I wanted to share a recent MWG adventure/success story.  

I was invited to fish/test product with sales representatives from two very prominent rod brands. It was the perfect opportunity to talk tackle, which turned into more of "a battle of tackle!" 

One company was pushing their new high end vertical jigging rod designed for pelagic walleye and a couple of pike rods. The pike rods were fairly ordinary using standard no name guides. The VJ rod used Fuji Titanium on a Nano-resin blank which was super light-weight and expensive. The other Pro Series rods focused on pike, walleye, perch and sea trout.  The sea trout rod being of particular interest because its casting distance and accuracy was supposed to be superior. But I just happened to bring my two Microwave guide rods using our BUSIHDO SJ68/8-15 blanks. Both Reps commented, "they had seen the Microwave guides and thought it was just a gimmick." The day's event would soon prove those theories wrong!

Conditions were unpleasant with heavy wind and rain. We started out fishing for pike, casting jerk baits at the edges or into pockets at the edge of cat tails. My rods were geared toward perch so I threw small shallow running wobblers. The boys had trouble with their accuracy, either over or under casting due to the wind. I acknowledged that their larger jerk baits could be affected by the wind, but my 10 gram wobbler would have the same issue though but I wasn't experiencing the same problems. After one pike each, we moved onto perch fishing with small swim baits (7 grams). While they used their traditional 8' rods and I, my 6'8" Spin jig, I caught 10 fish to their one. They, again, were casting all over the place blaming the wind. I commented that maybe the 8' rods are working against them, so I asked, "Why the longer rods?" They answered for distance and a faster hook set.  Soon we began questioning their choice in rod lengths which are traditionally longer and more parabolic in Europe than the US market.

As the day continued, they watched every cast I made and began to comment on the MicroWave guides. Three hours into the demo, one of the guys asked to try my other rod. Exactly two casts later; His first comments were, "We have to get these guides on a series of our rods!! I've never felt a smoother casting spinning rod." He continued, "the distance without any effort is even more unbelievable!" We continued to compare all the rods but in the wet rainy conditions, no matter how hard we tried with the longer rods, none of us could hit the distance that the 6'8" Busihdo/Microwave rod could.

We moved on to fish sea trout using spoons weighing 15 to 25 grams where accuracy and distance is the key and the best part of the demonstration. The wind subsided and the rain stopped, leaving no more excuses and the MicroWave guide rod still dominated the others. Although the longer rods picked up their distance as well, it was agreed that in the same length rod, the Microwave guide system would cast further.

The results of this excursion were that both gentlemen are going directly to their product managers with recommendations to use the MicroWave guide system on new rod series!

Daniel Paluch

American Tackle Company

European Sales manager