Casting 1/16 oz lures with old Shimano Bantam 100EX

[mark bumgarner]

Mine are not very fancy but they sure do fish well. Got my first one in 1982 or so (before Wife) and still fish it. Love em all!

[Hytekrednek]

What models do you have there? Also, which is your favorite to use, and why?
Nice bundle!

[Hytekrednek]

I think I see an old Lightning rod, and an old Shimano with the odd taper that get large at the butt. I forget the name of it but they are unique. I would like to try one some day.

[mark bumgarner]

All 4 are 10X sg, and the tapered rod is a Shimano Magnalite Fighting Rod which I bought with my first reel in 1982. I still use it for fishing plastic worms and have not found a better combination for the job.

[Hytekrednek]

Awesome! I have been tempted to get one of those rods to go with one of my older reels. I wasnt sure if it was worth the high asking price of around 100 they seem to always have. If I find one in good condition for a good price, I will get it. They look so unique. Thanks for the reply

[Hytekrednek]

I am still waiting for new drag disc to get here for my 100EX. Once they get here, I can put it back together, put line on it, and go test out its capabilities. The regular Bantam 100 does very good with fairly light lures. I am expecting the 100EX to be even better, I hope. If not, at least it looks very nice with that blue color.

[Paul Roberts]

Thanks, Hytek. A qualification though: "fairly light" is a pretty loose description. Do you have a digital scale? They are cheap on Amazon. Can be surprising what jig heads, and other lures, actually weigh. Advertised weights can be pretty far off.

Nice rigs, Mark! I remember those "Fightin' Rods". We sold them in the tackle shop I worked at then. Thought they looked pretty hi-tech/cool. Still do.

[Hytekrednek]

I dont have scales for weighing lures but I will look into it.

[Hytekrednek]

with a 1/4 oz rooster tail, this reel slings it a very long distance with ease. I did not use the lure control switch. it didnt need it. I will try lighter lure in the next couple days. I dont expect any issues with 1/8 oz lure either. 1/16 will be the challenge for sure. I am using 8 pound line. It may do better with lighter line, but this is as light as I want to go for now.

[Paul Roberts]

Roostertails are essentially an aerodynamic casting weight with a spinner blade and hackled hook attached. They cast like bullets! They are pretty close to their labeled weights too (a 64th to 32nd or so heavier depending on size).

As you probably already know, dense compact aerodynamic weights cast best/easiest. Bank sinkers cast like bullets. Add air resistance though and things get dicier. Line drag in the air is big too.

Will be curious how the 100X handles "1/16oz". I'm guessing that it will, but maybe with very fine braid (under 10#) and an aerodynamic weight. And how far? And with a low enough trajectory/arc to make good use of in real fishing situations. And with less aerodynamic lures?

I do not know how the Japanese BFS reels actually perform, beyond what RonMc has posted, getting well over 100ft with "1/16oz" I believe. I don't know what true weights, or how aerodynamic his lures have to be to achieve such distances. I have noticed the Japanese BFS slingers on YT seem to use small aerodynamic minnow plugs -weights unknown. These may be essentially custom casting weights, with hooks attached? Not sure how well a wider range of lures we fishers are used to using would perform... in tight quarters, in wind, under overhangs? You know... fishing. Then, how much does the Lure Control Switch help, or rob, trajectory?

Likely there will be thumb skills involved. And it is amazing what people can do with practice. I didn't dare skip lures with baitcasting gear, until I did it! It works.

[kyreels]

These may be essentially custom casting weights?

As a collector of practice and tournament casting weights, I have never seen a 1/16 oz (2 gm) weight made commercially. Varmac and Fuji/Lews made an 1/8 oz. They were rarely used in events and often were worn by women as earrings at tournaments. I would be interested in knowing about one if there exists such a beast. May just be emerging due to the newer technical advancements.

[Paul Roberts]

I meant that the BFS lures I've commonly seen used in BFS stream trout fishing are small lipped minnow plugs. Such plugs can be great casters due to their aerodynamic shape. And they are often made with a moving internal weight that moves tail-ward on the cast, and rolls forward during the retrieve. I've wondered if the impressive Japanese BFS gunslingers I see on YT use this lure type bc they serve both as lures and specialized aerodynamic "casting weights". (I edited above to clarify this question.)

[Ron Mc]

What I use for setting mag brake on my BFS reels is a 2-g jighead on a plastic body.
After that mag set, I'm targeting 3-g lures on this tackle, including stream trout minnows like Paul described.


The jighead is made by Zeake (JDM) and lets you clip on your own hook. Above, a small hook is buried in the plastic body for back-acre casting range.
This copies the old Stazo jighead, a favorite from the '90s, for rigging a kicking shrimp dropped from a weightless, clicking cigar cork.
A snap and click of the cork, the shrimp doubles over like the natural shrimp evading with its tail, then settles down head first, just like the natural shrimp swimming with its legs.


We just returned from 2 nights of dock fishing speckled trout along a navigation channel in far S. Texas.
The bait was 1" - 2" glass minnows, in balls so thick, they turn the water black. Big fish sip them without making a calorie-depriving effort to chase them, and it counts as my very favorite finesse fishing (and a heck of a fish fry).


In addition to stream trout plugs (with a hook swap from tiny trebles to larger plug singles), and plastic-body tandems on UL jigheads, a stamdard lure fishing into the deep channel are metal micro-jigs, which really sail out to distance as Paul also described.

these hooks foul spinning line 4/5 casts, but never fould on BFS because of tight-line casts.


I can't add much to the Bantam discussion, because my reels of choice are modern LP Daiwa w/ aftermarket BFS spools and, especially, racing old Ambassadeurs on my bench. My favorite Ambassadeur bench result is '77 4500C, and this combo two nights ago was sending a 3-g metal micro-jig to surface slashes 150' out.


What I do know about Bantam history, Shimano built their first baitcast reel for Lew Childre, BB-1 through BB-1L.
Copying his design (no patent) for their marked baitcaster sent Lew to Ryobi for subsequent models.

[Paul Roberts]

Fun post, Ron. And... yum! Those specs look good. I did a fair amount of fly fishing for stripers on hordes of little sand eels. Cool catching large-ish fish on such small flies.

3g (~3/32oz) to 150ft: So that might translate to 1/16oz to... 75ft? With some careful tuning and some good thumbing?

[Ron Mc]

Hi Paul,
the 3-g metal microjigs are so dense, they really sail.
Many of them have good pattern glow, which is very effective with fish looking for subtle bait outside night dock lights.



Normally, that rig above will overhand cast the 2-g jighead in my first photo to about 100', but the rod is not rated that light - it's actually rated 5 g at the low end, but it comes alive at 3 g. While it's a bass rod intended for 11-g topwaters, it makes a really good inshore finesse ML.

It makes a good distance bass rod, and overlaps with my 5'6" S-glass kayak bass finesse ML.


My shore salt finesse rod matched with Daiwa and Roro-X spool really fishes the light end, sending the 2 g past 130', and even though the butt will turn a snook, the long tip is too goosey for anything but shore fishing,


This is actually the metal microjig rod, it gets very good line speed and, matched with the right reel, sends 3 g way out - think surf micro-jigging and big fish from shore.

[Hytekrednek]

Wow! Impressive set-ups! I bet that is much fun with a big spec fighting on the other end.

[Ron Mc]

Hi friend, I enjoyed reading through your thread. Bantams have a big fan club.

The trick with light tackle, big fish, and especially kayak, is having rod-butt power to turn a fish trying to go under your boat. Shore fishing, you can usually wait them out, but a big fish going under and wide of your kayak may leverage the rod against the hull and explode the rod.
This is my salt kayak finesse rod, which caught everything that mattered on the 4-day Redfish Rodeo last fall.
Mostly fishing 1/8-oz TexasEye jighead and Minnow-Z.



The first morning, fishing heavily hit Estes Flats, could tell from the bait sign I was on 300 redfish on a shoal hidden by fall bull MWL, and they were heading toward the tide pass and a staked guide boat waiting for them. I went through every color Minnow-Z.

Reflected light on left, transmitted light on right. Normally in morning light, middle color "Mood Ring" reflects mullet sheet and transmits pink is the killer. But it was too visible on the heavily hit flat. When I switched to opaque "The Deal" on bottom, I caught 7 redfish on 12 casts. The other colors caught fish everywhere else that week.
Don't give up on Mood Ring, though - last May, it caught my lifetime spec, 28" on Estes.


For river bass kayak, I've gone to all round reels, a mix of my raced Ambassadeurs, and Japan benchmade reels from Isuzu Kogyo.
All matched with offset-grip/ separate-blade Japan "underground" rods, a mix of S-glass, composite, and IM6.
Top to bottom, 4600C MH frogger, 5' composite MM skip-caster, 5'6" ML S-glass finesse.

the middle combo above is such a good skip-caster, I addded a round reel for skipping bunny shrimp to redfish backs in mangrove and mud marsh. This is 6'4" 2-hand S-glass, that will skip-cast the 1/8 oz off the tip, and the powerful butt rates the rod up to 1 oz, and stops redfish trying to go under the boat.

[Paul Roberts]

Keeping in mind the OP and Shimano's claim with the 100EX, none of the lures mentioned so far weigh 1/16oz (.06g). The jig heads may be close, but the bodies add weight too. I question whether the 100EX could compete with modern BFS configurations. And how far did Shimano consider enough? Actual 1/16oz may just be marketers hyperbole.

[Ron Mc]

Paul, no offense, 1/16 oz is 1.7 g, close enough to 2.
I fish a 1.5-g lure on my raced 1500CI


also on my braid-raced Isuzu BC420SSS - you can get an Ambassadeur close to these, but not quite.

As you can probably tell, tinkering round reels is about my favorite thing.

[Paul Roberts]

No offense taken. My above post is about the 100EX.