I heard a funny story the other day, which I’ll now embellish and report as the truth. It won’t be too far from it.

Two anglers keen on catching wahoo and tuna around a far-flung Australian outpost just received their new bit of kit from Bluewater Tackle World: a nice big overhead reel, and a flash fully-rollered mini-bent-butt game rod that not only looked the part, but was actually almost ideal for their purposes.

I say almost ideal, because if they were fishing from a big boat with padded coamings and plenty to brace up against, it’s the kind of outfit that could really knock over a big fish with ease. But these guys fish from a four-metre dinghy, so the technique has to be a little different. Don’t worry, they’ve got that covered.

The reel really should have had braided line on it too, but they’re not experienced with that new high-tech stuff, so they just had a couple of hundred metres of heavy nylon on it. That’s a bit limiting. After a cursory inspection of the manual, they screwed the drag down, tied on a big bibless lure (they’re not into crimps yet), and went trolling.

Things went well. Everything worked like it was meant to: they’d hook up on the troll, the rod would bend, a little line would peel off against a smooth drag, and then with a push of a button the reel would wind the fish to the boat! Yes, the reel would wind the fish to the boat.

The boys were thrilled. They didn’t even have to take the rod out of the rod holder: with this new electric reel, every moment the fish wasn’t taking line, the reel was retrieving line!

Miya Epoch Command-X 4HP: Lever drag, weighs 1.8kg, max. 28kg drag pressure, capacity 800m PE8, 600m PE10

They had a couple of small tuna in the cooler, when things went wrong. A big strike slammed the rod down, smashing the plastic rod holder and jamming the rod butt in the gunwale. The momentary heart-in-mouth was relieved by the realisation that there was a safety lead attached (not just the battery cable), but it wasn’t all over. The new outfit was still on board, but the heavy line was pouring off the reel, and there wasn’t that much of it to start with…

In pandemonium worthy of a slapstick comedy, the duo tried to angle the boat, hold on to the outfit and slow the fish down all at the same time. There was no way the rod was going to point in the right direction, wedged into the remnants of the rod holder, and they couldn’t chase the fish and hold on to the butt and angle the rod all at the same time. They couldn’t get the rod out of the rod holder. The long and short of it was, the fish did what it wanted.

Until it reached the end of the line. At this point it was clearly make or break: and the line didn’t break. Maybe the fish was angling down and just circled on the end of its 200m tether; maybe it had just burnt itself out on the explosive run. But it stayed attached.

The anglers and the fish paused for breath, but the now-empty electric reel didn’t. It started retrieving line the moment the winding pressure overcame the fish’s resistance. Never mind the chaos around it: that little 12-volt electric motor just started winding that tuna back to the boat!

It took some time, and the fish made more runs, but it was beaten. Half an hour later, the little hand gaff was looking very ordinary as the anglers peered over the side at a yellowfin tuna that was evidently very big. How big? Maybe their eyes had gone a little saucer-sized, but they said “as big as that one on the Owner hook catalogue you sent us … maybe bigger” (the tuna on the catalogue cover was being held up by six anglers, and probably weighed around 150kg!).

The reel gave the last wind to pop the fish to the surface. Now yellowfin have a habit of giving a last little startled run when they break the surface, and this one did that. The knot at the lure gave way, and the fish shot through.

Daiwa Tanacom Bull 750Fe: Star drag, weighs 1.26kg, max. 20kg drag pressure, capacity 500m PE8

I’m not for a moment recommending electric reels for trolling, or sportfishing in general, though I could tell you some stories … but they do have their place, a very useful place, and that’s for deep-water bottom fishing. They’ve never really taken off in Australia; and in fact there are probably only a hundred sold every year, if that. But there probably should be more, and I suspect in the future there will be.

The logic is that as fish get harder to catch close to home, an inevitability of a growing population, more recreational anglers will want to go deeper. Sure you can go farther afield by towing your boat north or south, but you can also just drive the boat farther west (with apologies to south coast readers). And waters deeper than say 200m are, comparatively speaking, untouched.

The reason they’re untouched is twofold: one is weather, and the other is that it’s too hard to fish. At least an electric reel can overcome the latter.

There are only three brands of electric reels with a presence on the Australian market. There’s Daiwa and Shimano, which are obviously the big guns in reels worldwide, and there’s also Miya Epoch, another Japanese contender who actually dominate the electric reel market back on their home ground, but don’t have the international experience of the other two.

Electric reels are available in probably more size ranges than you’d expect, from ones that really only suit whiting fishing in 30m, up to 17-ball-bearing 24V giants that will take 1300m of PE30 (150kg) braid, put out 80kg of drag and weigh 15kg (not including the remote control, no kidding). And they’ll still mount on a rod.

All electric reels incorporate a level-wind system. Line capacities are given for Japanese braided lines, where PE8 is typically 80lb, PE12 is typically 120-130lb and so on. Retrieve rate will vary with the amount of line out, and the load on the reel, but all are better than 100m/minute with little load.

Daiwa Tanacom Bull 1000: Star drag, weighs 1.5kg, max. 22kg drag pressure, capacity 800m PE8, 600m PE10

All reels also incorporate a manual winding handle, which remains stationary while the electrics are doing their job, but can be used for additional winding power or when the battery power is low; and all reels also have an LCD screen that provides information (depending on the model) such as length of line out, retrieve speed, time to go, depth memory, and auto stop status.

These reels are typically around $1000, up to over $2000 for the larger Miya Epoch. On top of that, you can spend a fair bit on braid, but most anglers will use heavy braid and lighter bottom rigs, so short of some catastrophe, the line is likely to be on the reel for years.

Then there’s the rod; and most anglers will use them standing up on their usual bottom fishing rods. But the better arrangement is a game rod with a short curved aluminium butt, and ideally a swivelling roller tip. That swivelling roller tip rod needs to be custom built, but it allows the outfit to be fished entirely from a rod holder, and is definitely the way to go when using the bigger and heavier reels. The in-between is to use an off-the-shelf rod fitted with a mini bent butt.

Bottom rigs for the very deep are best done with crimps, three-way swivels, heavy circle hooks, lighter sinker loops and very heavy snapper sinkers. If the sinker snags, it’s the only part of the rig lost. Fish hook themselves on circle hooks, which is good because there’s no way you’re setting the hook from 300m away.

I’m no expert on all of this, so beyond the above, all I can say is there’s a lot to learn. How abundant those fine-eating deepwater fish like bass groper and grey-bandeds are off the various launching ramps is pretty much an unknown. How essential the addition of lights and glow things are to the bottom rigs will be a learning process. What the right baits, the best size hooks and most productive bottom will be requires experience.

One thing I do know is that when that knowledge is gained, it will be gained with the assistance of a lot of 12-volt reels.

Text and pics © Hal Harvey and Bluewater Tackle World

This article was first published in Western Angler magazine in April 2007, and may have been subsequently updated.