Colour, sink rate, or place — only one was the answer
Overnight rain had left the outer bay blown out. Working a wind-shadowed harbour carefully produced nothing. Of the three moves for a tough day, which one actually paid?
JetChaser and the autumn bait
The JetChaser is a shore egi for autumn: a tiny size 2.5 (20 g) / 2.6 (22 g) with real weight, built to imitate fast-moving bait. As the sea starts to cool, bait fish are at their most active point of the year. This was autumn eging. Heavy rain had fallen through the night and the outer bay was blown out — the choice was a harbour in the lee of the wind: “the rain will have dropped the water temperature a little, so I picked a harbour with good tidal flow.” Dawn and low light, so a colour that shows a silhouette. The breakwater was worked carefully from the base towards the middle, the JetChaser fed down to the bottom and dragged. Nothing came early on, and the tide line was tried too; the answer only came after a long move to a different area — a good squid from a cove where the bait gathers. When it is tough there are three moves: colour, sink rate, and place. “The best one is to change place — go to where the squid are.” In autumn eging the bait is the key, and that is a question of where you stand, not which egi you tie on.
Field Data
- Country
- Japan
- Season
- Autumn
- Time of day
- Dawn
- Target
- Bigfin reef squid
- Weather
- Light rain (heavy overnight)
- Tide
- High water around 09:00, before slack
- Water clarity
- Clear
- Lure
- JetChaser / EgiSharp
- Method
- Eging (shore)
“Jet eging” as a proposal
“Jet eging,” the phrase Keystone evangelist Azuma uses, is not something coined on the spot. It is what the JetChaser product page calls it, and the reasoning behind the lure is written there too: as the sea starts to cool, bait fish are at their most active point of the year, and “you often see good bigfin reef squid, switched on to feeding, chasing fast-moving bait.” The JetChaser was built to imitate that bait.
So the conclusion reached on the water that morning — in autumn, go and find the bait — and the intent behind the product start from the same premise. One arrives at it in a harbour at dawn; the other states it in advance as a design rationale. Only the order differs.
The Lure's Role
JetChaser
Size 2.5 (20 g) and size 2.6 (22 g). Very small, yet heavy, with a high-buoyancy hard-foam urethane body that holds the tension-stay posture. Because it sinks quickly, the bottom stays findable from a high stand or in fast current. The crown is the KS06 — the hook normally fitted to size 3.5 to 4.0 egi, on a size 2.5 body.
Overnight rain meant colour in the water and a drop in temperature were both expected, which is why a harbour with good tidal flow was chosen. Against a plan of covering ground in moving current while repeatedly re-finding the bottom, a fast sink rate works in the direction of shortening each cast. Being able to step carefully from the base of the breakwater towards the tip early on plausibly rests on that saved time.
EgiSharp
Sizes 3.5 and 3.8, developed in 2007 by the late Genzo Kanagawa, the founder, as an egi that would go beyond the traditional Oita form. At its centre are a sharp profile that pushes high-buoyancy hard-foam urethane resin to its limit, and the KS06 crown, designed from scratch for this lure. Four fall speeds are offered: V0 (ultra slow), V0+ (slow), V1 (standard) and V2 (fast).
“Change the sink rate,” one of the three moves named that day, is something you can carry out by swapping lures precisely because four fall speeds exist within a single size. And the JetChaser in size 2.5 (20 g) is close to the weight of an ordinary size 3.5 egi — near the 17 g of the EgiSharp 3.5 V1 — with both carrying the same KS06 crown. That the pair can be swapped without changing how the cast feels is what makes it useful on a day spent searching for the conditions.
From the Workshop in Arita
The egi used in this video are genuine made-in-Japan products, crafted at KEYSTONE's own factory in Arita, Saga Prefecture — the town of Arita porcelain. We put our soul into each and every egi.
The EgiSharp of 2007, and the JetChaser built for autumn from the shore. Two lures of different design and different size, carrying the same KS06 crown. Off-the-shelf crowns come in too few specifications, and performance hits a ceiling there — for that one reason a dedicated crown was newly developed in-house, and it has been fitted ever since. Both are made in Arita.
MADE TODAY IN ARITA
The fishing above is what this video records: eleven minutes and forty-seven seconds of building a day that refuses to co-operate. From an opening so quiet it has to be re-shot, through “colour, sink rate — but the best is to change place, go to where the squid are,” to the long move and the answer on a cove with a drop-off, what was discarded and what was chosen survives in order.
If it will not play, watch it on YouTube.
