Is there a new Saltiga Dogfight on the horizon?

In 2011, Daiwa Australia took its infamous Dogfight off the market. No longer available, anglers are still frantically calling around tackle stores trying to chase down one to call their own. While some might say Daiwa is crazy cutting such a popular reel, it’s worked before and no doubt they will do it again.

Daiwa loves to get every drop out their new ranges before bringing in additional “tweaked models”. This is reminiscent of their 2001-2002 release of the original Z series Saltiga’s. It took quite a few years before the limited editions such as the Dogfight and the Oz exclusive S-extreme series were released.

Anglers buy up the original release, get their value out of the reels, and a few years later comes an urge to buy again. It makes perfect business sense to keep something up their sleeves for later. Daiwa’s done this before with their Millionaire series, bringing in the cult favourite Black Sheep after the success of the rest of the range. Again the black sheep is still a highly sought after reel.

So can we hope to see a new Dogfight at some point soon? Probably not. At the AFTA trade show in August 2012 there always a chance of a new release, but considering it took 4 odd years before we saw the last one then it’s unlikely we will see any new limited editions this year. After all, the 6500 sizes didn’t arrive in Oz until the later half of 2011, so much for “2010 Saltiga”.

Realistically we can’t expect anything until 2013/14 so let’s hope the mayans got it wrong. Until then, Daiwa fanboys will have to keep their fingers crossed and eyes open for what Shimano might have to put on the table first.