TorqueConverter

My leaders start out as long as the amount of line I have out past the tip top guide while holding onto a bait ready to pitch. Over time this amount of material becomes shorter due to cutting and retiring. I often let it go as short as foot or less of leader material. My 40+ visibility water fish don't seem to care when it gets that short. I sometimes fish high vis braid right to the bait when my leaders are acting up and it doesn't matter a bit. Chances are you're far more spooked by the line than the fish will ever be so do what feel right to you. A confident angler is a successful one. No leader, all the leader in the world. Whatever gives you warm an fuzzies is best.

Lews handles are the same size as everyone else bar Shimano. BPS, Daiwa, Abu, Pfluger, Quantum, Pinnacle, Okuma, Cabelas, Academy, Gander Mountain and any odd ball name products all use what is the industry standard handle fitment. Just about anything you can get your hands on that isn't specially labeled as 'shimano only' should work. The short hand reference for this industry standard is often referred to as simply 'abu' or 'daiwa' handles to make it eiser than listing every single reel name brand to use this handle type on planet earth. Lews are Doyos and Doyos thankfully use industry standard. There is no shortage of handles to fit these reels.

Seems a bit odd to offer 3 reels so similar at the same time. Were these reels on the market at the same time or did they come out one after the other? If it is the latter then the reel company, Doyo Korea, was probably playing games and changing the product at their whim forcing Lews to buy the reel 3 times. If Lews specified that all 3 of them exist at the same time then that is just bizarre.

Stay away from the back max. It's a plastic framed mag reel. You can get aluminum framed, centrifugal braking, 10 ball bearing reels for $60. http://www.basspro.com/Browning-Aggressor-Baitcasting-Reel/product/1311080715241/ http://www.basspro.com/Browning-Midas-Black-Bass-Baitcasting-Reel/product/1309120616252/ http://www.basspro.com/Bass-Pro-Shops-Bionic-Plus-Baitcast-Reel/product/1207260456523/

1. What reel? 2. How light are the weights you're trying to cast? 1st baitcaster is always a bit of a learning experience. We've all been there once. I learned in the 90s that I couldn't throw 1/16 oz sliders on a Pinnacle Vision 100 very far.

Just a little bit. Right of the bat I noticed that they cast very well despite a fixed weight. Even in the heavy winds I fish as a great plains angler they cast really well. They also slice through the water given their ultra thin bills making them effortless to retrieve. Their medium buoyancy (not too much and not too little) paired to the ease of the bait to cut through the water means that in cold water they have a good action at slow speeds. Not my favorite cold water crank but competent none the less. The "tail kicking action" is overstated IMO. The axis of rotation in the wobble is located more towards the center of the bait than other tail kickers that feature an axis near the head that produce tight head movements with a wide tail kick. The flat deeper diver looks real good. It features a weight transfer system. lower buoyancy and has goo aerodynamic properties despite being "flat" because its not really flay but slim. I haven't fished the flat but I hope it compares well to a DT6 but with enough Arashi special sauce to differentiate itself from the DT6. I love DT6s and I'm hoping the Arashi Flat 7 isn't a sex'd up weight transferring, circuit board bill Rapala turd.

I've got a few of the "original Fred Young Big Os" that are plastic reproductions that came out a few years ago and they catch fish but they're not particularly good. The smaller sized CC Big Os seem to get bit more often.

In my book, the longer the backbone, the greater the torque. Generally speaking, the faster tapered rods will transition to backbone sooner than more moderate tapered rods meaning that faster tapers have more torque assuming a fixed rod length, because obviously longer rods offer more torque (aka leverage) than shorter rods. I've owned more than one broom handle moderate and willow branch Xfast so there's no replacement for getting hands on a blank before you buy. I'd be getting hands on a blank or at the very least taking word of mouth from a reliable source.

Is a shad a type of bluegill or one of those brims I keep hearing about? All the magazines keep telling me I need them to catch hogs and toads. but I'm just trying to catch bass?

What are you doing that thing is backwards???? I don't know how you can expect to catch fish with it rigged like THAT.

Maybe the new ones are less awesome in the 7 foot M/ML powers and lengths. I grabbed a 7'6'' MH and went "holly crap, how can a 7'6'' be this awesome". I swear the tip was stiffer than the old MH but I need that one.. uh independently verified. If you love the old ones then just go buy them, even at regular retail because it's not like they are getting any more of them. The new ones are based on an entirety different blank making them completely different rods and an unknown quantity. Sometimes it's best to stick with what you know. BPS is not above wrecking a good thing by "improving". Go ask an Extreme reel.

The Bomber 4a is a classic. So much so that both BPS and Cabelas market house brand knock offs. I'm more of a BPS Nitro Crank guy than a 4a but we wouldn't have them if not for the pioneering 4a. Gotta give credit where credit is due. Fat Free Shads are fine cranks too. Overall the Bomber stuff is affordability priced 'classic plastics'. They are widely available, proven fish catchers that cover a lot of the water column.

I'd sell it and get another reel featuring centrifugal braking by itself or preferably dual braking. The Doyo style mag isn't even acceptable on the Black Max let alone a Revo. I'm not sure what Pure Fishing was thinking on that one. If you want to hold onto it then give it a deep clean and light re-lube to free the gunk and overlube from it including the bearings. Set it up to cast with the mag brakes off, relying on the spool tension. The purpose of this is to verify that you have functioning baitcaster because its not too uncommon to see a shim or two missing from the spool tension knob making the reel unusable. You need to be able to verify that it can be set up to function off of the spool tension alone. Once this is established you can then play around with backing off of the spool tension while increasing mag brakes, but don't expect amazing results. Mags by themselves are trash.

The line has got its problems but it is very quiet through the guides, long casting once broken in and is the most abrasion robust braid by miles. You can put the stuff through hell and back and all it will do is fuzz up in a velvety texture as opposed to having chucks ripped from it like other braids. The stuff is hard to kill but the irony is that it can't be fished on a baitcaster unless you reel set and net land you fish for fear of digging into the spool. Knot strength is also poor and is why the stuff is rated at 50% of what is should be rated at. #14 Fireline is actually a 28-30 pound 4 strand braided product. Tie a real good uni knot and #14 ceases to be #14.

Correct. The Silstar stuff was pretty good back in the day. They didn't hold up like Shimanos or even the modern Doyo stuff but it was pretty good for the $ at the time. Features such as ball bearings, anodized, cross drilled aluminum spool and centrifugal breaking was hard to come by on reel for less than $100.

Are you sure you didn't grab a Bionic Blade by mistake? They're both white EVA split grip rods. The new ones blow the old noes out of the water in both the lightness and balance departments. I looked long and hard at the old ones and went Veritas Micro becase it was on par in the lightness but had more backbone and felt crisper. The new carbonelites make the Veritas Micro feel like a lead pipe.

Very good. One of my favorite if not my favorite spinerbaits since the day they came out. You get the vibration and collapsibility of an ultra light wire with the snap back resilience that even heavy gauge wire cannot match and that is the 'best of both worlds' by definition. Their Oklahoma blades are pretty awesome too.

Been there done that. It doesn't show up any better than any other braid unfortunately. I'm guessing the line needs some fluorescence to it to glow under a black light.

Every reel out there aside from the Daiwa and Shimano stuff is either a Korean or a Chinese "your name here" reel. I'm guessing your old fishing buddy was using PQs back when they were Silstars. The Doyo ones are much better.

They love referring to the stuff as a non braided product. I didn't start fishing it until the late 90s at the earliest so it's possible that the stuff was at one time briefly a singular fused product. I remember hearing that claim about it being a singular fused flat line but always caulked that up as bad info. It's a 4 carrier braid with a very low weave per inch today and was since I started fishing with it. The ends would always become unwoven and you'd have these 4 strands going every which way that you'd have to slobber over then twist back into something resembling a fishing line again just to tie a knot.

Weird, the one I saw in store and online before they vanished was the same frame and shape, but didn't have the matte black frame, had a black anodized spool and red color in the "window" thing on the non handle side plate. It was a blueish silver rather than gunmetal in color and I swear had like at least a 90mm handle. It only appeared online a few weeks ago only to disappear but is still in store as a display..

Yup. Squarebill is a convenient term.. I used to have a hard time explaining shallow crankbaits that have 2 to 3 inch body with a line tie located in the nose of the bait and small broad bill extending at approximately 45ish degree angle off the body. The problem is that there is a notion out there that they are something other than shallow cranks and should only be fished in and around cover by bumping the stump. As if somehow they are anything other than shallow cranks and somehow unable to catch fish in the absence of stumps to bump into.

Get a Browning Superlight. It's a black new Carbonlite.

The Prolite I got my hands on in store looks different than jakob1010's? Did that come off a Prolite combo or something?

Fireline original is a 4 carrier braid - just a really bad one. The stuff that makes up the strands is fused and all 4 of them are braided together in what I assume is the old Gorilla Braid machine. It's pretty awesome stuff at the carrier level being a nearly indestructible gel spun thermally fused Dyneema product but it's braided together horribly and that's were all the problems lie. Fireline Braid is an conventional 8 carrier Dyneema braid that's 'Fireline' in name only.