Long-distance casting champion Ron Arra witnessed something he’d never seen before during a recent surfcasting demonstration on a beach in Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
The 79-year-old, five-time national distance champ watched as one of the participants, Lucas Leao, uncorked a cast that drained every inch of line from the spool of his Penn Spinfisher VII 5500 LC (long cast) reel, which held about 265 yards of 30-pound braid and backing.
And then Leao did it three more times at the May 3 demonstration. Leao was using one of the new 12-foot Ron Arra Signature Series surf rods made by JS USA, a South Korean manufacturer of rods since 1984.
“I’ve never seen anyone cast the whole spool, not one filled with line to the top like this one,” says Arra, who dominated distance surfcasting competitions from 1983 to 1989 and continues to give casting lessons. “He has excellent finishing power. He was casting very high to get that kind of distance, with a slight breeze. Everybody was surprised.”
Leao, who works as a carpenter, was casting a 5-ounce teardrop lead sinker on Berkley x9 braid.
In his prime, Arra was a casting phenomenon. He set the distance record of 758.44 feet and clocked an 850-foot heave in practice. He also tossed a sinker across the Cape Cod Canal at pole 100, a throw of about 786 feet.
The rod plays a key role in these massive casts. There are currently five models in the Ron Arra Signature Series ranging from 9 feet, 6 inches to 12 feet. The rods are made from high-end modulus carbon, S-2 glass and graphene. The suggested retail price starts at about $600.
Arra, who remains an active surf and fly angler, served as a design consultant for Lamiglas rods for 25 years.
