Falling in love with the Long Fall + Jigger combo

The promise of an epic spanish mack haul from my recent trip to the south china sea was met with horrible weather where the trip wasn't just cut short but brought me down to my knees barfing and hanging on to dear life.

Nevertheless, I've acquired myself this sweet gear combo of a Shimano Ocea Jigger + MajorCraft Long Fall rod and was eager to get it pimped and ready for battle. So here's the low down.

Virgin reel, strapped tight and ready.

First yummy bits that goes in, new silvery bling hot off the oven from Japan. Out goes the ARC bearings and in goes Hybrid Ceramic bearings. Lubed them balls with light oil and externally rubbed down with some teflon grease for protection.

Main crank shaft and pinion gear support ARC bearings swapped out with Hybrid Ceramic bearings. Oiled balls and grease rubbed exterior.

Second crank shaft ARC bearings replaced too.

Second pinion gear support ARC bearing up next.

Spool support ARC bearing our and Hybrid Ceramic already snugly fit in the body. This is usually the spot to fiddle with when tuning free spool performance. For this instance, due to higher possibility of salt water intrusion, I opted to lightly grease the balls with salt-water "spec'ed" grease and externally rubbed down as well. Free spool speed isn't the priority as I'll be using jigs of 80g-160g and not about casting ultra light lures.

Another spool support ARC bearing but with a solid king pin in place that needs to be removed using a specialist pin remover tool. Any forcing here will definitely result in unwanted damages.

I've only managed to drop the jigs a couple of times before the weather got worse with cooler boxes propelling about on the boat like demolition balls. Not much impression to be had but I'll have to wait for my next trip back to Pulau Jarak in late August in order to be properly introduced and hopefully 'fall in love' with the sweet combo of the jigger and much hyped MajorCraft long fall rod.