Jrob78

I don't think I could remember all the rods I have off the top of my head if I wanted to. I have a bunch of customs also which further muddy the waters.

Love it, better than the SV, which is saying something. I'm about to buy another one and put some 5:1 gears in it for a cranking reel.

I'm in

@FishTank talked me into a 7'2" M Legend Glass so thanks to both of you!

Thanks, I'm pretty familiar with glass rods but I haven't so much as handled any of the Legend glass rods. I want one though. ?

How do you like the 7'2" M for square bills? I've been thinking about picking one up.

I have several rods I fish flukes with, lately it's been a 7'3" MH Poison Adrena with a Zillion HD and 12 lb fluoro. Really though most MH casting rods will work great with flukes.

This won't be a huge help because I don't have a specific recommendation, but I would be looking at JDM rods. They generally prefer shorter rods than we do and I've definitely seen swimbait rods in the 7'-7'4" range.

This definitely used to be a thing. I remember being 4 or 5 when I got chicken pox and I also remember my brother and 2 cousins having it at the same time I did. We were together a lot and my mom and aunt deny it so it might not have been intentional but I've always wondered. I haven't had the shingles vaccine and it's never been mentioned by my dr but I should probably ask.

As far as I know the S just has a shallow sv spool which should better handle lighter baits while the base model has a regular sv spool.

So some of you would rather take advice from a faceless, nameless profile that might only fish 15 days a year over a professional who fishes 250 days a year on lakes all over the country because he gets paid to use a certain brand of baits? Makes sense

100% casting but that's what fits my fishing style and how I grew up fishing, I wouldn't recommend it for everyone.

They are made in China, I believe all Megabass rods are.

Any technique where you use the rod to move the bait generally has a "slack line" period after you move the bait and before you reel up the slack to move the bait again. The amount of time the line is slack depends on how fast you're fishing a bait and your fishing style.

There's a store called Southwestern Parts and Service in Dallas that is a warranty center for Daiwa, Abu Garcia and Shimano. They stock a ton of Daiwa parts but you can't order from their website and will have to call. I've gotten handles, spools, knobs and various internal parts from them in the past but they are local to me so I just go in. I hate to see The Tackle Trap go but Gary posted on Tackle Tour that he had something big coming soon, so hopefully he's going to start his own thing.

I use fluoro for jigs. The slack line sensitivity and straighter connection to the bait are the main reasons why. Floating lines cause a huge bow in the line. I also don't think a little stretch in my line is a bad thing. I don't normally pitch jigs into heavy cover, I use soft plastics for that, but that would be the only scenario I would use braid for jig fishing.

The braid for everything guys are pretty exhausting too. People should do whatever they want or whatever makes them happy but constantly pushing it on others is a bit ridiculous.

It wouldn't be a deal breaker but if she couldn't take some playful ribbing from me after the fact, that would be a deal breaker. A steak should never be cooked past medium.

Gary from The Tackle Trap hinted that maybe he was starting his own company, that's what I read into it anyway, so maybe it was an issue of the owners being ready to get out of the game and not forced out.

David Fritts has forgotten more about fishing than most of us will ever know so I am definitely not questioning his methods. However, out of several hundred pros he's the one that uses braid for cranking while pretty much everyone else uses fluoro, again not saying he's wrong but he is in the extreme minority. He also uses a glass or mostly glass rod, which OP is not.

This is where I am with it too. I use braid for pitching heavy cover and frogging, I use fluoro for all bottom contact baits - soft plastics and jigs, and use copoly for all moving baits. Fluoro is expensive and requires a little more care than mono or braid but if you use it where it really shines it's worth the cost, to me.

I saw their Instagram post earlier today, hate to see them go.

JDM Tackle Heaven is showing the Steez A in stock.

12lb copoly is my go to for both of these techniques, I like Pline CX but any copoly or mono would work great.

A new Bantam is $240 with free shipping at Digitaka, I can't imagine you would be saving that much money with a proxy after their fees and shipping. That said, I believe @bulldog1935 has posted about using a proxy in Japan before.