Where is the okuma makaira made

Okay, so he has a PhD in Philosophy. He's a licensed electrician and left a position heading up a Washington DC think tank to open a motorcycle repair shop.

Dude walks the talk. Reactions: Findtuna. Ok, what does Penn got going on the drawing board? Baby baja? Lever drag torque light? Either you give it up or I'm going to spread rumors! Inquiry mind wants to know. So Steve, Baby Baja in the works right???????? I will continue to fish mine. Go down to BassPro and play with a Makaira or Andros reel and see what your impression is.

I'm sure all the computers you use are made in that part of the world too. Just because we have idiotically sent the manufacture of most of our consumer goods to asia doesn't mean we have to continue If you send it to either china it's gone. So the Baby Baja is coming when??? Spazoid Almost A Member. I wonder I bet that would make them more popular amongst our less "hardcore" fishing brethren who haven't appreciated the Baja Special as a killer fishing tool simply for its current looks.

Locke N Load Member. Problem with the Baja Special is try to find one outside of southern CA. Even at the fishing show in Providence I asked the Penn booth if they had one. The "rep" said they don't sell reels, let alone have any on special at the booth. He had no idea even when I tried to explain it as the HN. Locke N Load said:. Even in socal it is not easy to find. I went to a very respectable and well known tackle shop in San Diego and one of the sales rep told me it was no longer made.

He also said they were made in China when they were made. Penn is doing a poor job with marketing if their rep had no idea what it was. Now I see why sales aren't doing too well. Some of the staff at sport shows are simply local anglers who have only a passing knowledge of the complete catalogue; so it's not too surprising that somebody from New England might not know much about the HN.

Not sure how it's done "out east", but in the west, factory reel booths do not sell reels at shows; the tackle dealers would be very unhappy. If an SD tackle shop employee actually said HN's were ever made in China, [they were indeed discontinued between December and June ], then they were sadly mistaken.

If you want to PM me the name of the shop, I can make sure that they have the correct info. Hang with me at the FHS for awhile; it's pretty obvious when somebody enthusiastically comes up asking about the Baja Special, and then reacts with disappointment when they see it.

Last edited: Jan 30, Show hidden low quality content. You must log in or register to reply here. Similar threads Upvote 0. Okuma Tesoro 5NS. I came across this on Okuma's page while collecting the previous screenshots, and thought I should make it clear that I have nothing against seeing one or "two" of those damn fine ads!! But I digress.. Beneath the rotor there is a screw-in retainer red arrow , and I'm kinda tired at this point of mentioning where they got the "inspiration" for it.

This retainer has an oil seal yellow arrow which perfectly shuts water out of the pinion assembly. Seen also is the rotor brake lever blue arrow which engages the rubber brake ring green arrow when the bail is opened for a cast. This rubber brake ring can be accessed through the cut-outs of the rotor without disassembly, allowing easy cleaning and maintenance. The Makaira has a manual bail closure so a rotor brake was not essential, still it's good to have it.

Under the retainer there is a seal for that retainer blue arrow , and the unit that houses the anti-reverse clutch red arrow. This unit is tightly screwed-in, and it's reverse threaded meaning you remove it by turning it clockwise instead of the normal anti-clockwise. This is of course so that when the reel is under pressure from a big fish, the unit is pushed in the tightening direction.

If it had normal threads the unit would be pushed in the loosening direction when under pressure, and you don't want that.

To remove it a proper tool should fit into the two holes green arrows then turned clockwise. Here it is out, and you can see the clutch permanently press fitted into it. Do not try to remove the clutch.

A slightly larger model of this clutch is used in some Van Staal surf models HF , and its reliability and long service life are well established.

As expected in this top class, the clutch has metal springs for maximum durability. This clutch is known for being a bit tight to operate, which adds to an already tight reel, but I don't mind it knowing just how dependable it is. It has another important advantage. The small diameter of this clutch allows it to be inserted between two ball bearings, so it's protected and never under radial load.

The large clutches of the other two do not allow this arrangement. The Makaira's setup can only add to reliability and longevity.

The rotor flange is removable, and in its back there is a recess blue arrow to accept the protruding top oscillation rod red arrow. Moving on to the spool, one can't help noticing this bulge, whose job is to increase line capacity a little bit.

It's carbon copied from the Stella SW and How many times have I spoken of copied designs so far? It must be some sort of a record. The spool lip has a distinct reverse taper which we've seen before. This is becoming too boring, so let's put it in the form of a quiz this time. Choose the correct answer. If you know the correct answer send it to Okuma's headquarters, and they will most likely never respond.

Anyway, I have a problem with the spool not having a separate hardened lip. If a reel costs that much, I expect it to have a titanium nitride coated lip. These hardened lips have two advantages; firstly hardness means less friction with line which helps with casting distance, particularly when casting wet braid. The effect is small but it's there. Secondly and most significantly, it protects the spool lip from damage if the reel is dropped or rubbed against an abrasive surface.

A scratch or dent anywhere on a reel might have no negative effect at all, but when it happens to the spool lip the reel becomes pretty much useless. You don't want to cast braid over a scratched lip that will damage it, let alone the adverse effect it would have on casting distance.

Today this is more important than ever, because these big game reels are becoming popular in heavy duty shore and rock fishing, where the environment is more dangerous for reels than on a boat. Some readers have been sending me reports of their incredible catches from rocky shores, and these include huge tuna and rays. Actually I too hit the rocks while testing this Okuma, and the importance of hardened lips became quite real for me.

I wasn't there to catch big fish though. Just trying to get some Jack Crevalle which I needed desperately for reasons you'll see at the end of this review. The important part here is that I was landing one that was too heavy to lift with the rod, I carefully put the rod down on the rocks as I grabbed the leader and went down, but as I climbed back up I accidentally pulled on the line which moved the rod's butt and sent it with the Makaira crashing down.

Thankfully though, and by pure luck, the bail arm took the fall and protected the spool. This is the damage done to the powerful chunky bail arm by a 2 feet fall on those sharp rocks, so imagine the disaster had it landed on the thin spool lip instead. When a reel costs that much I want it to have a hardened lip for safety in hostile environments, especially that the Makaira casts exceptionally well which makes it a very valid choice for this sort of land based fishing.

The back of the spool has another highly effective oil seal to protect the bottom drag components. Disassembling the spool to reach the bottom drag starts with unscrewing the lower part of the skirt. This is a sensitive operation because it's tightened down with vengeance, and using improper tools or excessive force could damage it.

That skirt has a seal to keep water out red arrow. After that the ported disk is dropped, which has its own seal as well red arrow.

This frees the single metal drag washer blue arrow. Then that metal drag washer can come out, exposing the simple drag clicker mechanism; a sheet metal clicker tongue blue arrow , which works in conjunction with the clicker disc screwed into the drag washer red arrow.

With expected differences stemming from the different location, the design of this clicker comes straight from the Saltiga. The green arrow points the bottom ball bearing of the spool. This is how the clicker fits for reassembly red arrow , before the metal drag washer is inserted on top of it and manoeuvred so that the clicker slips into the disc.

The yellow arrow points the single woven carbon drag washer. Another contrast with the Stella SW here is that both Stella 20k and 30k use the same drag components, which results in the 30k having a lower maximum drag due to the wider spool. In the Makaira though the 20k and 30k use different drag components with larger discs in the 30k, therefore both the 20k and 30k Okumas can produce roughly the same maximum drag.

The reel has a claimed 30kg 66lb of maximum drag, and I scaled it to that figure no problems at all. When reassembling the spool it's important to line the holes in the ported disc with the cuts in the spool, otherwise it will look stupid and slow down water drainage out of the skirt. The top drag stack yellow arrow is of a small diameter and it's secondary to the main drag beneath the spool. The red arrow points the oil seal protecting the top stack, the blue arrow points the free-floating top ball bearing inside its housing, and the green arrow points the flanged bushing that transfers pressure to the stack through the floating bearing without pressure on the bearing itself.

That floating bearing, its housing, and the flanged bushing are directly robbed from the Stella. Here is the original from that Shimano.

In the first draft of this review I included more photos of the original deigns nicked by Okuma, but had to cut them out once I realised that the review was becoming too big and needed a trim down.

Had to include at least one though since a picture of a loot is worth a thousand words in a police report. A close up on that top spool bearing. The bearings of this Okuma are all top shelf made by the Japanese company Minebea, which has factories in different countries making different types and sizes. These are the same ball bearings used in the Stella SW and Saltiga. The back of the drag knob is a single piece of machined aluminium alloy, and it has no perimeter seal.

Instead of a perimeter seal, the centre post blue arrow And since water can enter form around the knob red arrow , there are drainage holes across the spool cap to let water out blue arrows. The drag operation has been heavily promoted as some sort of innovation, and we were bombarded with promotional material and reviews by "pros" telling us how unique and novel it is.

You know those "pros" of course, the guys used by the industry to promote gear in return for money, and we somehow are supposed to believe that they are telling us the honest truth and that they never find a fault in any gear just because all the gear in the world is perfect. Anyway, that groundbreaking and earth shaking "unique" drag operation of the Makaira comes straight from Shimano.

It's the "Baitrunner Spool II" feature they put in some of their big pit spools. Geez I wonder why none of the trusted "pros" ever mentioned that, even after I posted that last year in my initial impressions which should refute the ignorance defence.

Take note of the following names so that you can follow the description of the operation. The knob is made of three external sections, the casing red arrow ; this is keyed to the main shaft and does not turn, and it has printed numbers from 1 to The main dial blue arrow ; this main dial does only one full turn then stops.

It has a white dot you'll see it in the next photo which points to the numbers printed on the casing. Then there is the centre dial green arrow. The first and most important rule is that you should NEVER do anything unless the main dial is at the start position with the white dot pointing to zero. With that done, you can proceed to use the centre dial to apply pressure to the drag, pretty much randomly as you begin your learning curve.

Stop turning that centre dial at any point, then go back to the main dial which can do only one turn, and turn it to any position from 1 to 20 which will rapidly increase the drag pressure. If the range of drag pressure you get from this single turn of the main dial makes you happy then go ahead and fish, if not, then return the main dial to zero so you can go back to adjusting the small centre dial. I can't stress enough the importance of returning the main dial to zero before turning the centre dial.

If you don't do that, you could break the mechanism. It says so in the manual, and there is a video out there where Okuma stresses this point. Find a way to train your brain to automatically return the main dial to zero before touching the centre one. That sounds pretty tidy, but real life use quickly exposes the shortcomings of this setup. At very light settings of the centre dial, the main dial moves fine and increases the drag normally.

But once you tighten the centre dial to go into the useful range of drag pressure, the main dial increases the drag pressure quite rapidly, meaning a very high rate of drag progression. Then comes the feel. While others have made strides in improving the feel of the knob's movement using novel springs with better characteristics, the knob of the Okuma has Belleville washers spring washers shown earlier that are very hard.

That makes adjusting the main dial of the Makaira a challenging task requiring a lot of strength once you reach the region of useful drag pressure. You are working the main dial against too much resistance then, and as you exert that power you also have to restrain the movement since the drag pressure jumps a lot with little movement of the main dial in that useful range.

Yet more issues. They originally made the centre dial smaller than it is now. The original small one made it into the very last pre-production reels, but for actual production they increased its size when they realised it was too small for people have a proper grip on it.

The problem here is that they could not increase the width of the main dial as well, because it's limited by the overall diameter of the knob. That meant that the space available for the user to grip the main dial and move it has shrunken since the centre dial is now wider. What happens then is that as you adjust the main dial, you can't keep your fingers from touching and potentially turning the centre dial accidentally. And since moving the centre dial while the main dial is engaged is dangerous as stated earlier, you'll just feel nervous adjusting the main dial while worrying whether or not you're touching and moving the centre one inadvertently.

The bigger your fingers are the harder it will be to keep them off the centre dial. One last problem remains. You want to set the drag. You return the main dial to zero as you should. You adjust centre dial a bit "too much". The you go back to the main dial to increase the drag within the set limits, but all the sudden it's locked and can't move.

This is because when you adjusted the centre dial "too much" the internal washers of the knob pushed hard against one another to the point that the cam of the main dial couldn't make the breach in order to begin increasing the pressure. There is no way for you to know when you've turned the centre dial "too much", so that phenomena will keep taking you by surprise and locking the main dial, until by trial and error you might finally know where to stop the centre dial in order for it not to lock the main one.

This is not a manufacturing flaw limited to the two reels I purchased. It was in every Makaira I examined including all the pre-production and show pieces.

It's an inherent problem arising from the high tension progressive drag in a reel that produces a lot of drag pressure, unlike the big pit Shimano reels this system was originally designed for.

Even if none of these issues existed, the obvious question here is what is the point of a system that creates predefined limits for drag adjustment, and requires zeroing the main dial in order to change those limits to different ones?

How would you do this in the middle of the fight? The scenarios that require you to go outside of the pre-defined limits of that single turn are few, but what if? You can't ask the fish you're fighting for a timeout or click "pause" so that you can zero the main dial in order to move the centre dial, test the new limits, then tell the fish to resume. What exactly is the problem they were addressing by this complex setup? I've been fishing since I was 8 and I can't for the life of me recall a time when I wished or heard someone wishing that the drag of the reel had limited movement predefined by an extra dial!

Is it about rapid drag progression? Can be done by manipulating the threads' angle and the spring's resistance while keeping it a free moving knob that one can use without hitting limits that need a special procedure to change them. As far as I can tell, this is a glaring example of a desire to claim some innovation for marketing purposes, and in this case it's neither innovative, because it's taken from another company, nor useful or purposeful in anyway shape or form. If this reel ever sells enough to be eyed by custom makers who make aftermarket parts for the Japanese reels, I implore them to try making a normal drag knob for it, although it won't be easy because the amount of thread available on the main shaft is quite small.

Actually I beg Okuma itself to make that normal drag knob for those of us who are too stupid to understand the greatness of the original knob, and just make it an option that one can order with the reel for the same price just as we now order it with a left or right handle.

In the beginning of testing I caught some Mackerel and bonito, then later on I travelled to try to catch large Bluefin tuna in the Mediterranean, but for some reason I had some of the worst luck I've ever met fishing. I hit the spot I always fish, same boat, same skipper, same rigs, but I just failed to hook the fish I wanted. Other than that there was nothing but small groupers and the odd Meagre.

It was just not going to happen. This takes us back to why I was on the rocks. After the Mediterranean expedition failed, I decided to go for the reliable sharks from the shore. I knew if I was lucky I would be catching 4" to 5" Blacktips, which is still not a proper test for this reel, but at that point I had decided to make up for the lack of quality with quantity.

I can still tell a lot about a reel from extended use even if the fish isn't very big. I had two reels to test at that time, both skunked on the first try because I fished a bad tide around noon and left empty handed. Next time I went back near dark and landed a few Jacks that I needed, bled them and put the bodies on ice for dinner, then took the heads for shark bait. There was a guy shark fishing nearby who had a kayak, we stroke a conversation then took turns dropping bait for each other about 70 yards from shore.

The other reel was having a better luck and hooked two Blacktips into the 2. Near midnight though it started thundering and raining, there was no bite, so the guy left, with his kayak of course. I reeled in the bait because I knew that crab have been snacking on it but didn't want to know so I don't have to work, changed the lead to a 3 oz Sputnik to keep it from crawling back to where the crab were, hooked my second to last bait, then like a complete fool went into the water to cast it as far as I could.

At that moment I felt like a bad hypocrite. The guy who ends his reviews and email with "stay safe on the water" was holding a graphite rod in the middle of a thunder storm, wading chest deep in shark infested water, holding a bloody bait in hand, and after midnight with no one around to help if something happens. I could've kept this to myself, but I said it as a punishment to self and an act of repentance because that was wrong and stupid.

No fish is worth risking your life or limbs for. Back on shore, rod in spike, on my back feeling bored and can't even play with my phone because of the rain. That's when the drag went off. Lift, push the knob, strike, next thing I knew I was face down in the sand struggling to open the bail so that I won't lose the rod and reel.

Regained composure and shut the bail, only to begin one of the toughest fights I've had in a few years. That was no Blacktip, something completely different and much bigger.

As much as I hate the procedure of setting the drag, there is no denying of how much I loved its actual performance once it went to work. Starting inertia is non-existent, the response to every movement was very quick, certainly aided by the solid rotor which transferred every pull quickly to the spool with little or no flex, and even with a lot of line out, there were no spikes whenever the spool stopped and moved again.

It was about 12 minutes or so when I started feeling warm water hitting my arms. The spool was becoming very hot, and it would heat rain drops and spray them on my arms. That was a moment of struggle between two people, the fisherman who wanted to walk into the water to cool the spool down for a better chance at landing the fish, and the tester who wanted to let it heat so that if it fails he'd know its limitations and write about them.

Well, actually there was a third guy who wanted to cut the line and go home to eat pizza in the sweet bed instead of this idiocy, but he's kinda irrelevant because the other two guys never listen to him despite his brilliant line of thinking!

The tester won the day, I did not cool the spool down, and the drag kept functioning like a champ. It was about 20 minutes into this ordeal when I managed to bring it to about 40 yards or so from the shore, then it seemed that it gained extra energy from somewhere as it headed out with renewed force. My arms were exhausted, I'd been nearly flat on my back the entire time, and as the rod was acting as a lever against me, I just pointed the rod down all the way taking it out of the fight and directly using the reel against the torpedoing fish.

This is a technique I used years ago when I used to fish for GTs, where at the hookup I would point the rod down with a locked drag to stop the fish from going into the rocks and ravaging my braid, until I can move it into open water. That fish was nothing like a GT though, and as I desperately held into the stem of the reel and wished for a miracle the line went limp.

To be frank I didn't feel bad. I was happy it was over. Didn't move for a while, and when lactic acid stopped stinging my muscles I reeled it in, and my whole rig was there including the hook. I hope it didn't tear its mouth or cause damage to that thing. A bull shark is my best guess, but I'll never know. What I knew very well though was that I was holding an impressive piece of equipment.

Oh, and I learned too that I'm not as tough as I thought and that fighting big sharks without a harness is crazy. A rough final tally of the tests shows that in about fishing hours I landed about 1. I intentionally left it unwashed between trips, and even once left it in a plastic bag overnight just to see if I can make it corrode. The reel always felt rigid, and while all spinning reels flex under load including the Makaira, it just flexed less than any reel I've used as far as I can tell.

The drag performance was extremely close to that of a Stella, with maybe a tinny edge for the Stella in overall drag smoothness. A more noticeable difference though was the clicker sound, which is kinda muffled in the Makaira unlike the sweet loud ringing of the Stella's. Following that final fight though I did something with the Makaira that I wouldn't dare doing with the Stella. I washed it in the waves and gave the handle a few turns underwater, and that got rid of all the sand. That's more than I can say about myself, as three days later I was still finding sand in my butt crack!!

Your reel will probably have this, but no need to worry. At first I thought it was a finish imperfection, but on close inspection it turned out these were numbers written with a marker at the factory. The bail mechanism. When the bail is opened for a cast, the hinged lever red arrow rotates to press down on the rotor brake lever blue arrow , which then engages the rotor brake ring shown earlier. The mechanism is reliable and very intelligently designed, but that's because it was designed by Daiwa for the Saltiga family where Okuma found it and helped themselves to it.

Seriously people, that's just too embarrassing from a company whose motto is "Inspired Fishing". There no inspiration here, and to reflect reality I suggest changing that motto to the more accurate "Inspired Plagiarism". They don't need to steal this one from me. I surrender the copyright for this motto and give them full permission to use it and even print it on T-Shirts. If this happens I want one in size L please!

The line roller is a personal dream coming true. A simple straightforward construction with an extremely hard roller protected by an oil seal on each side. No water is coming in, and there isn't a hundred tiny parts to fumble with. This is Van Staal surf grade sealing. The screw has a washer at the head, and although that screw has no retaining system, its unusual length and the properly applied thread locker from factory guarantee it won't come loose.

The ball bearing red arrow is press fitted into the roller and permanently attached to it. When I first opened the box, one of the things I did was to roll the line roller with my finger. I felt a problem right away.

Don't know how to describe it, but it did not rub or anything like that. Rather it felt "bumpy". I'm no genius, but right there and before opening it I knew what it was because of past experiences. That was a case of "bearing in distress". Opened it to exclude other factors and see how it feels, and indeed with everything else off the bearing felt the same.

I am quite certain that the recess in which they pressed the bearing was undersized, so the bearing is cramped and stressed making it feel bumpy. I was familiar with the feeling because in the past whenever I put a ball bearing in a vice to work the shields off or something similar, the bearing would feel bumpy from the pressure of the vice.

That bumpiness doesn't stop the roller from rotating when there is any sort of load on the line which is good, but that's not the only worry here. The line roller's bearing is the hardest working part in any spinning reel. Think about this; when you spin the handle once, the drive gear works for one cycle, the drive gear's bearings work for one cycle as well, the pinion and its bearings work for 4 to 6 cycles depending on the ratio, and the oscillation gear and it's bearing work for half a cycle.

The line roller on the other hand would do around cycles give or take depending on retrieve ratio and the roller's circumference.

See how much more it works relative to other parts? When the bearing is stressed like that it will keep going, but it will wear faster internally. For example if your use required it to be replaced in 4 years when it's running freely, it would need replacing in 2 years for the same work if it's cramped. Earlier in the review I said that I will tell you something about the bearing inside the rotor nut, which is permanently press fitted as well, and that's it.

That rotor nut bearing is cramped into an undersized recess as well, although not to the same degree, and since its bumpiness is much less and is barely felt it's not a big deal for me. Once I finished checking the first reel's line roller, I checked the second reel too although without disassembling the roller. It felt the same. Browse more videos.

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