Jarvis Walker Aurora II 2500 Spinning Reel Part 1

As mentioned in my introductory blog, I'm currently living in the Torres Strait. Thursday Island, to be precise.

View from our bedroom window... not bad, eh?

I'll confess that I hadn't been doing much fishing prior to moving here. I've been living in Canberra for the past eight or so years, where other interests overtook my previous penchant to fish just about every day, or more frequently if possible.

I only moved to Thursday Island in late January 2016, and fish has been on the menu pretty much every day since. I love the lifestyle up here. Sure, it's unrelentingly hot and humid, but the pace of life and close connection to nature suits me.

My fishing gear, however, has not enjoyed the move. One reel that I had for over a decade self-destructed while casting poppers to small GTs and queenfish. My son's reel from a combo gifted to him in mid-2015 has snapped off from the rod while trying to free a snagged lure (this little 2000 size outfit pulled in a 15 kg blacktip shark three weeks before). I'll confess that I also bought two (too?) cheap 5000 size combos before we moved, and the reels aren't doing too well after three months of use and abuse in the boat catching reef fish.

It was worth it, though...

To cut a long story short, both my lure casting reel and my son's reel have now been replaced by a pair of Jarvis Walker Aurora II 2500 spinning reels. These reels boast a 3 bearing system, infinite anti-reverse, stainless steel main shaft, brass pinion gear(s?) and a gear ratio of 5.5:1. They don't boast anything about the drag system and suggest they're designed for mono, rather than braid.

I'll break the suspense, and tell you I got the pair of reels for just $40 each, including free courier shipping. This puts each reel at approximately $15 each without shipping; shockingly cheap by any standards. In fact, thinking back to my first reel purchase, it's the same price, but for a reel of these specs back then, I'd have been paying in the $100-$150 ballpark! Things have come a long way in 20-something years!

Pulling the reel out of the box, the quality doesn't seem too bad. The handle, bail arm and spool are metal, while the rest is the usual graphite-esque plastic found on properly cheap reels. I wish they wouldn't do it, but there's also a chromed plastic piece on the back of the reel that I already know will scratch up and look terrible very quickly.

Turning the handle, it's actually pretty smooth inside the reel, but the knob is one place a bearing is not, and there's already some slight notching in its rotation. I'll be lubing that bit up regularly...

Keeping with the cheap theme, the line that will go on these reels is also from the Jarvis Walker group: Rovex Tergo 20 lb braid. The reel capacity is rated at 210 m of 0.25 mm mono, so the whole 228 m spool of 0.21mm line should be accommodated. *update* After spooling up, it probably only took about 190-200m. No big deal. I also spooled the second reel with Jack Erskine 10X 9 lb mono for comparison.

This reel is going to be mated with a Shimano 4-6 kg graphite rod, which I use for casting plastics and baits to reef fish and trevally up to about 6 kg. I'm hoping it'll deliver enough drag to tire the 3-5 kg trevally and queenfish commonly encountered off the wharf, and the random assortment of emperors, snappers and tuskfish around the reefs.

First field use:
The first field test was done by my faithful assistant (son) Daniel. He still hasn't grasped the concept of minimising slack line on the return, so I was a little interested to see how the reel would cope with loose coils of braid. After all, most people are going to buy these reels for their kids, and there's nothing I despise more than undoing braid tangles while the fish are biting.

The session involved casting soft plastics off the main wharf for trevally and queenfish. The tide was just getting going, running in from low. The current wasn't too strong when we got there, but by nightfall it was gushing through as is commonly observed around Thursday Island. The winning technique was to cast in to the wind and current, let the lure sink to the bottom and do some intermittent twitches. The fish seemed to be concentrated in one little area about 30 m off the wharf, just off the bottom. If you got the cast right, they'd grab the lure on the first twitch, or sometimes even before.

I can happily report that the reel coped fine. There was one big knot of slack-line-induced loops from a whole 2 hours of casting, and it was relatively easy to undo. Here's a pic of the reel after the session:

As you can see, the line's bunched a little at the top and bottom of the spool and sitting quite loose on there. One cast and retrieve under tension will fix that.

Only three fish troubled the reel; the first was on my only turn with it, where I demonstrated that Daniel didn't need to change lure at all, but follow the technique mentioned above. It was only a small bigeye, so not really a test of the gear at all, but all seemed smooth and happy. The other fish were little queenies, which Daniel proudly caught by himself. Not taken with the above mentioned technique, but taken nonetheless.

My conclusion for the night is that the reel's not bad, with no obvious faults that I could point out as yet. I was expecting to at least find something, like the handle nut loosening with use (I've had that with 'mid-range' reels), the drag loosening off by itself or the reel not coping with loose coils of braid being wound on. Nothing. All was well.

A Week in:
As predicted, the handle knob is not up to the task. It started squeaking on the second trip. However, WD40 did the job to quieten it down and make the action smooth again. WD40 is only a very temporary solution though, and I reckon I'll be doing this at least every other weekend...

Also as predicted, the horrible fake chrome is scratched up, revealing the black plastic underneath. No big deal.

A bright spot for the reel is that it doesn't let you wind when it's under load with a decent fish. That's teaching good technique for my kids, so I'm happy about that.

The reel has handled everything we've chucked at it so far, which has just been casting plastics off the wharf for trevally and floating cut baits down the faces of coral reefs. Nothing's really troubled the reel, and the drag has been nice and smooth. The biggest fish landed so far has been by Daniel.

A very proud Dan with a ~4kg gold spot

Not that it's within scope of this review, but I've had a few goes with his outfit, which is spooled with mono. I've concluded that I really don't like mono anymore. Back on topic, the reel handles mono really well; much better than my braid. But Dan hasn't complained about the mono at all, and he's catching plenty of fish with it.

To conclude Part 1, the reel's really not bad. At least, not in the short term. It's smooth, strong enough and seemingly up to the task. Certainly a steal at $20!

What's 'cheap'?

If you look at online fishing forums, high-end gear is $500-$1000, mid-range is $150-$500 and 'budget' is $100-$150.

You'll also come across the stories of an old dude catching fish on $40 combos from Walmart or Kmart, who's more than happy with his gear and doesn't see the need for expensive gear. And then someone will post how that's great, but they'll stick with their Saltiga, because they actually know what they're missing out on and can't go back to cheap rubbish.

I grew up trying to get the most out of Jarvis Walker. When I started fishing, Jarvis Walker was the Daewoo of the fishing world; it functioned OK, but was certainly nothing exciting. In this day and age, Jarvis Walker is treated with the same disdain as Chery and Great Wall. It's below the spectrum of even 'budget', like much other fishing gear priced below $100.

The truth is that most fishing gear is produced in China, from Van Staal to Shimano to Jarvis Walker and to the junk someone can't be bothered putting a brand on. China makes some great stuff, and they make some terrible stuff. Making things in China is cheap. The costs of materials and labour are really low, due to economies of scale, huge government subsidies and, to an extent, people's willingness (tolerance?) to endure particular working conditions and pay.

This leads to some ethical questions, such as 'does buying a Van Staal support better pay and conditions for Chinese workers?', or 'does buying an unbranded copy of a Saltist take jobs away from Japan (or wherever they're making them this year)?'. In reality, what you buy will no sooner change developing world exploitation any more than riding a bicycle to work will halt global warming. You're just trying to catch some fish, for goodness sake!

I'm a marine science graduate (first class honours, if you must ask...) and have a fair bit of expertise in fisheries and natural resource management thanks to my day job. I really enjoy catching fish, and fished 'responsibly' long before anyone ever printed that on the excessive plastic and cardboard packaging that comes with fishing tackle and equipment. OK, you've caught me, I don't enjoy cleaning fish all that much, so I've only ever kept what I could be bothered filleting and/or what I might give away to my friends (usually whole fish; if I've ever given you fillets, that's a pretty good indicator that I value your friendship quite deeply). I also know that many species of fish don't deal well with getting hooked up, tired out and released; swimming away is far from the final story. I prefer to quickly and humanely put them out of their misery and stop fishing once I've caught enough for a feed or two (or justify the fuel used to catch them).

Why am I talking about eating fish? What's that got to do with defining what cheap is? Well, fish is usually a relatively inexpensive source of protein. The highest quality local fish (King George whiting, coral trout, rock lobster) is usually priced similarly to high end terrestrial meat ($40-60/kg). Commercial fishing, by its very nature, should be an efficient process of delivering fish from the water to the customer.

Just as the saying goes, a penny saved is a penny earned, so a meal of fish is essentially money saved from buying something else. An economist will tell you that, to properly value the meat you've just caught and put on the table, you should take into consideration all the costs associated with obtaining it. Time (minimum wage is $17.something/hour), fuel (boat or car) and bait/tackle/equipment are all costs that we frequently disregard in the pursuit of our hobby.

In this blog, I want to emphasise, mostly for the fun of it, frugality. You can minimise time costs by picking the right place to fish at the right time using the right technique. You can minimise fuel costs by being smarter about where and/or what you fish for. But there's less help out there for how cheap you can get with tackle/equipment without compromising frugality.

How it all began

My fishing life didn't start with a 'Silstar' (yes, they were a reputable brand when I was a kid) spoon in my mouth. Like many young kids, I was gifted a glorified toy as my introduction to fishing; a $12 plastic combo, complete with floats that didn't float, hooks with misformed eyes and spooled with slinkey-esque mono. You know the type:

In spite of its many faults, this gear still got me hooked on fishing, and indeed into a number of fish, before inevitably the reel catastrophically died during standard, run-of-the-mill use; the drag nut popped off into the water due to a very poorly formed thread, rendering the reel useless.

All was not lost. I had a piggy bank in which, once I counted up all the 1c and 2c pieces, had the roughly $15 to buy a replacement Jarvis Walker something-or-other (Vector maybe?) from Big W. It was the cheapest reel I could find. It didn't boast of ball bearings, a long cast spool or even its gear ratio.

At this time (early 90s), with Rex Hunt on the screen talking about quiver tips and Baitrunners and fly fishing, I was nonetheless happy with my 'toy' rod and ultra-cheap Jarvis Walker reel. My dad would take me to Mordialloc Pier, where I would catch the occasional mullet or tiny salmon, or if I could convince him to take me there at nightfall, flathead and pinkies. Dad didn't fish, so he usually read books; with me if it wasn't windy, or in the car if it was. I didn't catch many fish, but I still loved every minute out there.

As I approached 10 years old, I begged mum and dad for an inflatable boat. They were only $25 in the department store catalogues, including oars, and I was convinced they'd be fine for fishing. I was right. Instead of spending hours on piers, dad and I would get up at dawn on Saturday morning and check the wind. If it was calm, we'd load up the Falcon wagon, stop at the garage on South Rd (Moorabbin) to pump up the boat, then launch off Brighton Beach.

I had no concept of how dangerous this was. I don't think dad really did either. To begin with, we were about 100-150m off the shore of Port Phillip Bay in a vinyl pool toy, the only propulsion method being dad's rowing with the supplied plastic oars. Add to that a couple of fishing rods (we'd been given another one for dad to use) with twin hook paternosters, a knife and inevitably a nice feed of spiky flathead, and you'd be forgiven for thinking us to be lunatics. One time, we were looking around for a replacement for our 'blow up boat' at a boatyard. We asked the sales assistant if he had any 8 foot or smaller tinnies, and explained our current equipment. He forthrightly stated that even if he did have one, he wouldn't sell it to us for our own safety.

The one I had was called 'Atlantic Blue II'. In its honour, my actual, real grown-up boat is named Atlantic Blue III

In spite of our lunacy, we persisted with the pool toy for about 3 years, until I became self-sufficient in transporting myself down to Mordialloc on the train, and more than proficient enough to bring home at least a feed of fish every trip.The same toy fishing rod and Jarvis Walker reel lasted the whole journey, having not a problem with even some of the larger fish we'd occasionally encounter (snapper, KG whiting, barracouta, big blue-spot flathead etc). Both finally died; the rod from being closed in one too many car doors, and the reel from a broken anti-reverse spring.

To fit in better with the retiree and dole bludging crowd at Mordialloc, I saved up and bought myself a 'pole'; they were all the rage for the growing coarse fishing scene thanks to Terry Sheppard's emergence on the fishing scene in Australia. In case you're wondering, it was a whole $20 from the Compleat Angler on Nepean Highway, which was then staffed by (most notably) Adam Royter. That pole lasted me another decade or so, until it eventually snapped while setting the hook on a tommy ruff; it was a sad moment, though I'd long since bought a back up and a few other rods to boot.

Oh yeah! What a beast! I have no idea why, but this guy made coarse fishing seriously sexy!

Twenty years on from the heady days of the 'blow-up' boat and toy fishing gear, I've developed a bit of a curiosity about cheap fishing gear once again. I've moved to the Torres Strait, where both the fish and the climate push gear to its limits. Most of my gear was already at the point of replacement, having around a decade of frequent use around Canberra and the NSW South Coast. It's time to buy some new stuff, and I'm thinking 'why not'? Why not do some proper testing of some really cheap gear?