Xzoga Taka-pi 7525

[Paul de Bruijn]

Hi guys,

A friend of mine bought the rod above for our trip next April, and we are wondering if anyone here has experience with this rod.

Specs:
http://www.xzoga.com/taka-pi.php

Going to a remote location it's better to know in advance whether this rod is suitable of maybe too light.

Any advice or experience is highly appreciated!

Thanks a lot!

[Brandon Khoo]

Paul, it is pretty hard for anyone to give you an opinion on whether a rod is too heavy or too light when you haven't said what you want the rod for! It's rated PE5 so if you stick to that line class, you should be right. If you want to load it up with PE8, then you might have a problem.

[Paul de Bruijn]

Hi Brandon, thanks for your response.
You are absolutely right: we are going to Saint Brandon in April and the guy we are renting a boat from told us a story about a trip he had last year. Some Spanish guys lost a lot of poppers and fish while fishing with 65lbs braid. He advised us to go to 80 or 100...
Unfortunately we have rods that seem too light for this: the Xzoga mentioned and a Smith WRC 80P/35 (altough someone told me that the Smith rod can handle 100lbs...)

We might have to look around for another rod...

[Brandon Khoo]

Paul, if you want to fish 100lb, you will need to find a rod in that weight class. The Smith is fine for that weight class but don't overload it! The Xzoga you are looking at isn't suitable.

[Colin P]

Hi Paul,

I too am going to Saint Brandon in April - and I will be taking 2 popping rods - a Smiths 80P/35 loaded with 80 test braid and Ocean Revolution Pathfinder loaded with 100 test. The main danger posed to both rod and braid is the shock load on a GT strike (especially close to the boat). You can however set the clutch to mitigate these issues while still having a tight enough clutch to only grudgingly give line. That said, I twice broke 100 test braid on the strike from big GT in Fiji recently. I will be going back to twisted leaders which do "give a little" (much like a bimini in mono) - I doubt I would have broken on either strike if I'd not switched to straight mono.

Good luck in Saint Brandon.

Colin

[Jon Li]

Hi Brandon, thanks for your response.
You are absolutely right: we are going to Saint Brandon in April and the guy we are renting a boat from told us a story about a trip he had last year. Some Spanish guys lost a lot of poppers and fish while fishing with 65lbs braid. He advised us to go to 80 or 100...
Unfortunately we have rods that seem too light for this: the Xzoga mentioned and a Smith WRC 80P/35 (altough someone told me that the Smith rod can handle 100lbs...)

We might have to look around for another rod...

This rod will handle 100+ lbs anyday :
http://www.gtpopping.com/forum/index.php?topic=1998.0

Jon .

[Paul de Bruijn]

I'll give it a go with the Smith rod and try and be gentle with it. 

For my friend it's a different story, I will keep an eye on the classifieds here...

Jon: thanks for the link...

[Khaled Altaher]

Maybe you should've gone with this Xzoga:

SPECIFICATION 
    Model                Length    Type   Sec.    PTF action     PE NO    MaxDrag      BestDrag         Popper Wt.     Tip Dia.     Butt Dia.   
   
  Taka-Pi 7710        7' 7"         S       2           FAST+        PE 10      25 KG         10-14 KG          Max 240g      3.80mm    15.20mm

http://seasonsrods.com.au/taka_pi.htm

[Tom Grubb]

hey paul, i have used one of these rods before as afew of my fishing buddies own them for a light popper rod. they are running stellas with 50pound over it, they are catching fish 20-25kg with this set up, yet if you going to hook onto that 30kg+ it would be a different story. i am normally running my PE8(live fibre) or PE10 (xzgoa Taka-Pi 7710) incases that fish of a life time is around :-)