The Night the Squid Rose — 83m of Water, Fish at 20m
Against 83 metres of water, the squid had risen to 20-30. Working upward a few metres at a time, the answers were a black that shows a silhouette and a slow fall matched to a slack tide.
Why this video
The second omorig trip of the season. Fifteen minutes and twenty-six seconds spent testing two new products on the water: the Black Edition of the MonroEgi Yodaki Tune, and the slow-falling Mattari Tune. The water is 83 metres deep. And yet, on this night, the squid were not on the bottom.
The bait was holding around 40m, and the first squid took the egi on the fall. Switching to a black colour, he hooked up on the first drop at 70m; when the bites stopped he worked upward in 5m steps and connected again at 45m. By the end of the night a drop to 30m was enough — the take came the moment it stopped. “Started around 70 and the fish came at about 20.” The productive depth kept climbing all through the video. The tide, meanwhile, was “not really running.”
What makes this video worth keeping is not the good squid; it is that a prediction made before the first cast is then tested on camera. Before reaching for black, he states the condition out loud: “Not hard on the bottom — when the squid rise a bit. In 80 metres, above 50 is when they respond.” That is exactly how the night unfolded. Colour and fall rate are two separate tools, and on this night both pointed the same way.
Key Moments
Our Analysis
The condition for fishing black is put into words before the colour goes on: “Not hard on the bottom — when the squid rise a bit. In 80 metres, above 50 is when they respond.” He then switches to Red Head Black and hooks up on the first drop at 70m — “nothing much was happening until now,” he says, plainly surprised. Later, a Mattari Tune in Full Black is simply dropped to 30m: “I hit the depth, stopped, said let's wait a moment — and it was there.” No jerking at all. Black also produced the best numbers and the best size of the night.
A night squid boat is lit from above, so squid that have risen see the egi from below or from the side. In that geometry, a clear outline is likely to matter more than brightness. His own phrasing — “when a squid that's up in the water column looks down” — assumes exactly that line of sight. Down on the bottom, where there is little ambient light, a glow colour has the advantage instead. Black is not simply strong; it is strong on nights when the squid come up.
Plenty of anglers keep black for last, filing it under “low appeal.” Here it is used the other way round — as the confirmation after the depth has been narrowed down. Once you know the squid are holding high, black becomes a decision you can make before the egi is in the water.
For the Mattari Tune, the design numbers are spoken aloud. The 2.5 Yodaki Tune falls one metre in 4-5 seconds; the Mattari Tune takes 7-8. To get there, “the sinker is mounted the other way round,” shifting the balance point back so the egi falls in a near-horizontal posture. On this night the tide was “not really running,” and squid kept committing to an egi that was simply stopped and left to sink.
The problem he describes is what happens when the current does run: a nose-down egi catches the flow, fails to sink, and ends up hanging above the sinker. A level fall presents less surface to the current and drops cleanly. On a slack night like this one there is little flow to fight, so the slowness itself becomes the point — the egi simply stays in front of the squid for longer. Getting takes with no jerking at all is best read as dwell time doing the work, not appeal.
“You change the colour, and you change the speed” — colour and fall rate are two independent axes. On this night they happened to point the same way: silhouette for squid that had risen, a slow fall for a slack tide. When two conditions stack like that, matching only one of them gets you only half an answer. The steadily climbing depth over the course of the night shows that in order.
Field Data
- Country
- Japan
- Time of day
- Night
- Target
- Swordtip squid / Japanese flying squid
- Depth
- 83m
- Current
- Slack (“not really running”)
- Lure
- MonroEgi Yodaki Tune Black Edition / MonroEgi Mattari Tune
- Size
- Size 2.5
- Colour
- Full Pink Glow Black / Red Head Black / Red GG Purple Black / Full Black / Orange Glow Red
- Method
- Omorig (night squid fishing)
Beyond the Video
The video says only “eight colours in all”; the catalogue lists them. GG Black, Red GG Purple Black, Gold GG Black, Green GG Black, Full Pink Glow Black, Red Head Black, Yellow Head Black and Red UV GG Black, in sizes 2.5 and 3.0. The GG in those names stands for Galaxy Glow — a finish that glows in points rather than across the whole body. Laid over black, it lets one egi carry both a silhouette and a glow.
One more thing appears only in the catalogue: this series goes through a special painting process and therefore takes longer to produce than the other colours. Keeping the glow alive underneath the black is paid for in lead time.
The Mattari Tune comes in size 2.5 only, at 9g against the Yodaki Tune's 10g. Because the two are hard to tell apart by eye, the sinker is stamped [Msize 2.5]. The dropper weight in the video is a REVOLT omorig Drip Sinker in size 30; sizes 30 and 40 have now joined the existing 20 and 25.
Note that the video was filmed before release — hence “late June into July” of 2025 for shop shelves. All eight Black Edition colours, in both 2.5 and 3.0, are now in circulation.
The Lure's Role
MonroEgi Yodaki Tune (Black Edition)
An egi designed for night squid fishing with omorig and ika-metal. Its high-buoyancy body of hard foamed urethane leaps vertically on a light jerk, then settles and falls. The Black Edition adds eight black-based colours alongside Full Black, the long-standing number one. Because a glow base coat is laid down first and black goes over the top, the egi shows a silhouette while still glowing in the dark.
All night, the productive depth sat between 20 and 70 metres in 83 metres of water. Squid that have risen look up at the egi, and in that position an outline is likely to carry further than brightness. Hooking up on the first drop after switching to Red Head Black — and black holding up for both numbers and size afterwards — fits that condition.
MonroEgi Mattari Tune
The Yodaki Tune retuned to sink more slowly: size 2.5 at 9g, falling 1m in 7-8 seconds against the standard 4-5. The balance point sits further back, so it falls in a near-horizontal posture. Despite the compact size, it carries two crown hooks of the strength normally fitted to a size 4 egi, enough for large swordtip squid.
The tide was slack. With little flow to push the egi around, a slow descent turns directly into time spent in front of the squid. In the video, dropping to 30m and simply stopping produced takes with no jerking at all — less a case of being refused by a fast fall than of deliberately buying time to be seen.
From the Workshop in Arita
The egi used in this video are made at the KEYSTONE factory in Arita, Saga Prefecture, Japan.
The Black Edition goes through an extra stage: the glow base coat is applied first, then black over it. Leaving points of light rather than covering everything takes more hands than a standard colour, and that shows up in the time it takes to ship. The bait described in the video as “showing a silhouette while still drawing them in with glow” is the result of that process. Made in Arita.
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