Here is some great information about the rod from the designer/developer Ian Miller.
About the Blank
The T-Curve blanks have a proven track record over the last few years as rugged, yet high-performance graphite blanks, and this made them an ideal candidate for a GT rod – which needs exactly the same attributes.
Rod Design
As with any purpose-built rod, the fundamental requirements need to be understood before designing can commence. I’ve been fortunate enough to do some GT fishing both on the GBR as well as other destinations in the North and South Pacific, so I had a basic understanding of the fish and the lures used. In recent years the Japanese have taken a close interest in this type of fishing and applied specific design characteristics to spinning rods to make them work better and I was interested in these developments. When you break GT fishing down to the very basics, the prime objective is about getting the lure to the fish – a boat can’t do this for you, so being able to cast a heavy lure is paramount! And although they are a hard-fighting fish, the fighting specifications of the rod take a back seat to the primary objective. This makes them quite a different design to most other spinning rods. I also researched the preferences of local specialist GT guides to gain another local perspective.
Inspiration/Basis for the Rod
Shimano Australia already has some very capable and popular rods on the market in the T-Curve Bluewater range however they are more of an all-round style salt water game spinning rod. While they have plenty of power for fighting GTs and have landed some very credible fish, they are not ‘tuned’ for casting GT lures. So a specialist GT rod design also had to incorporate other features – the casting power needed for large poppers and stick baits, a butt/handle design more ergonomically suited to casting big lures off large spin reels, enhanced line flow for bulky leader knots that are inherently encountered with heavy leaders, and had to be made lighter in the hand for long casting sessions! As such there is no particular rod that the GT can be prepared to but it would be fair to say that it is heavily influenced by Japanese design attributes.
The process was more a matter of studying the specifications of existing GT rods in the marketplace, understanding why they have the dimensions that they have and where they fit into the big picture, identifying where I wanted the Shimano GT rod to sit in that marketplace and accordingly fine-tuning the design aspects such as overall length, handle ratios, power ratings etc. GT fishing now covers a fairly wide spectrum of fishing situations and there is tackle designed to suit every situation but in order for the rod to work it had to be compatible with the widest range of applications. The Shimano GT has broad appeal because it is suited to a wide variety of popular lures and powerful enough for the popular line weights. There are more extreme rods for this type of fishing, however the heavier varieties are sometimes too much rod for the average angler to comfortably use, and the lighter rods can often be covered with less specialised tackle. So the Shimano GT rod is one that anglers should happily use for most GT sport-fishing situations.
Design in General
Rod design should always happen on a rod-by-rod basis. Having said that, Australians have somewhat of a pre-occupation for fast action rods and this tends to find its way into most rod designs. As far as I know it has origins in the 70’s and gained popularity because we have a lot of hard-fighting fish that do require some muscle to land them! In the past, it has been commercial suicide to try to offer slow actions because the popular belief is that only fast actions were worthy! This is slowly changing however there still needs to be a specific need to have the slower action before people will buy it. The GT rod fit this profile because a slower action is the best way to gain casting distance, and the fact that the lures are very heavy and require a stiff tip makes the slower action more obvious. I guess time will tell what designs become popular, but Aussie rods are slowly evolving and becoming more specialised so a larger variation in action should follow!
