MEGADOG

BIG LURE makes BIG EMOTION!!

MEGADOG (The first part)
As the summer comes to an end, I hope all the bass maniacs out there are doing well! This engineering blog will focus on a presentations that are perfect for those getting fidgety in anticipation of the fall fishing season.
●The Concept Is a 200mm + Dogwalker
Many of you have probably already seem the impactful body of the MEGADOG in magazine articles. The aim of this lure is to draw big bait eating monsters to the surface using the konoshiro pattern.
Real konoshiro range from 22-23cm up to 25cm and even 30cm, but monsters swallow them whole with no difficulty. That’s why the body size had to be a minimum of 200mm. The was an absolute condition.
However, it’s not all just about size. The important thing here is that it’s big and can perform dog-walking easily. The MEGADOG has a very smooth and agile dog-walk that makes you forget about its larger size altogether. We strived for performance like that of the GIANT DOGX which has a proven record in freshwater and saltwater alike.
The first test models used the GIANT DOGX as a base and were scaled up to 220mm and 250mm, but that resulted in a massive weight gain reaching over 200g. That just wasn’t a very castable lure, so we slimmed down and redesigned the body.
The first prototypes based on the GIANT DOGX were 220mm and 250mm. You can see how much they differ from the original.
There were over ten different prototypes, but the basic size of 220mm was decided upon rather early in development and hasn’t changed since. After that, we spent most of our efforts pursuing a body form and balance that was optimal for good dog-walking performance. Whether we chose to make the body bigger, or make it slimmer, in the end the main goal was to have it inherit the roll-walking of the GIANT DOGX.
At first the face design was quite blunt, but to get better dog-walking performance the head was refined to a more pointed design.
Including the hook, the weight comes in at 130g. This approaches the upper limit of what you can cast comfortably with big bait tackle. With a rearward center of gravity and an aerodynamic design, the MEGADOG is very easy to cast.
●A Center of Gravity Inherited from the DOG-X
The MEGADOG has a fixed center of gravity. In addition, it has a seesaw balancer and inertial balancer built in as is tradition with the DOGX series. The seesaw balancer makes it easier for the head to pivot side-to-side, and the inertial balancer swings the body side-to-side, accentuating the head movement for easy, powerful dog-walking action. This mechanism is something used since the original DOGX and allows for intuitive, consistent action. It’s all a repetition of that process. Since it swings its head as it roll-walks, showing its large sides to targets below, the MEGADOG has excellent flashing performance despite being a topwater plug. During such movement, the fluctuation of the silhouette from fat to thin also helps to trigger bites from fish.
The weights used are somewhat small considering the size of the body, and there aren’t that many either. The largest is a 10mm ball. Why is that enough? The body itself is built very tough with thick ABS resin, and the wire running through the body from head to tail adds weight as well. The center of gravity design that takes into account all of these aspects helps the MEGADOG realize smooth dog-walking action.
●Why Dogwalking? Recent saltwater pencils are mostly the diving type, owing much to the bluefish boom. Many feature the vertical floating posture as well. But for sea bass, dog-walking types are more effective, so that’s what we focused on with the MEGADOG. The floating posture is nearly horizontal, and it’s set so that the tail only sinks a tiny bit with the weight of the hook. This is another unique quality of the MEGADOG.
Another feature of the MEGADOG is that its mouth is half open to help create light splashing when the head swings from side to side. The natural splashing sounds this creates help attract sea bass over a wider area, while not impeding the action of the lure.
The lure is very agile, and with full rotations of a high gear reel you can easily perform skating. I think you’ll be surprised at how agile this lure is despite its size.
●The Recommended Tackle Is Bait-Type
For tackle, bait-type is definitely advantageous. That’s because it’s easy to trigger actions with the reel. It’s not something that’s impossible with larger spinning reels, but it might be a bit. A high gear baitcasting reel has much less resistance, and makes it easier to perform actions with hard reel-stop retrieve. As for the reel size, you should be fine if you pick a model designed for big bass bait. The line should be PE 3-5, and a 50lb leader is standard.
For the rod, something with at least the power of an F7 is ideal. It can vary depending on how you cast and the torque of the rod, but in general a slow response-rate and a rod that loads deeply for long casts is preferable. Really rigid rods are no good, since there isn’t enough load to cast well or absorb some of the topwater strike. If it’s a well-designed big bait rod you should be fine. If it’s too long it’s a bit difficult to manage on a boat, so I’d say 7.5’ is a good target-length.
●Sturdy Monster Hunting Construction
With the konoshiro pattern it’s not uncommon to hook blue fish such as yellowtail, so the body is built to be sturdy enough to handle whatever comes at it. The internal construction features a through-body wire attached to a 200kg rated swivel, fortifying it against sudden twists and increasing its overall strength. There’s no doubt that this is a bit overkill for a seabass pencil, but that means there’s almost no possibility of this lure being destroyed by fish.
The hook is designed exclusively for this lure. When anticipating both sea bass and blue fish, the thin seabass hooks lacked in strength, but the thicker blue fish hooks proved harder to pierce with. That’s the difficult aspect of the konoshiro pattern. So we settled on a hook thinner than a blue fish hook, but thicker than a seabass hook and fortified it with an anti-rust coating. It has excellent piercing performance and will handle 10kg class blue fish without concern.
We’ve also doubled up on the split rings, due to vastly increased performance during testing. If the hook is dangling too close to the body, the body can interfere with hooking as seabass attack. However, if we use two rings and give it a little more distance, the hook rate clearly increases. Other lures with this feature include the I-Slide 262T.
Equipped with through-body wire, 200kg rated swivel, and original hook.
That’s all for this installment. Next time we’ll talk about the MEGADOG’s color variations!