Eging for beginners — snap it up, let it fall, and wait on the fall

Eging is fishing for aoriika, the bigfin reef squid, with an egi — a weighted, cloth-wrapped jig shaped like a shrimp. You sink it, snap it up sharply, and the squid grabs it as it falls. No live bait, no mess, light gear: you can fish for an hour after work, which is exactly why the method exploded in Japan. Yet on the same breakwater some people catch and others do not, and the difference is almost never how hard they jerk the rod. It is how carefully they watch the fall.

Light and thin

An 8.6 ft eging rod, a 2500-size reel, PE braid around 0.6, and a fluorocarbon leader. Start with a size 3.5 egi and switch to a faster-sinking version in deep water or strong tide. Braid does not stretch, so the egi's movement comes straight back to your hand — and a sloppy knot fails just as directly. Treat the leader connection as something you retie every session.

The basic cycle

• Cast, and let the egi sink to the bottom on a slack line. You know it has landed when the line stops moving.
• Wind up the slack, then snap the rod sharply two or three times to jump the egi upward.
• Stop, and let it fall on a line that is neither tight nor slack. Five to ten seconds. This is when the squid takes it.
• Take up the slack and repeat, working the egi back to your feet.

A take feels like sudden weight, or the line moving sideways, or the falling line simply stopping early. A sharp knock at the rod tip is rare. When something feels wrong, strike hard. After that, wind at one steady speed — pumping the rod lets the line go slack, and the hooks tear out of the soft flesh. Net the squid at the wall rather than lifting it out; lifting is the single most common way to lose one.

Pick the spot by weed and tide

Aoriika hold over weed and lay their eggs in it, so the water to look for is shallow ground where sand meets rock and seaweed grows, the base of a breakwater wall, and the tide-swept area near its head. Bites fall away when the tide is fully slack, so plan around the hours either side of high and low water when the water is actually moving. Breakwaters with a permanent night light are often the best after dark: baitfish gather in the light, and squid follow them in.

Spring and autumn are different fisheries

In spring, large squid come inshore to spawn: fewer takes, patient work over weed beds. In autumn, the young of the year are abundant, so you drop to smaller egi and cover water quickly. Same breakwater, same species, two different games.

Ink, and night manners

Hold a landed squid pointing out to sea and let it fire its ink into the water before you swing it in. Ink dries onto concrete and does not come off, so if you stain the pier, rinse it with a bucket of seawater. Ports have banned eging over exactly this. Much of this fishing happens after dark: keep your head torch on your hands, not swept across the water, where it scatters the squid and ruins the fishing for everyone nearby. And night eging from rocks is where accidents happen — the life jacket and the spiked shoes come before the rod.