Shimano Core51mg7

Lately I've been raiding every tackle shop in Singapore trying to find a decent finesse BC reel. I had my eyes set on 2 models, either the Daiwa PX68L, or the Shimano Aldebaran MG7, unfortunately, they were either out of stock or the price was too ridiculous for me to even consider buying, even "after discount" according to some shopowners... pshhh, don't give me that, any local fisherman knows that you can knock down the prices of reels by 25% and still make money off it.

Anyway, I gave up looking and decided to ship in the US domestic version of the Aldebaran, the Core 51MG7. It is on all accounts exactly the same reel as the Aldebaran, just in a different color and manufactured for the US market instead of the SEA market. Cost me SGD 418 including shipping. It finally arrived early last week after a 3 week wait and I got a chance to take it down to the Toman Pond at Fishing Paradise to test it out over the weekend. Here's my review of the reel.

Out of the box the reel is a magnificent piece of work. It is tiny, well not quite as tiny as the Pixy but small enough. The color scheme of the Core series is so much better than the Aldebaran IMO. I spooled it with 10lbs PowerPro immediately.

The reel comes with a bunch of nice features that include:

8 S A-RBs + 1 A-RB roller bearing
High Gear Ratio of 7.0.1
Shimano Super Free Pinion Gear System
Dartanium Drag
Super Stopper Anti-reverse
VBS
Quickfire II Clutch Bar
Magnumlite Spool
Magnesium Body

Construction

The weight of this reel is an unbelievable 150g, it feel virtually weightless in my hands, considering that I'd been using a Curado 201 for most of my baitcasting prior to this. I do admit that the magnesium frame does have a rather plastic feel to it, but solid nonetheless. The reel palms perfectly and once again, looks great.

Casting and Retrieve

I was very impressed with the casting capabilities of this reel. I wanted a reel that could handle 3-10g lures and that is exactly what I got, and then some. Setting the VBS to only 1 brake and fine tuning the cast control, I was able to fire even weightless 3" rubbers at least 15m without so much as a hint of a backlash. Sure it took a few casts to get used to the reel's "finesse-ness" but once I got the hang of it I was going through my whole box of tiny lures, testing each one and loving the distance and precision that I previously could only achieve with my utra-light spin setups.

The retrieve was very smooth, as most good baitcasters should be and I was loving the high gear ratio, gave me ultimate control of my lures while allowing me to do lightning fast retrieves to mimic fish darting around. The only downside is the slight backplay of the anti-reverse(as with all shimano reels) is present, but only a slight backplay, nothing to cry about.

Drag

The drag was as smooth as I would expect any mid-high end shimano reel to be. Cranked it all the way up and it maintained steady smoothness, though I must admit that as usual with shimano... the max drag advertised is never accurate... but for finesse purposes, the reel has more than enough stopping power for sure.

So in conclusion it was a great buy for me, absolutely love the reel!

Construction: 9/10
Cast/Retrieve: 9.5/10
Drag: 8.5/10
Aesthetics: 10/10

And a couple more pics of the reel with my GLoomis GL2.

Fun at the Toman Pond.

Went to the Toman Pond at Fishing Paradise yesterday, it was C's first time doing some serious fishing. The biterate was amazing as usual, which gave her a good opportunity for some hands on "training" as losing fish to mistakes was nothing, we'd get another bite within 5 mins. Anyways, I set her up with my faithful Shimano Stimula 6-10lbs rod and and Penn Extreme 1000 reel, and rigged up for fish meat as bait. I was personally just luring whenever she didn't need help. Most people just do a direct leader to hook rig and chuck it in but I wanted a little more... visuals... so I set up a simple float rig.

Within 5 mins of casting out the first bait we got a bite, but C panicked and didn't know what to do so the fish got away. 6 takes later... she finally set the hook right and after lots of dramatic screaming and panicking, she brought up the first decent sized fish of her life =).

She was thrilled needless to say and with every bite, she got better at it and soon it was fish after fish.



About 2hrs in, I landed a nice Pacu! Didn't know they had Pacus in the toman pond lol!




So all in all, it was a great day for the both of us with a total of 10 fish in just over 2hrs. I got some action on my swimbait and C got a nice bunch of nail-biting fights under her belt =).