JDM Counter Reels: Shimano CT vs Daiwa IC, and Which One Fits Your Depth

Fish off a boat in Japan and somebody on deck will call out a number. Sixty-two. Forty-eight. They aren’t guessing and they aren’t reading the sounder. They’re reading a little screen on the side of the reel. Japanese boat baitcasters have carried depth counters for years, and both big brands now fit one to nearly every family they sell.

Shimano stamps CT on the side plate. Daiwa writes IC. Roughly, they mean the same thing: a digital counter that tells you how much line is out. What isn’t the same is what that screen actually displays, whether the reel also gives you a brake for the drop, and what you pay. The range runs from ¥16,000 to ¥101,000, which is about $101 to $635.

The other thing that trips people up is where the useful ones live. Search for a counter reel for tairaba (齱ラバ, Japan’s sliding-head jig for red sea bream) and you get the Engetsu CT. Search for a jigging one and you get the Grappler CT. Shimano’s own Barchetta Premium page puts the split plainly: Engetsu is specialised for tairaba, Grappler for light jigging, and the Barchetta is the one built to cover several styles at once. That family gets almost no English coverage.

Prices come from Shimano and Daiwa’s own spec tables and are Japanese RRP, tax excluded, with USD converted at roughly ¥159 = $1 at the time of writing. Nearly all of these reels are JDM only, so buy links point to Amazon Japan, which ships internationally. Check availability and shipping cost at checkout.

Do You Actually Need a Counter, or Will Marked Braid Do?

Japanese PE braid (polyethylene braid, rated in gou rather than pounds) comes pre-marked, a colour change every 10 m plus shorter marks between. So you already own a rough counter, and for a lot of fishing it’s enough. A screen earns its keep in three situations: when the skipper calls a depth off the bottom and you need it on the next drop, when bites repeat at one number and you want the lure back in that window, and when the boat drifts broadside so the line leaves the rod at an angle and crank-counting quietly lies to you.

All three come down to repeating a number. In shallow water the marks on the braid do that well enough. Below 30 m they don’t, and the error compounds on every drop.

What CT and IC Actually Put on the Screen

Both brands publish the counter’s function list on the product page, and the two lists are not the same. The table below is a straight read of Shimano’s and Daiwa’s current pages for their counter-equipped boat reels. Features marked as model-specific only appear on the reels named.

Three of those change how a day goes. Shimano’s winding-distance alarm is set as a number: put it on A-5 and the reel beeps at 5 m, 10 m and 15 m up from the bottom, so you can obey a “five metres off the bottom” instruction without looking down. Daiwa’s gunwale alarm does the opposite job and stops you cranking a 60 g head into the rod tip. And Daiwa’s one-press correction after a break-off means retying doesn’t cost you a full re-calibration, which anyone who has snapped off at 70 m will appreciate.

Which Depth Are You Actually Fishing?

Forget brands for a moment. There are three kinds of reel here. One has no counter, and you read depth off the marks on your braid. One has a counter that reports depth and speed but gives you no say over the drop. One adds a fall lever, a thumb lever that brakes the spool so you can set how fast the lure sinks and then repeat it. Every fall-lever reel in this piece is a Shimano, and Daiwa answers with data rather than a brake.

Rows are the depth you fish most, not the deepest you’ve fished. Cells name a representative model; full prices are in the comparison table below.

The fall-lever column only starts to matter past about 30 m. A slow, controlled drop is something you pay for in time, and in 20 m of water there isn’t much time to control. Shallow anglers who buy the lever are buying a feature they’ll rarely reach for.

Shimano’s Most Flexible Counter Reels Sit Outside the Tairaba and Jigging Lines

The Barchetta family is Shimano’s general boat counter reel, and there are four of them. All four carry a backlit digital counter and a battery you can change yourself with a coin. What moves as you climb the ladder is the frame material, the bearing count, and above all whether a fall lever and the winding-distance alarm are fitted.

Barchetta BB is the entry point at ¥17,200: resin frame, 3+1 bearings, 220 g, 5 kg of drag. The step up to the plain Barchetta at ¥24,600 buys a CI4+ carbon frame and drops the small sizes to 190 to 200 g. Both of them also come in a 300 size that holds PE 2 for 300 m. Neither of those two has a fall lever, and neither shows fall speed.

The real jump is Barchetta F Custom at ¥35,800. That ¥11,200 over the plain Barchetta buys the new fall lever, the winding-distance alarm and the PE line-learning presets. Shimano’s Barchetta Premium at ¥46,500 has the same three features, so the extra ¥10,700 goes on a HAGANE metal body, MicroModule gearing, X-Ship and 8+2 bearings instead of 5+2. Features stop at the F Custom; above that you’re buying smoothness.

Key Technologies

The new fall lever is the one worth understanding before you spend. On the older design the handle got heavier the moment you set any fall tension, so you had to back the lever off before every drop.

Key Specs

One representative right-hand variant from each model. Note that the Premium is the heaviest 150 here, not the lightest: the metal body costs what the carbon frame saves.

Daiwa Fits an IC Counter to Almost Every Boat Reel It Makes

Daiwa’s approach is wider and starts lower. The Light SW X IC is ¥16,000, which is as cheap as a counter reel gets from either brand. From there the ladder climbs through three Light Game tiers into Tierra and finally Saltiga, and every single one of them has the counter.

There’s a quirk worth knowing in the Light Game X IC. The 150-DH with the 100 mm double handle is ¥16,800 and weighs 230 g. The single-handle 150 is ¥18,600 and weighs 260 g. The cheaper version is also the lighter one, which is not the way these things usually go.

The middle of the ladder is where most people should be shopping. Light Game RX IC at ¥24,600 brings an aluminium frame and 72 cm a turn, and Daiwa lists the Light Game RX IC 150 on Amazon US, so you can skip importing entirely. Light Game IC at ¥35,000 adds HyperDrive Design and is the lightest Light Game at 215 g. The ¥48,000 Tierra IC 150, new for May 2026, widens the gear teeth for torque and offers a 130 mm double handle for constant-speed tairaba.

Two outliers. Tierra Air IC weighs 165 g at ¥49,900, the lightest counter reel here by 35 g, but it only takes PE 0.6 to 1.0, so it’s an ika-metal (イカメタル, boat squid jigging) and ultra-light tairaba tool. At the other end, Saltiga IC tops out at ¥101,000 for the 300H-SJ-C: 100 cm a turn, PE 1.2 for 600 m, 10 kg of drag.

Key Technologies

Daiwa’s counter reels share one technology set from the Light Game IC up. The one I’d single out is the Hyper Tough Clutch: Daiwa says the insulated design cut salt-seizure repairs by 99 percent against its own previous clutch, and a seized clutch ends a day.

Key Specs

Right-hand variants, one per model. Drag ratings sit at 5 kg right up the ladder until the 300 sizes, so don’t read the price as a drag upgrade.

Engetsu CT, Kohga IC, Grappler CT and Ocea Jigger CT, in Four Lines Each

Each of these already has a full breakdown elsewhere on the site.

Shimano Engetsu CT, ¥34,800. The tairaba specialist: the same new fall lever and winding-distance alarm as the Barchetta F Custom for ¥1,000 less, plus a PE-only spool and a 5.8 gear option that pulls 6 kg of drag for slow, constant winding. Buy it if tairaba is most of what you do. The head-to-head against Daiwa is in Daiwa Kohga vs Shimano Engetsu.

Daiwa Kohga IC family. Daiwa’s tairaba line, with an IC counter fitted from the ¥16,000 X IC up. The model-by-model walk-through is in the Daiwa Kohga series guide.

Shimano Grappler CT 150XG, ¥34,800, and Grappler Premium 150XG, ¥46,500. The light jigging pair, both with a fall lever, an 8.1 gear and 81 cm a turn; the Premium adds MicroModule and three more bearings for the same features. The Grappler CT is one of the very few JDM counter reels stocked on Amazon US, which is why it shows up in our best JDM light jigging reels roundup.

Shimano Ocea Jigger CT and Ocea Conquest CT. The deep end. The Ocea Jigger CT is the dedicated metal-jig tool, with a fall-speed readout and no fall lever at all, a deliberate choice for how it’s fished; the breakdown is in our Ocea Jigger CT piece. The Ocea Conquest CT keeps the lever and leans lighter, covered in the Ocea Conquest series guide and compared directly in Ocea Jigger vs Ocea Conquest.

Is a Bluetooth Counter Worth ¥25,800 More?

Daiwa currently lists two Tierra IC 150s. The plain Tierra IC 150 is ¥48,000. The Tierra IC 150-C is ¥73,800. The C on the end stands for DAIWA CONNECTED, and the ¥25,800 gap, about $162, buys a Bluetooth link to a phone app.

What that gets you, from Daiwa’s own description: every setting you’d normally reach by holding buttons on the counter happens on a phone screen instead. A live display that shows, on a dotera-nagashi (ドテラ流し, drifting broadside so the line streams away at an angle), a calculated figure for where the lure actually is rather than just how much line is out. A depth graph of the last five minutes, where the slope is your fall and retrieve speed. A hit marker you tap when you get a bite. And alarms that play through your phone or earphones.

Whether that’s worth ¥25,800 depends on what your hands are doing. I run my own boat, and a lot of my fishing happens while I’m steering. That habit came from ochikomi (落とし込み, the Japanese method where you catch live baitfish on a sabiki and send them straight back down), but it carries over to tairaba and jigging unchanged: when boats are packed in tight or the tide is running hard, I can’t take a hand off the helm. Anything needing two hands, or a long press-and-hold on a small button, doesn’t get done. That’s the job the app takes off the reel. On a charter with both hands free it’s a luxury.

The same logic scales up. Saltiga IC now comes as the 100-C and 300-C at ¥100,000 and ¥101,000, both connected. The older non-connected 21 Saltiga IC is still listed at ¥73,000, so the pattern repeats: roughly ¥27,000 for the radio.

Will a Japanese Counter Reel Be Legal Where You Live?

Shimano puts this part in writing, and it rarely gets translated. Under the spec table on the Barchetta, Barchetta BB and Barchetta F Custom pages there’s a note that doesn’t appear on Shimano’s reels without a counter. Translated: the product emits electromagnetic waves, it may fall under each country’s regulations and technical certification schemes, sales outside Japan may be subject to penalties, and please don’t resell it.

The reason is plain. A counter reel is a small electronic device, and devices that emit are subject to national radio and EMC certification: FCC in the US, CE in the EU, UKCA in the UK, ACMA in Australia. Shimano isn’t certifying reels for markets where it doesn’t sell them, which is why you won’t find a Barchetta on Shimano’s American site. A personal import is a different thing from a commercial one, and I won’t pretend to know your country’s rules. But weigh the warranty question before you spend ¥46,500. Our guide to buying JDM tackle from overseas covers the proxy and shipping side.

One piece of good news. Both brands use a standard coin cell you swap yourself with a coin, no tools and no service centre: CR2032 on the Daiwas, a coin cell on the Shimanos. A flat battery is a couple of dollars anywhere in the world, and on the Daiwas the line data survives the swap.

Comparison Table: Every Counter Reel Here, Cheapest First

One representative variant per model, sorted by Japanese RRP. The technique-badged reels are included so you can see where they land.

Pick by Budget

Three price points, and what each one is actually for.

Light Game X IC 150-DH. Take the double-handle version: ¥1,800 cheaper and 30 g lighter than the single-handle 150, and 100 mm of handle suits the constant-speed winding tairaba wants. PE 1 for 400 m is more line than shallow ground needs, so you can under-fill and still read true. ¥16,800 (~$106).

Barchetta F Custom 150. At ¥35,800 it carries the same fall lever, winding alarm and line-learning presets as the ¥46,500 Premium, and Shimano itself positions it as the multi-discipline reel rather than a tairaba or jigging specialist. If you know you’re a tairaba angler and nothing else, the Engetsu CT has the same two features for ¥1,000 less, with a PE-only spool. ¥35,800 (~$225).

Light Game RX IC 150. Not the strongest reel here, but the one you can order today without a proxy service, a customs form, or the certification question above. Aluminium frame, 72 cm a turn, PE 1 for 400 m, and the same IC counter as reels twice the price. ¥24,600 (~$155) in Japan.

Wrap-Up

CT and IC are the same promise wearing different badges, and the badge isn’t the decision. The depth you fish most is, along with whether you want a brake on the drop or a screen full of numbers. Under 30 m, spend ¥17,000 and be done. Between 30 and 100 m the fall lever starts to pay, and the Barchetta F Custom does it for ¥35,800. Past 100 m you’re in Ocea Jigger CT and Saltiga IC territory.

If tairaba brought you here, Kohga vs Engetsu is the next stop. If it’s jigging, best JDM light jigging reels covers what you can actually buy in the US. Whichever you land on, rinse it in fresh water after every saltwater trip, especially around the battery hatch.

All specifications were taken from Shimano’s official product pages (fish.shimano.com) and Daiwa’s official product pages (daiwa.com). Product images are from Daiwa and Amazon. Affiliate links point to Amazon Japan and Amazon US; we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Check your local regulations and bag limits before fishing.

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マイボートで海に出るボートアングラー（釣り歴20年・ボート歴10年）。タイラバ・ひとつテンヤ・ライトジギングが主戦場で、エリアトラウトや堤防のライトゲームものんびり楽しむ雑食派。

実際に使った道具の「正直どうだったか」を、公式スペックと実釣の両面から書いています。

Boat angler based in Japan, sharing first-hand reviews of JDM tackle.