It was hot as a mother today. Nice weather to be out catching some, and actually, I'm kind of anxious to see the fish counts for the SoCal landings today... Unfortunately for me, I was too tired and beat up from the shitty work week to be able to commit to making it out early this morning. I slept in until 1p.m. and after getting my breakfast in, I decided to drive out to Charkbait in Huntington Beach to grab a product I'd been hearing a lot about, but hadn't seen much on the boats I've been on - the Cork Puppy, by JR Jones Company.

The Cork Puppy is a very well thought out invention. Basically, in the past when the long-cast guys and jig fisherman who use corktaped deckhand-style rods without reel seats wanted to attach their reels to the rod, they had to do so with a crappy nut/bolt setup and old school clamp. While this setup still works for many, eventually the tightened-down bolts and stress from the reel digs deep into the cork handle - shedding it like a molting rattler, and later causing damage to the rod blank.

Enter the Cork Puppy, which I believe will revolutionize the way iron-tossing anglers will attach their conventional reels to deckhand-style rods. The Cork Puppy comes in three sizes: 25mm, 28mm, and 31mm, and in three different colors - gold, anodized silver, and black. The Cork Puppy allows for that pressure to be evenly distributed throughout a larger area, minimizing damage to your expensive custom rods, and also making for a more secure mount and solid placement. It's made of 6061-T6 aluminum with type II anodyizing, so you can feel confident that it's not going to crack, split, or bend under pressure.

Taka Tanaka set up a beautiful Calstar 6485 LTCR 8'6" custom jigstick for me, and I didn't wanna chance anything "ruining" it... The only color options that they had in the 28mm size (which seems to be the most popular) were the silver and gold ones, so I took the lesser of two evils. I thought to myself, do I want to be Mr. T (gold) or Puff Daddy (platinum) when I'm out there catching my whopper with the cameras snapping away and the bonito fanboys drooling... so platinum it was. Here's another shot of what the Cork Puppy looks like from below - as you can see, not only does it look nicer than the traditional clamp, but it also helps spread that pressure that would otherwise clamp down on just one particular part of your rod.

Tomorrow, I'm headed out on the Pursuit, out of 22nd Street Landing in San Pedro for a full day's worth of fishing... I plan on putting this puppy to the test!