Rods

Dan Murrell’s verdict - An absolute joy to use and I have no complaints yet. Superb! 5/5

Having used big pits for what seems like forever, I have to be honest and say I was a little dubious about stepping away from one of the more prominent, well-established brands and trying these out. How wrong was I? They have been exceptional.

I have used these for over three months, clocking up somewhere in the region of probably over 500 fishing hours, and I am yet to find something I do not like. Straight out of the box they looked awesome, which is always good for first impressions, but I was amazed with what the box actually held. Inside were two machined, anodised long-cast taper spools.

Firstly is the Shallow variant, capable of holding 300 metres of 15lb (0.37mm), while the Ultra Shallow also caters for 300 metres but of 12lb (0.33mm). What I really liked about these where the fact that three reels can be filled from a 1,000m bulk spool of mono with no backing required, pukka!

Building on from the spools, the Onyx is one of the only reels to offer two interchangeable drag adjusters from the off, as far as I am aware. Depending on where you are fishing or how you prefer to play your fish, you can easily and effortlessly chose either the FD (fine drag) adjuster for small incremental changes allowing you to fine tune the resistance, while the RL (rapid lockdown) is exactly that, from all to nothing in a half a turn.

The gearing seems very well built and with one metre of line retrieval per turn of the handle, reeling in rods from long distance doesn’t seem like the chore they once were.

The chunky bail arm is another great aesthetic I like and gives me a little reassurance when I am throwing the reels around, as does the stainless steel line clip, which is both easy to use and easy on the line. They are balanced with my 3.5lb test curve rods and feel great in the hand. The folding handle is another great addition. Whether you merely like to fold it when sitting behind your rods for that all-important carpy rod shot, or, like me, you move around a lot and like the peace of mind that it’s tucked up out of harm’s way, it’s achieved in one simple clean motion.

My only real criticism is that I would like to see a deeper spool available, although the supplied spools cater for 98 per cent of angling scenarios. Being a big-pit angler I like to push the boundaries and a spool capable of holding 600 to 700 metres would be a real blessing and probably the final nail in the coffin for my existing big pits.

£139

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