It’s not often that a new fishing tackle product is developed that is both simple and functional, and fixes an age-old, in-the-field problem that we’ve all experienced.
How often have you been barra fishing and suddenly you notice one of the runners on your rod is broken or has come adrift from the bindings and is swinging loosely on your braid line?
I reckon it happens to me a couple of times a year, including just recently.
Not surprisingly, a quick-fix remedy to this problem has been developed right here in Darwin which is the barra-fishing capital of Australia.
Gavin Bedford is an accomplished and well-known Darwin angler.
A couple of years ago, he decided to get all his rods with busted guides fixed, all 17 of them.
“This represented about 45 rod guides, a long time for the rods to be gone and a huge cost,” Gavin told me.
“I felt there had to be a better way, so I set out to see if I could find it!
“The solution needed to be easy so that even a child could replace the guide, it needed to be quick so it could be done sitting in a boat or on a jetty with a couple of kids squawking in your ears and finally it needed to be cost effective, thus cheap enough that every fisher would have a pack in their tackle box for when, not if, they broke a rod guide.
“These were tough criteria, but there had to be a way,” Gavin explained.
“I tried clips, superglue and zip ties and a whole host of other contraptions with varying degrees of success.
“The hardest part was having a universal system that would work on very small guides found near the thin tip of a rod.
“The mechanisms I tried just couldn’t attach anything with the strength needed to keep the guide in the spot and with sufficient integrity that a bit of pulling wouldn’t move it.
“The problem was solved when I discussed it with a couple of friends: use magic tape which is now at the core of the system.”
Gavin then spent 12 months testing every type of this tape that he could find.
As a former scientist, he needed to know what worked and what didn’t because, if others were going to rely on it to fix a rod, it had to be the best.
He soon discovered that very few tapes could handle 45°C days in his back shed.
“Many tapes just exploded or gave up under this heat after a few days,” Gavin said.
“The tape that is used now has been on rods for over a year in those extreme high temperatures and none have had any problems, being as secure and strong as the day they were attached to replace a guide.”
Gavin decided to have a go at marketing and selling the product which he calls the Kwik-Fix Rod Guide and it can be viewed and ordered online at www.KFRG.au or kwik-fixrodguide.au.
I’ve experienced how good it is firsthand because Gavin fixed a new runner to replace the old one on a rod that I fished with only last Monday; he did this in less than five minutes.
A friend and I caught upwards of 60 barra and the replaced runner has not budged one iota.
The Kwik-Fix Rod Guide is available in small, medium and large packs for both baitcast rod and spinning rod, and there is also a combined spin rod and baitcast mega pack.
Kwik-Fix comes with two tapes: one double-sided black magic tape which affixes the runner to the rod by being stretched to breaking point to give it the maximum chemical bonding strength; and one blue PVC tape which protects the magic tape.
I really do believe this simple but incredible Territory invention by Gavin Bedford is an absolute winner if only because it will get you back fishing within minutes of losing or busting a rod runner in the field.
David “Richo” Richardson set out to catch a Lee Point Spanish mackerel last Monday morning and that’s exactly what he did.
Darwin angling inventor extraordinaire, former scientist Gavin Bedford, took less than five minutes to demonstrate his Kwik-Fix Rod Guide system on a damaged AJ rod.
The all-Territory Kwik-Fix Rod Guide system will keep you fishing and comes in various baitcast and threadline packs.
