Major Craft Giant Killing Tuna Jigging Rods

We’ve been eagerly awaiting the release of these rods for a while now, Major Craft has made a couple of models specifically for our bluefin tuna fishery in California targeting the 350-500g jig range. These rods will be able to work the larger jigs and still give you the pulling power to fish well over 30lbs of drag. Vertical jigs have been a great way to catch the bluefin in California going back over 8 years now, the style continuously evolving each year to what we have today which is primarily longer slimmer 300-500g jigs that drop quick. While we’ve had plenty of success fishing any kind of bigger reel and rail rod setup, the traditional jigging style has still been shown to be more effective for getting the bite especially when fishing during the day. These are short and parabolic rods that give the jigs a lot more action even at depth, they’re thinner and lighter making them a lot more comfortable to fish with and yet they’re capable of fishing the same drag loads without issue.

These aren’t rods designed to be left on the rail, you’ll need to pump and wind to fight the fish but at 6’2″ with a parabolic action it is a whole lot easier to take the heavier drag force on one of these compared to a 8′ fast action rod. We’d recommend pairing these with a lighter frame tall narrow reel to eliminate the issue of guiding the line and to avoid the extra weight of a heavier frame reel. The Accurate Valiant 600N/800N, Okuma Alijos 16, Penn Fathom II 40N and Daiwa Saltiga 55 are all great options for a rod like this for the guys that want to give speed jigging a try.

The conventional model places the reel seat a bit higher than the spinning since for jigging with a conventional reel it is typically better to keep the rod butt under your armpit which requires a bit more space. For a spinning setup you’d want to keep the butt in a fighting belt and use a lower gear ratio spinning reel giving you a broader range of motion while jigging.