Many years ago, deepwater jigging was all about yellowtail kingfish, but jigging’s most recent incarnation has seen the technique expand its target list to include a variety of different species, some of which you wouldn’t necessarily think were jig eaters.

Coral trout, bass groper, hapuka, dogtooth tuna, wahoo, albacore — they’ve all joined the Seriola family and others like cobia and giant trevally in smashing heavy metal at any given opportunity. Shimano’s technological advances in their range of rods, reels, braided lines and lures has also made jigging somewhat more enjoyable than it once was. A big king, dogtooth tuna or giant trevally will still test you out though, and the ‘strong in the back but weak in the head’ requirement still applies even today.

With their TC3 blanks, Fuji reel seats, Fuji SiC guides and custom-shaped EVA fighting handgrips, the Ian Miller-designed TCurve Deep Jig spin and overhead rods set the standard for off-the-shelf jigging sticks and remain steadfast performers to this day. Their medium to extra fast actioned blanks are the right taper for working jigs, but retain plenty of guts in reserve to keep the target species away from line-shredding reefs and wrecks.

These Deep Jig rods have now been joined by 11 new TCurve Revolution Vertical Jigging rods. These have Pacific Bay componentry, Zirconium ring guides, EVA grips and split butt configurations, and are designed for use with metal jigs as well as more subtle slow-jigging approaches with lures like Shimano’s Lucanus and Bottom Ship.