Shimano Ocea Jigger vs Ocea Conquest: Which One Fits Your Fishing?

Two round Shimano baitcasters end up on the gunwale of the same boat all the time. Same aluminium, same gold-and-black look, prices within a few thousand yen of each other. One has a levelwind walking the line back and forth across the spool. The other doesn’t, and you thumb the line yourself. That single difference decides more about which one belongs in your hand than any spec sheet does.

The levelwind branch is the Ocea Conquest (オシアコンクエスト). The free-spool branch is the Ocea Jigger (オシアジガー). Both sit at the top of Shimano’s Japanese offshore range, both are sold as PE-only reels, and both have grown into families with counter versions, lever-drag versions and finesse versions bolted on. Eight product lines between them as of this writing.

I fish tai rubber and light jigging off a small boat in the Seto Inland Sea and Osaka Bay, and I’ve had both shapes of reel in rotation. Below I’ve sorted the whole range by the kind of day you’re actually having, rather than by price. For a deeper look at one family on its own, there’s a full Ocea Conquest series guide and a dedicated piece on the new Ocea Jigger CT.

Pricing note: these are JDM (Japan Domestic Market) reels. Prices are Shimano’s Japanese list price, tax excluded, with an approximate USD figure at roughly ¥160 = $1 as of August 2026. Amazon Japan ships internationally, so check availability and shipping cost at checkout. A handful of models also turn up on Amazon.com through import sellers.

What to Look for Before You Pick a Side

Four things separate these families. Get them straight and the rest of this article is just filling in numbers.

The levelwind. Every Conquest has one, and it tracks with the spool. It lays line evenly at the crawling speeds tai rubber runs at, and it means you never have to think about line stacking on one side. No Jigger has a levelwind at all. On a reel that gets jerked hard several thousand times a day, one less part for PE to rub against is the whole argument.

Drag class. This is where people guess wrong. Conquest bodies run 5 to 8 kg of max drag. The standard Jigger 1500 sits at 6 to 7.5 kg, the same neighbourhood, and only the 2000NR sizes push to 10 kg. The heavy numbers live in the specialist Jiggers: 12 to 13 kg on the CT, 18 kg on the 4000, 20 kg on the lever-drag LD. So “Jigger means more drag” is only true once you leave the 1500.

Spool diameter. A Conquest 200 runs a 38 mm spool, the 300 a 43 mm. Jiggers start at 49 mm and go to 60 mm and 73 mm. Bigger spool means more line recovered per handle turn at the same gear ratio, and it means your retrieve rate collapses less when you’re 150 m down and the spool is half empty. That’s a real difference in deep water, not a brochure difference.

Counter and money. Both families have a counter option. Adding one costs roughly ¥11,000 on the Conquest side and considerably more on the Jigger side. Whether that’s worth it depends entirely on how much of your fishing happens in a narrow depth band, which I’ll come back to.

One Thing I’d Add From the Deck

The neat split of “Jigger for jerking, Conquest for winding” is useful, but it isn’t a law. In LSJ (light shore jigging) I do something most people around me don’t: I take a lure everyone agrees is meant to be worked with rod action, and I just wind it straight instead. It catches fish more often than you’d expect. If you’re that kind of angler, the case for a levelwind reel is stronger than your target species suggests, because a lot of your rod time is spent cranking rather than pitching.

For Tai Rubber and Steady Winding: Ocea Conquest 200 and 300

This is the reel the Conquest name was built around. Tai rubber (鯛ラバ / タイラバ) is a Japanese bottom method for madai, red sea bream, and it’s almost entirely a winding game: drop the head, close the clutch, crank at one honest speed until something eats. A reel that lays line perfectly at 30 cm per second and never asks anything of your thumb is exactly right for that.

The 200 is the light body, on a 38 mm spool, built around PE 1.0 to 2.0. The 300 steps up to 43 mm and PE 1.5 to 3.0, which is where deeper tai rubber, light jigging and inshore slow pitch start to overlap. Both carry InfinityDrive, which changes how the pinion gear is supported so the handle stays light when the drag is loaded, plus the redesigned fall lever for metering the drop.

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Left-hand versions exist for every one of these, numbered 201 and 301. They’re usually listed as separate items on Amazon Japan, so check the handle side before you order.

Which Gear Ratio, and Why It Isn’t Only About Speed

Most tai rubber advice tells you to pick the slow gear and wind at a constant speed forever. That’s decent advice for a first season. Here’s what I’ve found on my own water, though: from summer into autumn, when iwashi (sardines) are the bait, breaking that constant speed is what gets bites. Not with the rod, because a tai rubber blank is far too soft for rod-driven action to reach the head. With the reel. You lift the crank speed a little, drop it back, lift it again. Nothing dramatic, just enough that the head stops behaving like a metronome.

That’s a tai rubber observation, and I’d expect the same logic to hold anywhere a slow straight retrieve is the default presentation. It changes the gear-ratio question too. If retrieve speed is itself the action, faster gearing gives you more room to vary it, and slower gearing gives you more torque to hold a head steady in current. Neither is an obvious default, and I’d rather people chose on how they actually fish than on a rule of thumb.

When You Need the Depth Number: Ocea Conquest CT 200 and 300

Same reel, same bodies, same fall lever, with a digital line counter sitting on top and a wider viewing angle than the outgoing version. Everything above still applies. What you’re buying is repeatability: when a fish eats 8 m off the bottom, you can put the head back in that window on the next drop instead of guessing.

The counter also carries a winding-distance alarm that beeps once you’ve cranked a set height off the bottom. More useful than it sounds on a drift where the depth keeps changing under you. The battery is owner-replaceable, and there’s an LED backlight for dawn starts.

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Only the counter-related parts are listed here. The drivetrain is the one from the table above.

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Is the Counter Worth ¥11,000?

If you fish a sounder-marked band, yes, and it isn’t close. If you fish bottom-up in 40 m of water and count cranks, probably not. The counter versions carry 15 to 45 g of extra weight depending on size, and they add a battery to the list of things that can die on a Saturday. Worth knowing before you pay for the screen.

For One-Pitch Jerking on Amberjack and Kingfish: Ocea Jigger 1500 and 2000NR

Now the other side. Take the levelwind off and you get a reel you can rip on all day without line ever tracking across a guide under load. The current Ocea Jigger is built around that, and its headline feature is choice of speed: seven gear ratios across two body sizes, from 5.1 up to 7.0.

The 1500 runs a 49 mm spool and holds PE 2 for 500 m, at 405 to 410 g. Drag tops out between 6 and 7.5 kg, which surprises people who assume a jigging reel must out-muscle a tai rubber reel. At this size it doesn’t. What it does give you is a much bigger spool at a much lower weight, which is why it holds its retrieve rate better as line goes out.

The 2000NR is the narrow-frame 60 mm spool: 580 to 595 g, PE 3 for 400 m, a flat 10 kg of drag across all four ratios. The fastest one pulls 132 cm per handle turn, roughly what a big saltwater spinning reel does. That’s the tool for sliding long jigs sideways, and for firing off a speed change when nothing has touched the lure in an hour.

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For Deep Slow Pitch and Real Drag Pressure: Ocea Jigger LD

The LD swaps the star drag for a lever, and the numbers change character completely. Max drag is 20 kg. The spool is 60 mm across and 33 mm wide, swallowing PE 4 for 500 m or PE 3 for 670 m. It weighs 690 g, which you’ll feel by mid-afternoon, and that’s the trade for being able to run genuinely heavy pressure on a lever you can find without looking down.

Shimano ships a spare drag cam in the box that also suits lighter line, so the lever curve still makes sense when you drop a class or two below tuna gear. That matters if you bought it for deep slow pitch. It’s the natural pick past 150 m, when current is doubling your line up, or when you’re dropping on fish that will simply leave with a 7 kg drag setting. Our roundup of the best slow pitch jigging reels puts it against the alternatives from Daiwa and the smaller specialists.

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If the lever isn’t what you want but the metered drop is, there’s a middle option, and it gets its own section below.

A Fall Lever on a Star Drag Reel: Ocea Jigger F Custom

This one answers a narrow question. What if you want a metered drop, but not a lever drag and not a levelwind? The F Custom takes the standard Jigger bodies, leaves the line guide off, and puts a fall lever on the palming plate. Thumb pressure you don’t have to hold yourself through 150 m of water is the entire pitch, and by the last drift of a deep day it stops being a luxury.

The lever is shaped for jigging rather than lifted off the tai rubber side of the catalogue: there’s a dimple on the top face and another on the flank, so either thumb reaches it, the one palming the reel or the one on the handle. Two bodies, and a single gear ratio in each. If the standard Jigger appealed to you because of its seven speeds, that’s what you’re handing back.

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Left-hand versions are catalogued as 1501HG and 2001NRHG at the same money.

Where It Fits

Shimano aims the 1500 at madai, tachiuo (hairtail), rockfish and mid-deep jigging, and the 2000NR at amberjack and near-shore tuna. That reads about right to me. The reel earns its price once the drop itself is part of the presentation. If your day is short drops and hard jerking, the plain Jigger is cheaper and hands you the ratio choice instead.

Counter on a Jigging Reel: Ocea Jigger CT

The newest thing in either family, and the first Ocea Jigger ever fitted with a counter. It’s due in Japan from November 2026, with left-hand versions following in December, and it’s priced well above everything else here at ¥96,000 to ¥98,000.

What it adds over the Conquest CT is a fall-speed readout rather than only a depth number, plus a HAGANE body, 12 to 13 kg of drag and a 60 mm spool. What it gives up is the levelwind and the fall lever, because neither belongs on a reel you jerk. Shimano lists Silent Drive and X-Protect on this one too, and says a Bluetooth link with the next-generation Tankenmaru sounder is in development. I’ve written it up properly in the Ocea Jigger CT explainer.

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When the Drop Is 300 m: Ocea Jigger 4000

The big-capacity end of the line, and a reel with an unapologetically narrow brief. A 73 mm spool swallows PE 3 for 1,200 m, drag runs to 18 kg, and there are two gear ratios: 4.4 and 5.1. Both slow, deliberately. Past 300 m you aren’t out-cranking anything, you’re lifting weight, and the spool is already doing the work a fast ratio would normally do. Japanese anglers run it for amberjack and for the deep-water species that live below where most jigging tackle stops.

Bring a rod that can hold it. 785 to 790 g before you spool it is a lot of reel to have hanging off a foregrip, and the frame is wide enough that palming isn’t really the intention.

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The One You Can Cast: Ocea Conquest FT 60

New for 2026, and the odd one out on this page by some distance. 225 g, a 31 mm spool carrying PE 0.6 for 200 m, and an FTB magnetic brake with the brake unit taken off the spool altogether and moved to an external dial. Shimano built it for finesse tai rubber, where the head is light, the braid is thin, and you read the landing off the spool rather than off the rod tip.

Getting there meant giving up the family’s signature. On the FT the levelwind no longer tracks the spool, and that’s precisely what lets a small, thin-walled spool spin fast and then stop dead the instant the head touches. Shimano’s own line is that a small spool turns more times per metre of line leaving it, so the moment it stops is easier to see.

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Should You Buy One?

Only if finesse tai rubber is a real part of your season. Shimano’s own product page quotes Yasuhiro Akazawa saying that once his average depth gets past 100 m he goes back to a 200 or a 300 for the power. Inside that range, in shallow water and messy current with a light head, the FT does something the others can’t. Outside it you’ve paid Conquest 300 money for 5 kg of drag and a PE 0.8 ceiling. It’s a lovely thing. It replaces nothing else in this comparison.

Comparison Table

All eight current lines, ordered from lightest to heaviest body.

Pick by How You Fish: Three Setups That Cover Most Days

Three honest starting points, depending on what your boat day looks like.

Jigger or Conquest: Where This Actually Lands

Forget the tier ladder. These aren’t a good reel and a better reel, they’re two answers to two different questions. Ask what your hands do for most of a trip. If they turn a handle at a steady rate and your thumb only touches the spool on the drop, buy a Conquest and enjoy never thinking about line lay again. If they lift a rod and drop it, over and over, buy a Jigger and learn to thumb.

The middle ground is real, though. A Conquest 300 will jig, and plenty of Japanese anglers use one for light jigging all season. A Jigger 1500 will grind out a day of tai rubber if you’re willing to watch your line lay. Neither is being used wrong. You’re just paying a small tax in convenience or in feel, depending on which way you cross over. If you’re still working out where your fishing sits, the light jigging guide covers the technique side that all of this hardware is serving.

ちゃんま

なんでも釣り師

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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.