The Rooster

Ya know, for 1/2 a second I thought about something like that cause the grip of the handle spins so super freely like the spool on a baitcaster does. I wouldn't be surprised at all to learn that is where they are, but if it is then how do you ever oil those??

A worm!!! Particularly the 7" Berkley Power Worm in the color black. Sometimes I'll change it up with a Zoom U-tale 7" worm instead and then it's whatever color strikes me as might....um.....look good in the water?? Mimmicking natural bait colors such as pumpkin or watermelon (browns and greens), or some darker colors such as red shad (red and black). Recently though I went on a trip with my bro-in-law who got me started using the Baby Paca Craw by Net Bait in the color green pumpkin. I caught 4 that day on those but he busted about 15 of his 30 bass on that bait alone. We were "lubing" them up with some Berkley bass attractant scent in a bottle in addition to the strong anise scent they already have. That day the fish were keying in on scent since the water was so murky and the bait was nearly the color of the water. Also surprisingly this little bait has a LOT of vibration from the pincers that the craws have. They wabble nearly like a spinnerbait blade when you retrieve it, enough I could feel it in my rod tip, so I'd say every jerk of the rod to work it while down on the bottom is creating a lot of vibration. I use 3/0 EWG (extra wide gap) Gamakatzu hooks on my T-rigs and a bullet weight sinker in 1/4, 3/16, or 1/8 oz. sizes. That's all I find necessary and I only use the heavier 1/4 weight for deeper water or when the wind is blowing around my line quite a bit. Sometimes I might put one on to increase the feeling I get from the bait if I'm fishing soft bottoms like mud or sand. For rocky bottoms I don't need it to feel what's down there. Otherwise the smaller ones will work fine for most cases. Here's a good trick to try. Until recently I had only thought of using glass beads with the carolina rig but it made sense to me that they would work on a T-rig too so I'm gonna try some to see if they make any difference. I figure when using those craw baits that about 3 beads clacking together might immitate the noises real crawfish make when moving and swimming. I'll let ya know!! I'm a novice at the T-rig though but I'm learning. I'm sure some others can give you more tips than me.

I just finished disassembling, cleaning, and then reassembling my Pflueger President spinning reel. It's supposed to have 10 bearings, 9 ball type and 1 roller anti reverse bearing. I can only account for 7 of the ball type though. There are 2 on the pinion gear, one on each side of the roller bearing, then there's one on the spool shaft under the spool itself.....that's 3 so far, then there's 2 on the main drive gear, one on each side (now we're up to 5) and there's one on the oscillation gear inside the gearbox (now 6). Then there's one for the line roller on the bail itself and that's the 7 that I could find. I did not disassemble the bail itself, all I did was remove it from the reel body and cleaned and relubed the gears and the inside of the gearbox on the body. While I was in there I did see that there are 2 plastic bushings that support the spool shaft. One is inside of the pinion gear shaft and one is just below it inside the gearbox in it's own specific location. Are those considered BEARINGS?? Otherwise there's no place left for 2 more ball bearings to be at on this thing unless they are on each side of the bail for the bail to open and close while riding on them. Could that be possible?? I have a 6735X model of this reel for reference. I know the ultralight reels are smaller and don't contain as many as the larger reels do but mine is not that, it's what I'd call a medium to medium/large size.

So now that I think about this, technically an IM-7 rod can be every bit as sensitive as an IM-8 rod, but it just has to be a bit heavier because of having more material in it in order to achieve the same stiffness as the lighter IM-8 rod that has less material in it. But there might be something to be said for the lighter IM-8 rod maybe even being more sensitive than the IM-7 rod just because it is lighter. The graphite content of both rods may be equally sensitive but the heavier rod still might not let a person feel as much just due to the weight being more. If your hand is tired from holding a heavier rod then you won't feel as much as you might have if the rod had been lighter, no matter how sensitive the graphite blank is. I would think this would be more the case in a 7' medium heavy flippin' stick as opposed to a lightweight spinning rod though. It would also be more apparent in a sold cheap and made cheaper, IM-7 rod vs. a high quality IM-8 rod from a high end company. This is all just me thinking out loud and posting it so when someone reads it and thinks I'm either onto something or way off base, they can tell me so. I feel like I've learned quite a bit from this thread so far. I know my rod purchasing will likely forever be changed by it all.

Having read this I now get that higher modulus means a stiffer rod that is lighter cause less material was necessary to make it. More stiffness results in more sensitivity. Combining that with the previous read from up above I can see where some companies can use the identical same material and one can create a better rod than the other due to how it was made. That explains a lot to me as to why one company can sell an IM-7 rod at 1/2 the price of another company's IM-7 rod. I'm glad I asked this question. I think I understand a lot more about this now and it makes me feel better about purchasing a higher dollar rod with the same rating as one I already own. Maybe I'll even go a little higher with the amount I put into one now that I know more about what I would be getting.

This was my experience too when using Trilene XL. I never lost any fish with it but it constantly broke when tying the knots. I'd have to tie three or four times sometimes before it would stay tied. I used it for a long time but finally I switched to Stren a couple years ago and have not had that problem since. I thought for a while that it was the way I was tying the knots but apparently it doesn't matter with the Stren I'm using, the original in the purple box. Works great.

Well, I have seen them sold separately on the internet. Just not in stores was all. Seemed they'd sell some considering how many reels they make and sell individually.

Just for the trivial nature of the knowledge. That's all it means to me. I don't care who makes it, if it fishes well , is affordable, and is comfortable to use, not to mention looks good then I'm buying it.

Man I have been there!!! It ain't purty even with the brakes nearly all the way up either!!! I smacked a tree limb in the middle of trying to fling a 3/8 oz. spinnerbait out into the lake from the shore. Had a Garcia 5600C4 and it was a royal mess inside it. Took 20 minutes of picking to get the line straightened out again and it was hopelessly kinked so it had to be changed. Fortunately that reel held so much line due to the overly large spool (205 yrd/12 lb.) that I cut off a bunch and was still able to finish fishing that day.

How come we don't see Pflueger rods being sold separately in the bigger stores like BPS and Cabela's, or even in the tackle stores and Sportsman's Warehouse, Dick's, and other places?? I've only seen them as part of a combo deal and that's it. Don't they make or have any that are worth selling separately??

Are you only considering those two house brands and nothing else?? I'm thinking about getting into some Shimano rods myself. There's at least 3 different ones under $100 that they make.

Muddy, You mind me asking what it was about the Extreme that made you switch back to the Trion reels again?? Just curious. I have an Extreme and have also looked many times at the Trion but didn't go for it since I was so satisfied with the Extreme I own. BTW, what did you do with those Extremes you "no longer need"??

Ah HA!! I knew I saw some similarities in the BPS and the Browning reels. Only thing is, I though Shakespeare made Pflueger?? Does Silstar do those too??

Hmmm...Pflueger...hadn't thought of that one. I knew there was a good reason why I liked it so well though.

This pretty much tells me what I think I already knew, and that is that I have to feel a rod hands on in order to tell if it will perform like I want it to. The numbers alone mean nothing. Makes sense cause I was looking at a Shimano Clarus that was IM-7 and even though I already own a bunch of rods that are IM-7, that Shimano just "feels" like it would be more sensitive. Something about the lightness of the blank and the tip being so thin compared to some of the rods I have makes me think I would be able to detect more subtle bumps under water. What I also got from that is that the IM numbers do mean that each one is just a different material instead of having more graphite. Thanks for that informative post. I'm not quite sure I fully understand it all yet. May have to read it a couple more times before it sinks in fully. But thanks none the less. It has helped me with my primary question.

With mine I am able to cast 1/4 ounce crankbaits straight into pretty strong winds with no backlashes at all. That's a huge pro. The inertia brakes on this reel are incredible. Also I am able to cast it most of the time without even thumbing it until just before the lure hits water and can get 60 feet or longer casts that way. Same lure as above, I use it mostly for cranking and T-rigs. Again, this is due to the braking of it. It's very user friendly, has a quick lube port that enables you to add a little gear grease in the event that it begins to feel a bit rough on the retreive. All you need to do is remove it from the rod and take one single phillips screw out on the inside of the frame and the port opens right up exposing the main drive gear. That lets you get another trip or 2 fishing out of it before you have to really disassemble it to clean it and relubricate it again. Very nice feature, never seen that on any other reel at all. Also you can remove the side plate and oil the bearings on the spool shaft with no tools at all. By the way, I've already completely torn mine down and relubed it, reassembled it again, and it's as slick as glass again. I've heard that these reels, once they begin to feel rough that you can't bring them back again, but my experience with mine proves to me that this is not the case at all. It's overall profile is very small and lets you palm it super easily. Very comfortable to grip. I love the oversized paddle grips it has for cranking too, just very comfortable to use. It's available in a lot of different versions, 3 different gear ratios, a wide spool version, and even a super small finesse model is available, even left handed models, and some with flipping switches, some without. Really the only con I can think of is the color of it keeps it from being matched to a lot of rods. There aren't too many green rods out there with gold trim. I don't like the Extreme rod it was made for, only just the reel itself. Cabela's makes one, the Fish Eagle II, but they're $80 and only IM-6 graphite. If I'm paying that much money for a rod, it's gonna be a Shimano Compre, whether it matches the reel or not. Come to think of it, that's probably the rod I'm getting for mine. Right now it's on a red rod and looks like Christmas with the red, green, and gold colors. ;D My reel fishes strong, that aluminum frame reassures me everytime I pick it up. It probably would be OK if it was graphite framed but I like knowing it's aluminum. Hard to find a reel with so much going on for the price it is, and if you wait a bit, sometimes they go on sale for $60. At that price it's like giving it away, and I'd be tempted to buy 2 of them. Next time they go on sale like that I am!!!

I'm sure his experience using that bait helped his numbers a lot too, I hadn't used it at all until then. But really I wouldn't know if I could have used that bait effectively or not cause the wind was blowing my line around to the point I wasn't even able to feel it hit bottom, and sometimes it was obvious that it wasn't on the bottom cause I could see the line blowing down the lake and pulling the bait with it. His fluorocarbon line seemed virtually unaffected by the wind at all while mine was.

I've wondered this too. You can usually look at a reel with the Cabela's name on it and tell who makes it by it's shape. Daiwa and Shakespeare make some of theirs. But the BPS reels, none I've seen anywhere else look like theirs. Browning did have one called Six Rivers that looked a lot like an Extreme, it was in a catalog a year back. But it was way oversized compared to the Extreme, just looked like it was all. This year BPS has one they call the Nitro and it looks like a Browning Midas or Citori in design.

The Bass Pro Shops Extreme has got to be one of the best deals anywhere for under $100, they're only just $80 retail. You can find them on sale sometimes for under $60. I actually paid less than $50 for mine due to a clearance on them but I got the 5 bearing model when they replaced it with the 7 bearing model instead. These are great reels and have a lot of features that others only have after you cross the $100 line such as an aluminum frame. I've seen some reels that cost under $100 and still have that but none of them feel as smooth as the Extreme does, not to me anyway.

Brand name means something to me in that I won't buy a product that is not a brand name I know and trust. But even with the name on it, it still has to be a good product. If it's wearing the name I trust but it is obvious that it's not made very good then the name alone won't sell it to me. Also, even though I have my picks when it comes to brands, I'm open to checking out anything from a new brand I've not seen or heard of before. Still though, I'd have to see it close up and hands on before just buying it. That lets out any kind of internet ordering on something I have no experience with.

When a rod says it has IM-6, IM-7, or IM-8 graphite, does that mean that the IM-6 rod doesn't have as much graphite as the IM-8 rod does, or is it that the IM-6 is a different type of graphite compared to the IM-8?? Basically, does the number refer to a type of graphite, or just how much graphite a rod has??

We both were using a 1/8 oz. sinker on the T-rig. His was tungsten and mine was lead though. We were using casting rods. Later we went to 1/4 when the wind picked up. I did get a few on the T-rig, 4 in all. He got a bunch more than that though. It was when we went to the 1/8 oz. shakey head rigs on spinning tackle that he was loading the boat and I got none at all. I'm definitely going to upgrade my rod and my line both. Part of it is so I can improve my fishing some, and part of it is to appease my bait monkey. I just like getting new stuff.

You think I should get the Compre over the Clarus?? I guess common sense should tell me that it would be better. The only thing I don't care for on that Compre is the foregrip on the spinning rods. That cutout they use to expose the blank I mean. The way I hold a rod, I grip the foregrip completely in front of the reel, all 4 fingers and thumb. I also tend to have cramps in my hands from the type of work I do (construction, swinging a hammer all day driving nails) and the small grip seems like it would cause fatigue after a while. Most of the rods I have now were selected for price range and foregrip comfort. I know that Clarus isn't much different really, but it doesn't have that cutout on it at least. That and price are what make it the most interesting to me in the Shimano line. It's affordable and I can have 3 Clarus's for the price of 2 Compre's. And comfort would be better it seems. I'm worried about sensitivity though. I wish I could know it would be better than what I already have. It's IM-7 graphite which is what I already have now.

That's what I was thinking. My brother in law stomped a mud hole in me Saturday using fluorocarbon line in windy conditions while I used mono.

I've had mono bury into the reel before but it was only after I had a snag and pulled way too much on it to get it loose. It didn't dig in really bad though. Just enough to cause me a problem on my next cast and have to fix the line again. Incidentally, my brother in law showed me a neat trick for getting a snag loose if it's snagged out of water, not below the surface. He pulls some of the line out to the side just in front of the reel and uses the rod to hold the line pulled somewhat tight from rod to lure, but not extremely tight, but enough to bend the tip of the rod some. Then he "snaps" the line by letting go of what he pulled out and drops the rod tip at the same time. Sometimes the lure will pop free of what it's snagged on. More often than not though you'll have to retrieve it the old fashioned way. But even if it works just once, then that's once you don't have to troll over to it to get it out. I thought I'd tell you that since you mentioned a snag in your post.