IAY

You have to spool fluorocarbon properly or it will get ruined. 10lb fluorocarbon is also way too thick for spinning reel. People use 6-8 lb, but you will run into trouble with those as well. I try to keep my spinning reel line that is not braid under 5 lb.

They are effectively the same, in terms of bait presentation.

Both of the reels are very refined. Conquest is made out of aluminum with brass gear, so it is going to feel more rigid and powerful, while Metanium is certainly no slouch in power but feels a lot more nimble and easy to work with due to the light. I have 2 new Conquests, but I love my Metanium more. With everything being said, I would go for the conquest for this application.

Also more invisible than braid

What you are worried about when casting light weight gear is the weight of the spool. Putting extra line adds a lot of weight, and light lures just doesn't create enough momentum to actually turn those spools. Yes, there have been old school baitcasters which are designed to cast light weight stuff, but none of them comes close to the capability of the newer ultralight custom spools people have been making. There are plenty of options available to fit those gears though, just like the shallow spools for Ambassadeurs and Conquests.

No reason you can't use it for bass. Go for it!

BFS isn't about taking the same space as spinning. You can use heavier 10-12 fluorocarbon line and still go down to 1/16 oz total weight easily, letting you fish cover much more effectively than spinning set ups. Baitcasting reel also allows you to lock down the drag and really turn the fish out of cover, and disengage the spool and thumb the line as it makes hard runs on open water, giving you much more fish manageability. BFS is going to struggle on light lures without much center of gravity like unweighted plugs. They are simply different tools meant for different situations.

Shallower spool, new breaking system, silent tune, and new paint job.

Learn how to do the FG knot well, and melt the end of the fluorocarbon to create a little cap thing for the braid to hold on to even better. I do not fish too many braid set ups, but I did try them out last season for big swimbaits, and had countless backlashes from the random knots it could form + force of 2.5 oz + lures and the FG knot has held through every single one of those bad backlashes.

It's meant to be used with 8 strand braid, which is thin but very powerful. It is used for inshore and boat fishing for breams.

I personally hate braid because of the way I cast and I don't fish much heavy weed so I use straight fluoro.

It's stupid to me how they would ask for the value difference if the price originally were the same. Why should they care if you bought it on sale or not, they already sold the rod to the retailers anyways. I would be perfectly fine with them saying how they won't exchange the model, but telling you that they would, and asking you to ship it to them and THEN asking for the price difference is a joke to me.

Is the rod you bought worth the same as the rod you want to trade for?

I have a Conquest 200 and have the regular gear as well as the HG gear and I love it, so there is no mistake in purchasing it for sure. I had the 200 on Megabass F10-76XBJ and it was just too much of a stick for the reel to work it comfortably. I ended up putting it on a lighter rod, and bought a 400 and couldn't be happier.

916UBR is rated for 3- 8 oz. It is definitely going to feel better with a 300 conquest than a 200.

I agree with you that there isn't much of a difference in terms of overall performance and feel for the reel based on the pretty limited amount of times that I have used Doyo reels. They both feel pretty good in my hands, but I wouldn't trade my Daiwa/Shimano platforms for them. I do hear from a lot of reel techs, that Lews product last better than Abu Garcia, so maybe you are paying more for the bling through Abus, and paying for better internals through Lews.

There is absolutely no stretch in braid, and they tend to develop a kink no matter what you do, causing random backlash sending your bait flying into the water. 12lb CXX is a 20lb (.370mm) breaking strength line, and I have been running that no with no problem at all for last season. They will do fine, but I don't like CXX since it doesn't handle well at all in my hands, I would just go with a 20lb P-Line PF original (.380mm) which handles much better. Having bigger reel is not a bad thing on the rods you are going to fish. They are very very heavy rods, and having a bigger reel to help balance and hold onto will make it less tiring. You do not need 300, unless you are fishing baits consistently over 4 oz imo.

I would feel pretty comfortable throwing up to 3 oz stuff on .370 mm nylon or fluorocarbon and I have gone down to .330 mm lines so you should be fine. I would just get the larger conquest if you are going to throw bigger stuffs, more line capacity, making casting more comfortable.

I would not throw swimbaits with braid, just heart break waiting to happen

5 pound tastu or shooter fc sniper

I would just get the Zillion TWS SV, which is quite a bit cheaper than the Morethan SV.

You are using the wrong tool for your application. 25 lb shooter is really really thick stuff, and it is pretty hard to manage, but super stiff, sensitive, and ultra abrasion resistant. I would only use that to flip really heavy cover.

I use 15 lb big game for all of my lures under 3 ozs, and 20lb Seaguar Abrazx for lures up to 6.5 ozs. Don't judge line by the poundage label, because it is pretty meaningless, go by the diameter instead.

Use Dacron instead. Sits on your spool better when you tightly wrap it and it's lighter.

I would never use something that heavy with BFS spool.