaller kind of fishing market.
Take the Daiwas and Shimanos and Penns and so on - the big boys of the fishing tackle world. I work within fishing and I am fascinated in how the different tackle markets are fed into, and because bass fishing is so much my thing I am especially interested in this small sector of the overall scene. For sure some of the really big tackle companies make some seriously good gear for how a lot of us here go about our lure fishing, but for a long time it has been my belief that some of these companies are too big and unwieldy to be able to then specialise into a smaller market such as lure fishing for European sea bass. I love lure fishing with Shimano and Penn reels especially, but are there any Penn lure rods out there that translate to my fishing, and even though Shimano in their imperiousness offer I think only four of the (awesome) Dialuna lure rods from Shimano Japan, when did you last see one in a UK tackle shop or actually in stock on a lure fishing tackle website? Such good rods yet nobody seems to know about them but they are rods from a huge tackle company. How the hell does that happen?
When I was doing some work with Shimano UK I tried and tried but ultimately failed to get to the bottom of who in the Shimano Europe organisation were the people who made the decisions on what specs of rods and reels should be made available, and then what selected items say from Shimano Japan might or might not be brought into Europe. Hence my interest in this new Lunamis range of lure rods from Shimano Japan - what rods are going to be offered to the European market, who makes those decisions, and are these grownups remotely in touch with and able to react to what’s going on out there? I hear all the arguments that something like carp fishing for a huge tackle company like Shimano is of far greater value than our little bit of bass fishing, but on the flipside I will never, ever understand how when you’ve got so much gear already there - no R&D costs for starters - why a lot of this incredible gear isn’t then made available to what is a large and well established network of distributors, sales reps, tackle shops, websites, “pro staff”, and so on.
As I said, this blog post is born purely from my interest in how the tackle trade services its customers - us lot! - but I do happen to think that what rods from this new Lunamis range are made available to Europe will be an interesting observation upon how in touch with the grassroots one of the big boys really is. Bear in mind also that I have never seen these Lunamis lure rods but I am going to hazard a guess that with them sitting between the Dialuna and the Exsence Genos in terms of price they will most likely be pretty serious rods and potentially just about ideal for many European lure anglers who chase bass in saltwater - and especially with such a large range of rods that cover so many different types of lure fishing (not just bass of course). I am looking at the paucity of the Dialuna range and indeed supply for the European market and predict that there will be four spinning and one baitcasting rod from the Lunamis range. I also predict that seeing one in a UK tackle shop will be about as likely as seeing a unicorn crossing the road right in front of you. And yes, I very much hope to be proved wrong here.
Which in a roundabout way leads me to how much I am enjoying getting into the work I am doing with Savage Gear. As a tackle company they are big enough to get things done fast if needs be, but they are also small enough to not have endless levels of grownups who somebody little like me needs to wade through to get my voice heard. For sure it’s only lure fishing for bass and it certainly isn’t the great big world of carp fishing where the UK sits at the head of the high table, but if every tackle company out there only ever concerned themselves with going at the biggest markets then how would something like lure fishing for bass continue to flourish and develop?