MickD

I don't think we can define one specific factor. Some of the newer hi tech blanks have no scrim, so that would take out a component that, while it has a function, does weigh something. Whether the manufacturer found another way to provide the structural function of scrim that is lighter than scrim, I don't know. But the blanks that are scrimless are expensive blanks and I do believe with blanks one tends to get what he pays for. Considering the fact at the higher prices the incremental price increases don't provide the same incremental value increases as occurs at lower prices. If you want a slow action, many like glass, like E-glass. But it will be heavier than graphite and graphite can give any action that glass can. Graphite will be more sensitive. If you want max sensitivity it will be high modulus graphite. With or without scrim. In all blanks design is very important. This is the best I can do.

Go back and read my original response to your post.

If you're asking me, I wrote "favorite," not Favorite. I've never even heard of Favorite before. The blank I was referring to is a Rainshadow. I have two Loomis rods , built by me, and they are very good rods , and I've built many St Croix SCV and Avids. My Loomis's are casting rods and the St Croix and Rodgeeks are spin. I will say that the Rainshadow is certainly competitive with the Loomis and St Croix (and Rodgeeks) that I've built on, and at a price point just under the Rodgeeks, about half the St Croix, and less than half of the Loomis's before they were no longer offerred as blanks. It is interesting that many on this forum state their favorite spin rod is a St Croix SCV 7 foot medium lite power, fast action The Rainshadow appears to be about the same power but with a little slower action. The point of my mentioning that rod was to illustrate how important design is. Here is a rod about two levels of modulus below the SCV and Loomis, and it's a great rod.

Weight is the enemy of sensitivity, so heavy is bad, light is good. Which leads to small and light guides, because weight way out there on the blank has much more effect on sensitivity than weight in the butt. Small, light guides contribute not only to sensitivity but to balance because most blanks over about 6 feet are tip heavy. Achieving lighter weight leads generally to manufacturers using higher modulus materials in their blanks, the higher modulus resulting in lighter blanks for the same power. Which leads to better sensitivity. BUT. . . A very important ingredient in a really outstanding blank is design. For example one of my favorite blanks is a 7 foot medium light RX7 blank that costs well under $100. When I built one for my son his first reaction on fishing it was that it is "really sensitive." He uses it for tubes for smb, an application that I think it is a little underpowered for, but he loves it for tubes even though he has two SCV St Croix's of the right power. The finished rod weighs 3.6 oz, if I remember correctly. How one determines how all this mixes together is not easy, but if I wanted to buy the most sensitive finished rod of a certain power and action, I would look to the reputations of the manufacturers and the highest levels of their rods. I know of no way to measure sensitivity. One thing you cannot do with modern high quality rods is evaluate them by twitching/wiggling them. (exc maybe fly rods) They don't wiggle with their hi mod materials and light guides. They leave many who are not familiar with this level of quality thinking they are too stiff. One thing you can do that will tell some of the story is to take a miniature scale to the store and weight different rods. Scales are cheap on Ebay or Amazon, and are very accurate. Weight doesn't tell the whole story, but if you're confused about the merits of one rod vs another, and one weighs in under 4 oz and the other is 5, it's very difficult to get a 5 oz rod (unless it's quite long or very powerful) to be really sensitive The old 7 foot spin Ugli Sticks weighed about 5.3. I don't think it takes a retail price of $800 to deliver a great rod. I haven't been in the rod market (I build my own) lately, so am not sure what the top of the line (or close to the top) Loomis and St Croix rods go for, but I'll be you can get a great rod for about half that, or a little more than half. The price-value relationship that we are used to in many products works for rods, too. Meaning that as you get pricier and pricier the incremental value added per dollar spent is less and less. Finding the sweet spot that meets your needs is the challenge.

I have no complaints on the old Cabela reels by Daiwa, always and still smooth, and all the new Daiwas are silky smooth.

Never assume he doesn't understand you, always keep telling him what you want him to hear. I've been told that the recognition/cognition isn't a constant, but comes and goes.

One thing I've noticed about a couple of my "hot spots" is that smb at one time of the day are just not there, yet stopping back later in the day often finds at least a few, and sometimes many. Especially if a new wind comes on. I always make at least two stops during a day on the water in the location that has the "hot spots." I've noticed that my best spot in former years has not been as good the last two years. It could be the water level being so high, or something else, or i may not have gotten there at the right time. The last time we went this fall was a cold, sometimes rainy, never sunny day with a decent wind. The water was quite dirty from winds the previous couple days, and we found one spot that really worked. 25 with only a couple dinks, a couple over five, four just under 5, and the rest 3/s and 4/s. 10 days earlier I had taken 28 similar fish out of the spot with one over 6. I'm hoping its magic will continue into the next season.

Need to know if only at speed or all the time. Two different scenarios which could have two different solutions. Not enough info to contact Humminbird. If only at speed all parts and connections could be perfect and there still could be a problem with locating/tuning the transducer position/attitude. If this is the case Humminbird can do nothing.

No, because if the tip is straight up then balance means nothing. All the weight is directly over your hand. It could be distributed over 7 feet or 7 inches. It makes no difference. As soon as you tip the rod down balance begins to show itself, and its effect is max when the rod is horizontal. It's physics, it's not I. The guy in the video is right. For the reasons he gave. IMO. I have not been able to break my grandson of holding the rod by the butt as he ends his casts, and if he overshoots on the cast he cannot do anything about it.

Come on guys, it is not about "they." It's about you. You make the choices, buy or don't buy. You are not being forced into anything. How this even got into a discussion about balance is a mystery to me. It the tip is up, balance is not an issue. At 90 degrees balance has no effect on anything. As you go off 90 degrees, then it (balance) becomes an issue. It is at its max at horizontal. But for most tip up techniques, balance is not as important as many argue.

It's not just about weight; it's about weight and where it is. And the technique.

Once you get it cleaned you'd like to keep it from corroding again. One way to hold it off for a while is to "paint" it with liquid epoxy. But that will chip off in time. Most keepers are said to be "stainless steel," but from my experience building rods, the anti-corrosion characteristics are inferior to guides. I use REC titanium alloy keepers and small ceramic ring fly guides for keepers, and they do not corrode like most keepers. The fly guides may be bent to give an angle which will work as a drop shot keeper. If the corrosion gets to be too much to deal with, replace it with either of the above options. Or any other keeper made of titanium alloy.

On another forum the X-Rays have gotten very positive reviews. However, the service has not. Before ordering I recommend calling and getting an in-person commitment for the shipping date. Some real horror cases have been reported, then recently a very positive one on the quick shipment from them. Try Point Blanks for a top notch premium blank. They can be ordered and drop-shipped from Anglers Resource direct, which is pretty fast and reliable.

Do it, it will hold up quite a while. Fly tyers do it all the time. What works best is to add barring with the sharpies. There's something magic about barring, whether it be cranks or feathers or hair.

If this is happening only at speed then your transducer location/attitude needs to be tuned.

This is a big deal especially if you haven't taken all the other stuff off your starting battery. with a smart charger where you store your boat you can plug it in when it's there and forget about it. With significant extra drains on a starting motor your engine cannot keep up, especially if you're not using it a lot on the water. I also have an emergency jump starter, about the size of a hard bound dictionary, which I keep on board just in case. It will also start the tow vehicle if necessary, like when I left the headlamps on once. It cost about $75 and is cheap insurance against dead batteries. Another tip you may not be taking advantage of is that your depth finders have a standby feature (which I use when I am stationary and don't need the info) which saves juice yet starts the finder back up in the same situation you were in when you commanded standby. With three depth finders you may be able to have two on standby some of the time.

Daiwas for from less than $100 to $200 seem to me about as good as it can get for casting ease. No, I don't have experience with DC, but if DC's are better than the Daiwas, I doubt if they are much better.

Leaders or wind chimes. You might have to use an FG knot to go line to line to avoid it getting caught on the guides because it has a pretty large diameter. Most don't use any leaders of flipping/pitching.

Me too. If you have some longer rods , let him use them and see what he thinks. I started my grandson and granddaughter on 6 1/2 foot St Croix Avid M-F, and they had no problems doing all they wanted to do with them. Longer rods not only cast farther, but give better hook sets. Also, IMO, a little more "foregiveness" when fighting the fish.

I thought I was copying a link to a hand whip finish process, but got possibly some other methods as well. But the whip finish can be tied easily without a tool and there are many videos on line showing how. It should work for big flies, hair jigs, etc. Sorry for the confusion. Couldn't figure out how to simply delete the whole post. THe hand whip finish starts at 2:42

From my experience, for whatever reasons, the fish in many waters have specific color preferences. Different color preferences than they have in other waters. Why? I don't know. But if you want to catch fish on those waters, give them the colors they seem to prefer.

Will work fine, don't worry about it.

If lures didn't catch fish, they wouldn't last long on the market. The Daredevil in Canada isn't still around because it appeals to fishermen. It's stull around because it appeals to fish. And that appeals to fishermen. My theory on why fish bite is that in that tiny brain of theirs there exists a number of "instinct" influencers. These change from time to time explaining why certain things work in warm water, others in cold, some in the spring, etc. You get the idea. But some are more important, and more influential than others, and the main ones are motion and color, with appearance less important (think about the tube-what does it look like?). These have to be "triggered" before a fish will eat. Appearance becomes more important the clearer the water. But motion is the most important. Otherwise why would I be unable to catch a smallie on a live crayfish, but could catch them on a tube? Same day, same time, same water, same fish. Color just seems to be a big influencer. On Sag Bay and Lake St Clair some shade of green, + red, works more than any other color (on smallies). Black or Junebug for largemouths. I have met fishermen who fish only one color on St Clair, green. (watermelon). Consider the drop shot. The drop shot. Is it motion, color, appearance, or what? I submit it is the motion and color. At times the "influencers" are going for something really slow, and if the color and the motion are right, they will eat it. I've seen days when only one color would work on drop shot. It was usually green. When fish are receptive to the "dying shad" jerkbait bite, it's first the motion , then the colors consistent with that motion, realistic minnow colors, make sense and are successful. Motion + color. Then there is the Budweiser can lure. . .

Using stiff leader grade FC leaders or saltwater stiff mono leaders will cut down on the line tangling in the hooks. Other posts about 6 months ago showed replacing two trebles with one single helps with bottom snagging and retains action. I've done the latter but not fished them yet.

Yes, blades work for deep bass (and walleye) in warmer waters. I've found in cold water smallmouths and walleyes that the lures are not interchangeable, and in fact , two different sizes of blades are not interchangeable. Both can work, but some times, only one, and only one size and color will work. I really want someone to tap into the bass/walleye intercom system and offer access. I'll pay handsomely.