bassasaurus

General rule is around 25% but I'm always adjusting to conditions on the water.

Depends on what you like to fish. As already mentioned, if you primarily throw bottom contact baits like jigs, t-rigs etc then invest in a rod. If you're a moving bait guy then get a reel. Regardless, you'll probably end up upgrading your gear later on...

I've ordered many JDM reels and have yet to pay any customs fees for reels. Only on 1 piece rods.

Nice combo. Which poison adrena model is that? How does it fish?

This

Out of the reels you mentioned I have an older generation metanium mg7, a couple of supertuned pixys and the pixy type r. You like the ltx but say that the pixy type r is out of your price range. If you look around you can find it new for less than 400. The "pixzillas" are amazing reels but modifying does not come cheap. The type r is an absolute blast to fish as well. If you upgrade to a shallow spool and tune your curado 50e, you probably wont see too much of a difference compared to the reels you mentioned when factoring in cost. You can find good deals on good condition pixys on that auction site.

palomar!

Agree with the above posters. I usually use 5-8 lb fluoro or copoly with line conditioner but I think that the action and taper of the rod is very important. It has to be able to load with the light weight. Although most UL and L rods are usually more moderate and "whippy" due to the thinner blank but it's usually throughout the entire blank without much tip action which makes it difficult obtaining casting accuracy and also playing larger fish.I think the original floating rapala is around 1/16oz. I'm not sure you're going to get much distance and accuracy CASTING with a baitcasting setup at that weight.

I take it that you tried driving a mercedes for 500,000+ miles but it wasn't reliable and broke down?