brophog

There’s a video out there by the company talking about all of the time and money wasted by all other baitcast users due to all of the line needing to be cut out every year. I suppose that’s their attempt at justifying the cost but it comes off as very late night infomercial rather than serious marketing to a discerning audience. There is a market for this reel, but does the relatively high price and poor distribution network get the reel into the hands of that market.

Do take note of the line and lure ratings of those two rods. Though they both say Medium, the ratings suggest it may be more like a Medium and Medium Heavy.

That's my favorite feature of ceramic bearings.....the fact I can hear them. For those that are not bats, though, some people just run higher tension and brakes and/or thumb the spool continuously at night. Maximum distance usually isn't a huge consideration in most night time fishing applications.

There is no point in setting any spool tension so loose. You keep emphasizing it like it means something. There is only tension or no tension, and if there is tension then how much tension. The spool doesn't spin any faster making the knob looser than necessary to remove tension. They've had this system for several years and this is the smaller of the reels. IIRC they show the mechanism in that video posted above, it's fairly large. Size will likely always be a negative to some, especially compared to today's tiny reels.

Then stop fishing around marshmallows. Though some people think they do attract fish, so maybe that's bad advice.

That's going to depend on the exact rod you're using. Every rod manfacturer tends to have a little different idea of what a ML rod is in terms of power. Plus you can have a ML rod power that is moderate action so it bends much closer towards the middle part of the rod or a ML fast action that bends closer to the tip. A moderate-fast action sits somewhere between those. Generally, your more moderate rods will tend to cast further because more of the rod is allowed to easily bend on the cast but your faster rods provide better hook setting power as less of the rod tip wants to bend. Keep in mind, this stuff isn't set in stone, there is a lot of nuance here that these terms don't adequately convey. You're using a moving bait with an exposed, light wire hook. That's a good recipe for a hookset. Conversely, let's assume you had a 1/4oz Texas rigged plastic just sitting on the bottom with a thicker hook. That fish may not be committed to taking it, you have a thicker hook that has to penetrate not only the plastic but then the fish. That's not a good recipe for a hookset. In that situation, even though you may be casting the same weight, here you would probably want a more powerful rod like a Medium or even Medium Heavy and in a Fast action.

I've only had to use Okuma's customer service once over the years and they were excellent to me.

Absolutely. Excellent options for a ML rod.

I use a lot of medium light casting gear. Traditionally you didn't see a lot of ML rods because the reels weren't capable of casting at the lower half of the range that those rods typically have, but capable reels are becoming more and more common and therefore the rods are now as well. If you're looking at using such rods, you definitely want to pay attention to your reel's casting capabilities. Very important. I especially like 70 or 80 sized reels for these rods. Not as specialized as reels typically labeled "BFS" which are often very purposefully designed for much lighter lures and therefore have more drawbacks. The biggest limitation a 70/80 class reel has is usually line capacity but I think more and more people over time have come to recognize that your traditional 100 class line capacities are really more than we often need in actual practice. You may want something even more specialized to hit that 1/8 or 3.5g size that is often at the bottom end of many ML rods, but I find in practice that most rods don't cast their low ends particularly well and that 3/16 or 5g size is really more of the lower end that we tend to actually use in finesse bass fishing. That's about an 1/8 oz jig and 2 inch plastic, so very, very common and when a lot of people say they're throwing 1/8 they're really throwing more like 3/16 due to this.

That's because those reels generate an insane peak spool speed with proper rods and proper technique which results in insane braking from a centrifugal system. Plus, with a monomag setup you can back the mag off in the back half of the cast and you can't do such on the fly adjustments on a centrifugal. The previous versions of the smaller Fathom star drags were centrifugal and it became such a popular user mod to mag them that the next revision are mags stock.

They have it correct in the bullet points as a magnetic reel, but not in the description. The description is all over the place. They describe the Velocity Control System as "anglers can alternate lure weights on the fly to find the perfect balance for casting and employ a wide range of fishing techniques." VCS is their version of a standard 6 pin centrifugal braking system. As we all know so well, those systems are anything but adjustable on the fly. Before VCS some of those same reels had a dial on the side of the spool to control the release of the centrifugal brakes. Worked fine as a braking system, but what a pain to adjust on the water.

That's it right there. While I prefer cork, I've long since switched to other materials on any rods I build for myself because I like full handles and the price for what you get with cork just isn't there.

I got into it for the same reason a lot of people try something like this....I couldn't find what I wanted any other way. Doesn't hurt that the components most companies use now are not the ones I want. I can't say it really saves any money, probably the opposite in reality. Do it purely to build the rods I want.

Notice I specifically separated the blanks from the finished rods. If you can get the finished K2 at the price that link had it at when it was posted, then it's a great deal. If you buy it at the time this is being posted then you may want to learn how to build rods.

The low end baitcast reel market has gotten significantly better over the years. Kastking reels are pretty solid for those looking at the lower price points and shouldn't hold anyone back wanting to learn to cast a baitcast reel. That said, that's a very basic magnetic reel in the OP so I probably wouldn't look to get that particular combo if I were looking to save money. Kastking sells a number of other lower cost baitcast reels that could be combined with a rod for a similar price point but with better overall quality. Combos are rarely the best option from a price to performance ratio and I don't think this one is an outlier.