Delaware Valley Tackle

The line sizes on a reel are pretty much irrelevant. A 2500 size reel is ideal for general bass fishing.

There are a bunch of ways to temporarily attach guides while wrapping. I use either small bands cut from surgical tubing, small rubber hair tie rings or elastic thread from the sewing aisle depending on the situation. The start up kit is a good start if you know you'll stick with it for a while. I think everyone should turn a rod by hand once or twice just to learn how the epoxy behaves during the process. As for guide placement charts, I'd use them as a starting point, but static testing and perfect guide placement is probably the single biggest performance improvement you can make over a production rod.

I've settled on PVC pipe. I guess it depends some on the value of whatever you're shipping. Sure there's insurance but who want's to jump through those hoops if you don't have to.

"Shakey Head" means different things to different people. The way I use them is as a finesse presentation which usually means ML spinning tackle for me unless weight and cover dictate a move up in power. I build what is labeled as a Mag ML which I find near perfect for the majority of my spinning apps for bass and walleye. A soft, but fast tip casts well, feels light bites and sets the hook well. The only "shaking" I normally do is just taking up slack and letting the natural shake of my hand transmit through to the bait causing just a quiver.

I have to agree, the reel in your pics has seen some use but is still in perfectly fishable condition.

You simply have a guide issue. The fact that they are "micros" is beside the point. Whether the tip top is defective or just designed that way can't be determined without seeing it.

Line weight ratings on a bass rod are near meaningless other than to roughly suggest applications. Line numbers on a reel are not ratings at all, merely capacity specs.

That's a work horse of a reel you can pass along to yet a next generation if it's cared for at all.

1. No knot will will damage a modern guide. As long as it passes the guide it will be fine. 2. Personally, I'm not sold on bass being line shy. If they were, I'd be using a leader of at least 4' 3. A little more line off the end when casting may give better casting results.

The Saros and up have worm gear oscillation which I like. The Stradic is a little more refined, whether or not it's $40 more refined is up to you. I tend to think so and in fact like the Ci4 a lot.

If you'll be fishing jigs and plastics I'd stick with the $200 reel range and look into upgrading the rod to an Avid or LT etc.

For multi species fishing from the bank that rod is not bad at all. Just avoid heavy wire hooks as you may not get good hooksets with the lighter rod.

Reminds me of Seinfeld at the car rental " So you can TAKE a reservation, you just can't KEEP a reservation......How is that a reservation?"

No need to turn off centrifugal brakes when setting spool tension as the spool's not spinning fast enough to activate them. Mag brakes, if present, should be off/lowest setting prior to setting spool tension.

Lure weight ranges are subjective and intended to suggest a range of weights that will cast well with that rod. Overloading by too much can obviously have negative consequences but a little common sense should avoid that.

The benefits of bearing upgrades are significantly less once the stock bearings are flushed and properly oiled. If you're going to change bearings an ABEC5 ceramic hybrid run dry will provide all the practical advantage you can use and save you a few bucks. The Hedgehog bearings I've seen in customer reels were underwhelming IMO.

Feature for feature the Revo S probably has the edge on paper. Real world performance wise they are very close. I've read of some reliability issues with the Gen 3 Revos but have not experienced them personally or in a significant number of customer reels.

Sure, just check with someone to get the H.P. limit or better yet throw a 12 volt trolling motor on it.

If you do a search there is a similar project chronicled in this forum.

Brand new are about $700 for a 13-14'. Do you have a way to transport it? If you'll need to buy a trailer take that into account. I'd point at the tear in the bow and offer him $75 and you'll get it out of his way. Aluminum can be welded but they have to know what they're doing. With more regular use expect some of the rivets to spring leaks. As an alternative: https://albany.craigslist.org/boa/4650614982.html

Yes, two part epoxy is the adhesive of choice for rod building. If you want to email me specifics of what you need to do I'll do my best to help you work through it.

Anything's possible nowadays, but I highly doubt BPS would undermine themselves by selling an inferior reel under the same label as another. They can sell combos cheaper for two reasons: the mark up on individual components allows it, and retailers commonly use loss-leaders to generate foot traffic. Under this scenario, they may well be breaking even or even loosing money on that combo and making it up on ancillary sales.

Pflueger is hard to beat on a bang for the buck basis for spinning reels. The next experiment I'm planning is the Okuma RTX: $99 and 6.6 oz.

I take TT's reviews with a grain of salt, but in the fluoro shoot out they did, BPS fluoro scored surprisingly well.

That's a sweet blank. I have one for myself built with Minima guides, a carbon fiber Tennessee handle and mounted with a Ci4 Stradic. It's feather light, sensitive and has surprising power. I find myself going more and more toward ML and Mag ML for spinning apps.