Test Drive: Abu Garcia Salty Fighter 2 Jigging Rod

By: The Angler

I have tested and played with many jigging rods over the years. Most of them are good and some of them are awesome. There were some that I have decided to send to the lake of fire in Hell, and get the demons to throw brimstones at them because they were just hopeless, cumbersome, ugly, and badly built. Well, the Abu Garcia Salty Fighter 2 jigging rod fortunately is not one of these.

[ It has got plenty of power in its blank to manage these fishes…. ]

The Abu Garcia Salty Fighter 2 jigging rod is one of those rods that have been sitting in my office waiting for the authorities to open the floodgates of fishing and cross district travel. When they finally did I grabbed the Salty Fighter 2 jigging rod and then stopped as I pondered about taking it out to sea.

Comes with quality components such as Fuji reel seat and guides.

You see, the place I jig at are far from the boundaries that the authorities allow me and people in my area to cross. While I can access some of the sea fishing areas, these areas are not that great with jigging. While I could not take it out to sea; I decided to bring the Salty Fighter 2 jigging rod to my favorite field testing pond to see how well it performed.

Quality Fuji guides help helps make the rod lighter. They are also tougher and can easily manage superlines.

Looking at the Salty Fighter 2 jigging rod, I know that it would be overkill at the said pond. The hard fighting fishes there do fight hard but they would not stand a chance against a behemoth such as this jigging rod here. Anyway, I decided to go ahead with the test to see how it would perform. Before we head to that section of this article, here’s information on the rod.

Rod Information

Brand: Abu Garcia

Series: Salty Fighter 2

Model: SFJ2S601PE4 A

Configuration: 1 piece, jigging

Blank Type: Graphite

Wrap: Carbon Coil Wrap

Blank Rating:

Action: PE4

Length: 6′

Line: PE1.5 – PE4

Lure/jig: 80-300gm

Max Drag Pressure: 8kg

Handle: EVA + Faux Cork (small sections)

End Cap: EVA

Guide: Fuji

Reel Seat: Fuji

Cosmetics General: Metallic candy blue, and black (grey)

Thread windings: Black, metallic candy blue, and silver

Cosmetics Others: Carbon fiber reel seat nut or fastener

For our test I fitted the Salty Fighter 2 jigging rod with the new Abu Garcia Zata spinning reel spooled with 20lb Spiderwire Dura-4 Braid brainded lines. For bait I used the well proven Berkley Powerbait Pro Grub 3″ which has caught plenty of fish here. The groupers here just love this bait. We caught plenty of them.

Abu Garcia Salty Fighter 2 Jigging Rod ready to torture the hard fighting groupers.

Casting Wise

When it comes to casting, the Salty Fighter 2 jigging rod can cast although its tip is configured more towards jigging. It got the Pro Grub out to decent distances’ about three quarters of the pond. The rod can cast and note that the Pro Grub and jighead is kind of lightweight. It would certainly cast out 80g jigs better.

As for controlling the bait during the retrieve, Salty Fighter 2 jigging rod remained unhinged. It has plenty of power and stiffness to drag the bait and jighead along the bottom of the pond. It’s like driving a monster truck on a grassy school field. Cars can easily do it. Overkill for the monster truck. That was how it felt.

Hard fighting groupers? Not an issue at all.

What about fighting the hard fighting groupers? We caught plenty of them. Setting the hook was really easy and playing these hard fighters certainly were not an issue at all for the Salty Fighter 2 jigging rod. It has got plenty of power in its blank to manage these fishes. Fights lasted a short time before fishes were up for their photoshoot.

That said, we did lose fish too. Once was because the hook of the jighead opened up. The fish fought hard but the pressure placed on the hook by the fish and the Salty Fighter 2 jigging rod was too much for it to handle. No more using these cheap rubbish jigheads. Best to pay for quality. We also lost one fish due to bad hook set but that is a norm in our sport.

My Thoughts

The Abu Garcia Salty Fighter 2 jigging rod certainly is a good rod with good quality components such as Fuji guides and Fuji reel seats, high quality EVA, and a tough blank. It has too much power for the pond that we fished in. I hope the authorities will allow us to cross borders soon so that bigger fishes and even harder fighting gladiators can be had on this rod.