FloridaFishinFool

I've heard this before. I am one of those who do not care how a rod lays on the deck. I care only about how it fishes. My rods are built for fishing not how they lay on a deck. Not even a consideration to me Chris. I just took the same rod published in the article and mounted it upside down so now the guides are on top same as a conventional rod we humans have used successfully for more than a century. But just look at the results! I used the same 90 degree for these images. In these images taken just minutes ago, I know they are not the clearest, but you can see how the line flows under a 90 degree load. It is clearly running down beside the blank in between each guide in the bend section touching the blank for approximately 50% of the blank length in between each of those guides. This is added or increased accumulated line flow friction under load spiral wrapped rods eliminate all together. And I had trouble taking these photos because even these short micro guides were torqueing the rod over sideways in the mount. When you add up all the places along the blank the line touches under load it has got to add this friction to the overall accumulation of friction line flow experiences under load. Eliminate this and line flow friction has to be reduced in my opinion. And what is funny is some custom rod builders are so worried about line touching the blank in a spiral wrapped rod they go to extremes to prevent it while rods that did this naturally for over 100 years you don't see them putting extra guides on them to lift line off the blank! Why is it only on a spiral wrap the one tiny little spot where line crosses the blank is such an issue they have to toss in another guide to solve a problem that does not exist. These next two images are of the middle of the blank moving back towards the reel. It shows the line flow under 90 degree load is also running down along side the blank for approximately 50% of blank length between each guide. This is not how I want my rods to behave or function. This is less ideal. All of the above accumulation of friction increases and rod torqueing over are completely eliminated on all of my CHW rods. This is the exact same rod but now a CHW spiral wrapped rod eliminating what you see above. Line flow friction under load is decreased significantly in my opinion. There is only one possible place where the line could possibly touch this blank now under load. Where X marks the blank crossover spot. Like I said a lot of rod builders think this is an issue and they include an additional 90 degree side guide to lift line off the blank but they are adding friction here by forcing line to flow out sideways causing increased angular bends through transition guides. I learned to eliminate that guide and just use the one before and after X marks the spot as the lift guides. Works like a charm!

Only in the bend area do you see angular bends. Not through the transition guides. I will take the same rod shown above which was also published in the article and turn it upside down and demonstrate the accumulation of increased line flow resistance to compare with the CHW version. You can't eliminate all of them. Rods and reels and line have limitations. I think I reached that limitation with what I do. I hit the wall and could go no further. It works. Give it a try on your next custom rod. They really are amazing to use.

The amount of friction line experiences flowing through the guides on a rod is accumulative. So with guides on top, when under load you have angular bends of the line flow through each guide adding increased friction, and then as line touches blank and often flows down alongside the blank you have to add in that friction as well. My CHW process eliminates most of 2 out of 3 accumulations of line flow friction under load. One, the line flowing on blank or beside it is eliminated. And 2, the line flow friction through transition guides that is straightened out has no angular bends through those guides so that friction is almost eliminated as well. While on a conventional rod, these same locations would show some angular bends to line flow under load sometimes. My line shoots straight past those areas. It does make a difference! I believe it. If you look at this photo, the only angular bends in line flow under load exists only way out closer to the tip as rod begins to bend into the load. If the transition guides were all on top and those in the bend as a conventional rod, you would see angular bends coming back towards the reel in most of those guides. And lots of line touching the blank along most of it, and way out there in the bend line flowing down beside the blank between each guide often touching twice in between each one. Those friction increases are gone on this rod. Do not exist. Friction has to be reduced because of this.

Just yesterday I had to get on my 12 year old about damaging the cork doing this. He wanted me to show him older rods with hook damage as proof. Hopefully he has learned his lesson. The one that gets me Chris are the spinning rods with a hook keeper on the bottom of rod right in between the reel and stripper guide. I can't tell you how many times on a cast the line gets caught on them and ruins a cast. Those are quickly removed or moved. Good idea for a thread! On one of my son's rods I showed him to use the reel seat's forward mount. There is a small hole or gap next to reel in the reel seat perfect for a hook keeper on rods without one.

Due to the extreme amount of vegetation I have to deal with in Florida I almost always rig these weedless. No weight for topwater bite and just below the surface. Or, a weighted hook for places like lily pads where I let it drop down into them going down 2 to 6 feet deep mostly. And kind of Texas rig them for bottom fishing. I avoid thick rubber lures of this type that look more like a cigar. I want a lure shape that tapers down to a thinner tail so all that thick rubber does not fill the hook gap and get in the way blocking good hooksets. I have some lakes here in Florida that are shallow dishpan lakes with wide vast expanses of eel grass. Nothing I love more than swimming these through all that eel grass. The bass explode on them and sometimes are jumping out of the water to get at these. A fun fishing method to me. MY FAVORITE! Gotta get that in there or I'm in trouble again! If I want to swim a paddletail I will switch over to premade with weighted hook inside and often add a stinger treble hook to increase hookups more and lose fewer fish.

Technically it can be applied to any rod blank. I've never tried a fly rod but due to how whippy those usually are would be in my book a slow blank. Extremely slow blank as bends tend to go deep in many cases all the way to the reel. So applying my process would then amount to about the same thing as an acid wrap or Robert's wrap or other methods. My process would also pull the transition back closer to the reel and basically spiral around the thickest part of the blank just because of the bend of those rods. I am not sure how it would perform since I don't fly fish. It would be interesting to hear if others did make spiral wrapped fly rods and how they perform. My Cagey Hook Wrap process is not the same as an acid wrap at all. That is a west coast California method used primarily on short jigging rods used for almost straight down fishing with little to no casting. My idea was developed on bass fishing casting rods. This particular rod shows about the best application of my process to date. Others may be slightly less well done as this is a learning process, but this one rod came out very well and fit the custom rod rules in the book to a T. Observe line flow under a chosen 90 degree rod blank load. It goes through the transition guides ruler straight with zero side loading and line flows in either top center or bottom center of the transition guides. I cannot make it any better than this using a rod and reel. Rods built like this are a pure joy to use which is why I took the time, effort and trouble to come up with this idea. I have constructed a dozen of them in the last few months and still finishing up 4 more right now. I have close to 100 spiral wrapped rods including those made by others for comparisons including the very first custom spiral wrapped rod I purchased at a garage sale decades ago that started this madness for me. I even have 2 Moby rods on Loomis blanks I use as examples of what works and what does not work as well. One Moby is as they built it, and the other Moby I stripped off the guides and constructed it my way using micro guides just so people can see the extreme differences on identical blanks. Both works. All of them work. It is just that some are more ideal and some are less ideal. No right or wrong way. Just ideal or less ideal. Presently I am working with a number of custom rod builders across the country who are trying to learn it and build their own CHW rods. I can tell you this... to build a rod like the one shown above, it takes a lot of time, trial, and effort to get those guides in the most ideal locations and angles. My process dials in the spiral wrap custom to each rod when done correctly. And the builder can choose the degree of loading they wish to use to further dial in their custom rod just for the fish species they choose and size of the fish as well. So when building a CHW rod, you can choose any degree of blank loading you want or need. You can adapt it to a 65 degree bend or a 120 degree bend or any variation you choose for almost any blank. When I build my bass fishing rods I tend to dial it in for a 90 degree bend has been my choice, and my photos all show that same degree of bend as well.

Spiral wrapped rods are indeed a great pleasure to use when built right. I spent more than 25 years perfecting a process that adapts to each rod's natural bend. All other spiral wrap processes impose external ideas on a static rod. What I came up with is the only process that puts guides on a rod based on how it bends. I learned imposing external ideas on a static rod leads to increasing angles of line flow through the guides under load. And most leave it that way. I was not satisfied with those results so I began working towards perfectly straight line flow from the reel into the natural bend area of a blank. Another idea I had to toss out was the old idea of get around the blank as soon as the line leaves the reel. So all other ideas of spiral wrapped rods were doing this. Spiral wrapping around the thickest part of a blank. When I began listening to what the materials were telling me is when things began to change. I am not an artist, so forgive my shaky hand drawing but this kind of explains what the difference is between standard spiral guide designs and what I came up with. Basically other methods do a longer wider spiral around the thickest part of a blank. I learned to shoot the line straight past the thickest part of a blank and use the blanks natural taper to get out of the way of the line flow further straightening it out like this poor drawing shows: You said: "Anybody collect any actual data on performance? Some people say they cast better... data?" I know of no such data. And they cannot possible cast better. If anything they can equal casting distances on standard topside guide rods. You said: "MANY PEOPLE say you can use at least 1 less guide vs conventional... you folks here agree?" On my CHW rods I did eliminate at least one popular guide found on most spiral wrapped rods made on static rods. There is a common idea or thought that a person must eliminate any rod blank touching of the line. This is a complete fallacy yet it leads to many rod builders insisting on installing a 90 degree side guide to lift the line off the blank supposedly correcting a problem they believe exists. I say it does not exist because if you take a standard rod with guides on top and load it up with a large fish, when the rod bends the line is brought into direct contact with the rod blank in between every single guide on the bend section like this: And quite often the line flow under load runs along beside the blank and often even down below the blank creating 2 places of touching between each guide increasing line flow friction. And it has worked fine for more than a century of common use. The spiral wrapped rods eliminate this for the most part and some go to the extreme to use a 90 degree side guide to further lift line off the blank where it passes the blank only one time! Just once where X marks the cross the blank spot. So what I learned to do by listening to the materials was to use the guides one before and one after the X marks the spot where line crosses the blank so on my rods I did eliminate that one guide. You said: "wouldn't this affectively shorten the potential spread of the load? With the first guides so far out it wouldn't really load past the first guide to distribute further into the beef of the blank no?" Hmmmm... only one guide experiences full weight load and that would be the tip. The other guides do not experience that much of a load at all. You can test this by loading up a spiral wrapped rod- or a spinning rod- mounted and use your finger to try and lift the line off the tip guide and see how much pressure it takes if you can do so. Then move back one guide from tip and try it under same load and you should be able to easily lift the line under load off the guide. So there is really no change in what a rod experiences as far as loading goes. What the spiral wrap accomplishes are eliminating the rod twisting or torque caused by top side guides acting like a lever twisting rod blank under load. All eliminated. And, with my process of straightening line flow under load I reduce the amount of friction it takes to reel in a fish to its absolute minimum with limitations of materials at hand. It makes reeling in a fish easier and less of a battle for the fisher person. It reduces having to use muscles to prevent blank torque while fighting a fish, and it gives the fisher person less friction to reel in a fish again reducing the amount of muscle power and energy needed to accomplish the job. Those are the primary reasons I do it. Torque elimination and friction reduction to line flow under load. Once I got the process I came up with as far as I could take it I wrote the article for RodMaker magazine in December of 2020 issue. The only XF rod I have is a MudHole MHX Gen1 MH XF rod. It shows how the Cagey Hook Wrap process I came up with follows each rod's unique bend to achieve the spiral wrap results. This is as close to meeting your request that I can get. Line flow is ruler straight with ZERO angle of bends through transition guides and no side loading following the rules of custom rod building as published in a book I read. My bad drawing above showing how I use the rod blank's taper to shoot line past blank is on full display here. I do not spiral wrap around the thickest part of the blank. Rods built this way are fabulous to use if I do say so myself. Its why I spent decades perfecting it slowly step by step. Everyone who has tried it loves it. Here are a couple of comments about it: Cagey Hook Wrap Method Posted by: Jeffrey D Rennert (---) Date: January 27, 2021 01:25PM I haven't read the article from Rod Maker Mag. yet ( I let my subscription expire, I have renewed), But after seeing the article i decided to share my experience. Kent and I started a friendship @2 months ago. This spawned from our passion to make everything perfect. He came to my house with a rod wrapped to his specs. I showed him my 6-8 versions. I started this acid wrap after reading this forum. I did a Tom K. version 0* to 180*, I did another version, Donald LaMar's -.5*/90*/180*, Then Norm's (thank you Norm for all you do here), 0/60*/120*180*. I had zero faith in Tom K.'s method, only to be shocked at it's smooth casting. The others casted well also. I decided on Norm's method, Now, with casting not an issue, why tinker with it? I've fished plastic worms for bass so long I've developed a twitch being so slow. But the one thing I had become accustom too was the torque generated when setting the hook, and these were serious try to remove their jaw hook sets, no braid then. The absolute second I set the hook with Kent's spiraled rod, I was in shock. Where was the twist, where was the reposition the reel in my hand moment? Kent is not paying me enough to embellish on the moment of truth hook set, I'm just sharing my experience. I've since caught bass on crank baits and experienced the same very smooth transition from fish to landing. I've since stripped two rods and plan on more. Forgive me if I was as long winded as Kent, haha. Re: BFS build Posted by: Kendall Cikanek (---) Date: March 18, 2024 09:00PM Every freshwater baitcasting rod I’ve built for about three years has started with an RV6. I especially like them on BFS rods. I’ve got enough casts with various guides and have packed enough rods around to feel like these just work better and are very durable. My next build will be a Cagey Hook spiral wrap, though. While I’m happy using my tried and true formula, it really appears that Kent worked out something fairly revolutionary with this system. I’m not sure if the RV6’s high frame will be right for that until I get further into it. I’ll start that rod with the LRV if a lower guide is a better fit for the method.

"Technology" has not improved or fixed anything in relation to aluminum and salt. Same now as then.

Florida environment says otherwise.

Some beautiful reels being posted around here! ALL of them! And some nice looking drag stars too! As for looks suggestions, I can't go there. That is in the eye of the beholder as to whether it looks great or not. But as I looked at your images one thing jumped out at me. BNT799, now part number 107QJ friction washer. The schematic seems to show it installed same as how you have it here, but this could cause a wear ring on the drag star 360 degrees all the way around. A wear ring would be the gold anodized coating worn off by friction of those tips wearing down and exposing the silver aluminum underneath. The friction washer is long enough that if a wear ring began to appear on the drag star it would spin out from under the handle and become fully visible at some point down the road. If you turn that friction washer around the other way and put the outside tips towards the handle, that way any wear from it will stay hidden under the handle right around the drive shaft. Anyone with mint condition display reels might consider this to keep them looking perfect. And if you do turn it around the other way, an extremely thin small washer between friction washer and drag star might prevent any noticeable wear. The plastic washer could be an issue if it allows the handle to work loose from compression of the plastic. Maybe consider a metal washer in that location if this is your only solution. Otherwise, replace drag star as mentioned by others, and you can play around with shims under the drag star to create a little more distance between handle and drag star. The schematic shows 1 washer between drag star and #15 drag spring washers. Remove it and the drag star will now be closer to the reel than handle. If you want a little more distance, leave the washer mentioned above in there and simply remove 1 #15 spring washer. You will not notice any noticeable effect doing this. There are plenty of reels made that use only one spring. What you don't want is to make it so the drag star bottoms out touching the reel's side plate when drag is cranked down tight and you can't get enough drag. Then you know you've gone to far and have to change it back. Playing around in there can get you a little more distance without bottoming out. If keeping it looking stock is important, an extreme possible alterative solution could be to locate and purchase another spare stock drag star and bend the arms of it back towards reel a little bit. The anodized coating could crack and expose silver metal underneath if bent too far, but these are cheap. About $13. Cheap enough to experiment on. https://shop.fishingreelparts.com/star-drag-41721478.html Put it in a vise and use a large crescent wrench or similar and tape off the arms to prevent scratching and slowly bend them all the way down deep closest to center as you can get, and bend just a little bit at a time out of the way but not enough to cause harm to anodized coating. If the spare part turns out well, you still have a stock drag star look, and a like new untouched spare in stock if you decide to change the handle out again down the road. This is just a last resort extreme alternative to aftermarket replacements.

Ironically just yesterday I was showing my 12 year old how to fast cast with flick of a wrist. He was not loading up the rod very well and using it to his advantage. Hopefully he will quickly improve on it.

Do your due diligence! Inspect thoroughly.

Guess what I found! And there is only one. You just missed one sold on ebay 4 days ago, but there is still one up there for sale! Pinnacle Bait Casting Reel YCZ 10 https://www.ebay.com/itm/187393332634 $19.95 plus tax plus $7 in shipping. Cheap!

AI says: "Silstar did not manufacture its own reels; instead, they were a brand created by a consortium of distributors and were contract manufactured by trade shops, most likely in Korea, such as Doyo or Daywan, who made the reels for Silstar to sell. The brand was prominent in the European market before the company went out of business around 2009" In my opinion it has got to be Doyo because the internal parts match identically to other Doyo reels under other brands.

That's awesome information! That red reel looks identical to the one I just purchased. Are these Doyo? How is their brake for spool control? Do you think a 12 year old kid with zero baitcast experience can handle one of those to learn on? Now I know some more reels I can plunder parts from! Thanks! 😉 Do you still use these old reels? And can you date it more precisely? I appreciate this type of response greatly! I just checked ebay and found one just like yours for $34 plus tax plus $12 in shipping. And it shows the same photo as yours. Are you selling yours? https://www.ebay.com/itm/286742918783 This one would interest me if it were a lefty. Not a single Pinnacle lefty on ebay that I saw in a quick look. This one looks like my Doyo made Browning Citori. This may be yet another Calcutta copy cat reel.

I stand corrected. My guess was wrong. I made an assumption based on his lingo. I wish he just would have said it was a metal frame. His lingo kind of chased me off. If I was in the market for a reel and assumed it was plastic I would have moved on. A sale lost possibly.

Are you buying gears as a set or do you do any mix and matching of these aftermarket gears? I assume when you said you purchased one pinion here and a main gear elsewhere they were a matched set just ordered separately?

Thanks! We managed to boat 5 bass. Bite was tough and tough to get at. We drove through rain so the boat was soaked when putting in. And we had to wait in SUV for rain and lightning to move on before fishing. And because of the rain clouds I chose to not be out in the middle of a lake holding lightning rods in our hands so until those rain clouds had move far enough away we had to spend our time early on hugging the shoreline using trees to block storm winds, and provide taller lightning attractors than us. We had no issues with that thankfully. I also chose to keep boat near our only cover on the lake which was a bridge we could get under if needed. But this was my 12 year old son's first time bass fishing again. He did it when 3 years old and he holds the record for the youngest family member to cast by himself, retrieve a lure by himself, and catch and land a bass all by himself- at just 3 years old! I got it on video too. So he and my other son moved away from fishing to their cellphones, laptops, video games, etc. and he is just now returning to fishing at 12 because all his buddies fish and he wants to fish with them. So I have been getting him some saltwater gear for that. Oh, and he told me he has learned his lesson about telling his buddies at school all about his secret spot in New Smyrna Beach area- the Mosquito Lagoon Aquatic Preserve area. He said now they all want to fish in his secret spot. So he has learned real fast to not tell everyone. But yesterday was his first day back to bass fishing and I gave him front casting deck and trolling motor control- his first time as captain which he needs to work on- as he got so caught up in learning to read the water and watch for actively feeding fish all around him to cast to that he completely spaced out on boat control. So I had to step in numerous times for that. I'd like to say I let him win yesterday, but really he kicked my behind out there. We always compete on the First fish caught, biggest fish caught, and most fish caught. He won all 3 categories. But he learned another funny lesson yesterday as well though unintended on my part for sure, but he did not think so. We were trolling past a small channel or incoming creek about 25 feet wide and I told him to cast up in there. We both saw actively feeding bass at the mouth of the creek. I let him cast first. He said a bass picked it up and he tried to hook him but missed. I had cast much further up in there than he did but as my lure came back to the lake I got a hit and set the hook on a fish and all I heard was "YOU CAUGHT MY FISH!" Ooops. Yeah, maybe I did. And I can tell you I will never hear the end of that one! I had to hear about it all the way back home too. And how he kicked my behind. It was kind of funny to hear him say after winning "gee dad I'm a better fisherman than YOU are!" Un huh, OK sure you are! All in all if had hooked all the fish that hit for me I would have had 5 fish. I got 2 in the boat. He should have had around 7, but managed 3. And he was catching them on weedless paddletail flukes and he used one of my rods, a 7'6" MH F spinning rod with Shimano stradic 4000 on it and 14 pound braid catching his first schoolie bass on a rat'l trap. Until yesterday he did not even know what a schooling bass was, but on the lake we were on they were busting up all around us just out of reach so I crossed the lake to other side to work back to boat ramp and he was swinging away with it out in middle of lake with no cover as this thread mentions, and caught his first rat'l trap schoolie. Boy was he thrilled. I used this fish to show him how to settle down, and not reel in the fish, but use the rod to carefully control the fish back to the boat and how to reel down on them and pull in with the rod. He got it quickly and really seemed to enjoy it. You know, if you LET them win, I think it keeps their interest more. The 51 year old boat may have been free, but the memories are priceless.

Santa, or in my case Santa the mailman delivered another "take a chance" reel yesterday. I had this one saved for a couple of weeks and it never sold so the seller pitched me an offer of $8 plus $7 in shipping. I passed it up again because I was looking for newer reels with more bells and whistles for my 12 year old son. I was just looking for decent quality "beater" reels he could learn on and I would not have to worry about if he dropped it to the bottom of the intracoastal waterway. So I passed on the $8. And the seller came back with an offer for $5 plus the $7 in shipping. I said what the heck. Looked like a solid reel. I put it on my saved list because it had a metal frame. My reels have to have a metal frame or I will not purchase it no matter what the brand. I kept passing it up because it needed a few parts and I was looking for whole reels. This one I am not sure of the age, but guessing 1990's? It is an old Bass Pro BSM1000HL made in Korea by Doyo I am assuming? Called the "BassMaster." It does not have bells or whistles. A pretty simple standard reel, but solid. Nice metal frame. Handle comes with 2 bearings and 2 bushings I may change out to bearings if I keep it. It has the same AR Shimano used in their Curados and Chronarch reels during same time period. The AR also kind of dates this reel. It does have plastic side plates, but sturdy. And its brakes are also very similar to what Shimano was doing back then. Heck, even the Shimano brake shoes fit this reel. So almost a rip off of Shimano and this would not be the first time. I have a Doyo Browning round type of reel that is a direct copy cat rip off of a Shimano Calcutta, but oddly, the Browning is the only one I kept as it is also very well built. My frankenstein reel because it keeps getting parts from all over put into it. I've played around with 6 sets of gears in it tweaking it along. But this reel when delivered was filthy dirty inside. I wonder if this one had been dunked at some point in the past. I did a complete tear down and cleaning or so I thought. All the regular cleaning methods failed to clean the gears fully. Nothing worked. So when I began reassembling the reel I noticed the gears were still dirty and clogged up way down inside of each gear tooth. Both pinion and main drive gear. I had to sit at the bench wearing those funny looking microscope goggles and clean each tooth of both gears. A brass wire brush would not clean them. Solvents would not clean them. Nothing touched whatever was on those gears. Could be an old grease someone used combined with mud and dirt? I am not sure. So I had to come up with a probe that would fit to the bottom of the gear but not something that could damage the gears. I finally settled on a plastic toothpick. I was able to start at one side of a gear tooth and push the solidified debris out the other side like squeezing toothpaste out. Then back for scraping off anything left behind. This is not something any tech commonly has to do for sure. It was a slow tedious job cleaning each gear tooth out. I bring this up because how many of us examine those gear teeth that closely? I didn't at first because I expected normal cleaning methods to take care of it. But upon reassembly I noticed it first on the pinion gear. They often have hardened old grease still on them in hidden spots and before I put new grease on them I want to make sure they are clean. Then I noticed the main drive gear was even worse. But fortunately the normal cleaning methods had softened up whatever it was in those gear teeth. Once I was able to remove 99% of whatever was clogging up the gears, I then ran them back through normal cleaning methods to finish them off back to clean brass before installing back into reel. This job took the most time. I wondered about the reel having been dunked before because the main drive shaft bearing was rusted up and solidified to the frame. It was not easy to remove because this frame did not have any rear access to push it out. I had to use a penetrating oil and then find a drill bit that fit it perfectly and wobble it to break it free and begin to try and lift it out of the frame. So when a new bearing was installed I like to use a little grease on the frame where the bearing is installed so the grease acts like a barrier to more corrosion and as an anti-seizing agent that will make removal next time far more easy for sure. And all bearings treated with corrosion X as well. Even the AR had similar gunk in it I don't normally see in reels. But adding in some new parts like cast control cap, shims, 1 bearing, and new handle nut cover and she's back up and running again. I may swap out drag washers down the road if I keep it and go with 4 bearings in the handle as well just because. And I am not sure my 12 year will be able to learn baitcasting reels on a reel like this one because it does not have much in the way of brake controls. But we shall see. This is another one of those reels you never hear about online. And I mean never! I did a search for this reel and could not find not one single mention of it on any forums. I did find a couple of sales pages, but that's about it for this reel. Guess it was not a big seller. Regardless, it is a solid reel. Well built using many standard common Doyo tooling parts found all across the Bass Pro & Browning lines of reels. Its amazing to see how many of their reels use the same parts over and over and over. Makes my job of finding parts much easier. Need a part for an Abu? Grab a Bass Pro reel. Need a part for a Bass Pro reel? Grab a Browning. Gears, yokes, springs, clutch parts. I like it this way too. It would be far worse for techs hunting parts if every reel had its own unique tooling and parts exclusive to just that one reel. I see the same thing in other brands. Shimano did it too. Its cheaper for them to cut production costs. Kind of funny to see all these different reels with same internal parts. Same reel. Different size, shape and color. Makes techs jobs easier for sure. So now I have another $5 reel that is probably close to 25 or maybe even 30 years old that is back to like new again and will fish just fine now for another 30 years. How can you beat 60 years of fishing for $5? This is how I roll on reels. No need to spend hundreds for the shiniest new thing not made anywhere near as solid since so many of today's reels avoid metal like the plague! I love MORE metal in my reels! I still have to clean or replace these brake shoes. A few that were used are still dirty here. Looks by eye to be exactly the same as Shimano. If so, I have a box of them in all colors and different materials weights. All finished. Back to smooth again! No more crunchy grinding noises or weird feeling gears. No way those gears could mesh together correctly with both pinion and main gears clogged up with solidified material stuck deep inside of each gear tooth. Done and over with now. Time to try this one out. I love older vintage heavy metal reels! And I love it that fishermen are dumping them for cheap! Thanks! I wish I could find out more info on this old reel. Nothing to be found out there really.

Do you own the water? Do you own the land under the water? If you do, then maybe it is OK to do something like this without a license or state permission, but if it is a public body of water and you put things into it that could move around and or cause navigation hazards to others who don't know they are there could get you in hot water. If it is public water I would check with your state's fish and game wardens or check the law on such things first. Maybe your local government has regulations to follow as well. It might be a great idea, but I would just make sure its all legal and not going to cause anyone else any issues. Hope you recover and strengthen up soon- and get back to fishing!

If mine, I would use a soft metal brass brush to remove it. NOT sandpaper! Vinegar works like Bulldog said above but could mar the surface of the epoxy as he noted also. And to stop corrosion where you can't see it that won't harm epoxy, I use corrosion X. Paint won't get in there. Just carefully clean and use something like corrosion X or other products as mentioned around here. Done and over with. Keep fishing until they fall apart- and that could be years or decades from now. Or, replace if you want to. A little bit of surface corrosion does not affect structural integrity for quite some time depending on how bad it is. Minor surface corrosion is cleanable and useable.

Looks like I may be the only member here choosing a paddletail fluke! Hmmmm... am I wrong? I'll find out later today.

Very true! I have increasing arthritis in my finger joints and flipping a thumbar up is tough on me. I NEED that extra easy to use lever! Its awesome! And this is the ONLY reel I have ever seen like it in my lifetime. Only one. If there is another I would sure like to see it. I agree about the Castaic, but the online review even makes mention the Shimano reset lever partially obstructs the spool. I'd like to avoid that even if it is a Shimano. The reel I am showing here meets my body's needs a lot better. But I do agree with you. I just wanted to share other alternatives generally not very well known or even talked about. Around here we tend to see the same old reels reposted over and over and over. Same reel. Different angle. It gets old fast! I cannot understand why one or more brand of reels is not doing this today? If they are I have not found it yet. And now that you have mentioned this, I am going to go check all of my reels and see how many of them are like you pointed out and see how hard my newer reels are to do this on. Thanks for pointing this out again.

Based on your video I will setup two rods for some of these ideas and give them a try today. Everything is pointing towards middle of the lake here and in other threads, but I am still going to take one shallow water edge of the lake weedless setup just in case. Thanks for the video this morning.

Good one! Heck the house here is starting to stink up just reading this thread! 😁