Vision XLA-AR 11 in Costa Rica
In march 2006 we traveled to the pacific coast of Costa Rica. It is one of the hotspots for catching sailfish,tuna, jack cravelle, mackerel and the famous rooster-fish. We got some gear of Vision Fly fishing to test, amongst others the new antireverse reel XLA-AR 11.
When we saw this reel the
first time, we were very surprised about the weight. All the others we
knew like the Tibor or the Billy Pate have much more weight. This isn’t
very comfortable casting the whole day.
So we started to try it in practice full of expectation.
Our initial ambition was
catching a sail, which would have been the ultimate
test for all our fishing gear. But we had bad luck, the sailfish were very
inactive because of storms around Australia and therefore the sea was too rough.
So we decided to fish inshore and find
others to fight with. There were a lot of sardines and all the
predators were chasing them.
We chose poppers to catch big jack cravelle, but also the bonitos and even the rooster did like those flies very much.
The smaller jacks were
about 6-10 pounds, and they fight well.
The biggest jacks we caught were close to 30 pounds. These fish showed
us first the advantage of anti-reverse reels and we also stopped fishing 10
weight rods because we miss lifting power, which is very necessary. The 12
weight rods worked much better and cast the big flies much easier.
The #12 GT4 SW fast did a very good job.
When searching the internet how to catch “Pez Gallo”, the Spanish name of the rooster fish, it was quite hard to find any information about the right fly patterns. But after a while we knew that everything pink colored was very good.
And we found that you need
a lot of speed in your retrieve technique, means you have to cast and strip
while the boat is moving on.
If you ever have a strike
fishing like that, you will know how important
an anti-reverse is and how important it is that it works perfect.
Our completing result of the XLA-AR :
We had no problems at all, the anti-reverse function did well all the time, the
brake works smooth and the less weight allows you to cast a whole day.
And the next trip to Costa Rica will show us how this reel will fight a sailfish, for sure...
Report compiled by:
Uwe Rieder and Christof Menz
More Photos:
