Hi Brad
As noone has responded to this, i will try. I normally avoid giving any advice of jigging because, well, anyone who has been jigging with me knows I am truly a master of the sport - NOT!
I haven't fished with either of these rods but I have had a reasonably good look at both of them.
In the first instance, I would probably suggest you get out of your head the notion of stopping power when you talk about xos doggies. A decent sized doggie will do whatever it wants to do. You simply hang on and hope it doesn't cut you off somewhere. I'm not denigrating the captures of really large doggies we see from time to time but I can tell you that luck plays a huge part. I do think there is definitely an element at work here where the harder you go on a big fish, the more in panics and the harder it goes.
On the two rods, I find it peculiar that Daiwa don't have a PE6-8 jig rod. They used to in the past but as I have commented on their GT rods, they seem a little bit out of touch with the sport. To me, the HFS is just a bit too light to have the lifting power for a decent sized fish. The XHFS, while rated to PE10, does profile quite nicely though the blank and looks to be a very nice jig stick so I think that this would clearly be a preferable rod for doggies.
Just one other point for you to note. If you do manage to land a good one, just remember that doggies have a relatively poor survival rate on release, especially when jigged from the depths. i suppose what I am saying is don't leave a trail of dead ones behind.
