Who doesn’t love receiving new fishing gear in the mail?

13 Fishing, the innovative young company that produces affordable, paradigm breaking products for the open minded fisherman, joined the Rapala family of companies last year. That meant I could get dealer pricing on their second generation Concept Z SLD bearing-less bait casting reel with an external sliding braking system. Since 2018, I had been fishing the original Concept Z reel inshore for small game and loved how easy it was to throw light lures, so I wanted to try the improved version with external brake adjustments and stronger gearing. Figured it would be a great reel for friends new to level wind bait casting to try out.

Rapala ships to Hawaii via UPS 2-day so shipping cost is really expensive. To spread the cost around I added a Rapala Fish Pro 6 inch Fillet Knife since I didn’t have a thin, flexible blade to cut sashimi. I had struggled to slice the weke nono from the last trip with my thicker, stiff blade since the the weke nono flesh is soft.

To round out the order I added VMC Octopus Live Bait hooks to try as red damashi hooks, and a set of 13 Fishing’s soft plastic ice fishing lures to mimic plankton. I exclusively use Completely Hooked Lures Minnows in the 1.5 inch size and they catch just about everything on the damashi, but wanted to see what the 13 Fishing critters infused with amino acids and proteins would attract.

Check back to hear how the new toys perform.

6/26/24: Here’s how the new gear performed the first time out.