When they are on, you find the bottom once
Tip-run, from the shore
Tip-run is thought of as a boat technique. Cast the same egi from the shore and what you need is not special tackle, but a different order of operations.
Why this video
A KEYSTONE evangelist works through shore tip-run with the JetChaser, from the tackle to the retrieve to the fishing itself. Four minutes fifty-two. "People hear 'shore tip-run' and assume it must be difficult, but it is actually very easy" — that opening line is the claim the video sets out to make.
Nothing in the tackle is special: an 8.5ft M-class rod, a 2500-size reel, PE 0.6. More than once on camera he stops to say that this is simply the tackle you would already be using from the shore. The session is on a high platform, with a crosswind and a running tide. The hit came on a JetChaser size 2.6 in Red Aji Orange, while he was holding a tension fall.
We are covering it for the change in the order of operations, not for the catch. Tip-run belongs to the boat: the boat drifts, so the angler repeats one movement and the water covered is decided by the drift. From the shore nothing drifts you, so the angler is what moves. Every advantage named in the video — the bottom is easy to feel, the tempo is fast, you can run and gun — follows from that substitution.
Key Moments
Our Analysis
The retrieve is consistent. Drop on a tension fall to find the bottom, jerk five or six times, slide it sideways, then drag. Where the water is deep, drag it longer. Repeat. And he states plainly that the bottom is found only once — "the active squid come up after it, so you take the bottom at the start and after that there is no need to take it again."
The reason the step can be dropped is that the squid are not pinned to the bottom. Active fish follow the egi up into the middle layer, so once you know where the bottom is, working that same depth horizontally puts more casts in the water. Read the other way round, whether the shortcut works is a gauge of how active they are. If nothing comes without going back down, activity may have dropped.
The first thing to learn in shore tip-run is not the movement itself but the judgement of what may be skipped. Fishing from the shore means covering water on foot, so the time spent on one cast decides how much water you reach. Whether you can drop that one return to the bottom changes how many spots you get through in the same session.
Field Data
- Country
- Japan
- Target
- Bigfin reef squid
- Wind
- Crosswind
- Lure
- JetChaser
- Size
- size 2.5 / size 2.6
- Colour
- Red Aji Orange
- Method
- Shore tip-run
Beyond the Video
This use was not discovered after the fact. The JetChaser product page has said since launch that "the unexpected result from last year's test sessions was eging from the shore". It gives the reason as well: size 2.5 (20g) weighs about the same as an ordinary size 3.5 egi, so nothing feels wrong on the cast or in the action. That weight is why he can say on camera that this is just the tackle you would use from the shore anyway.
It was designed for shallow water of 10 to 20 metres, fished on light tackle, for the good bigfin reef squid holding on the bottom. Shore fishing sits on the same line, and the brief already anticipated that the fast sink would pay off on high platforms and in fast current. That the hit came from a place that was high, deep and with the tide moving lines up with what was intended.
The Lure's Role
JetChaser
Two sizes, 2.5 (20g) and 2.6 (22g). The body is hard urethane foam, a material that is difficult to mass-produce, and it is that high buoyancy which makes the tension-stay posture possible. The crown is KS06 — the one normally fitted to size 3.5 and 4.0 — carried on a size 2.5 body.
Every advantage named in the video comes back to the pairing of weight and buoyancy. The weight keeps the egi settled and the distance up into a headwind or a crosswind. The fast sink makes the bottom easy to feel, which is what keeps the snags down and the tempo high. The buoyancy holds the posture, so you can wait with the line tight. The hit came on size 2.6 in Red Aji Orange, on exactly that tension-fall wait.
From the Workshop in Arita
The egi used in this video are made at the KEYSTONE factory in Arita, Saga Prefecture, Japan.
MADE TODAY IN ARITA
If it will not play, watch it on YouTube.
