MickD

Unless I'm mistaken, I have not seen where any attempt to allow Kastking to react to this issue has yet been made. Might be a little premature to start giving them bad reviews. Every maker has at least a little problem now and then.

You seem to have a good understanding of what you're getting into, so go for it. It is a very rewarding hobby, and I, like you will, truly enjoy using the top quality rods we build. Please send me an email or personal message.

Keep in mind that the first guide on a casting rod is the line guide on the reel, essentially a micro at the reel. Comparing slight mis-alignments to this would lead one to believe that they won't affect performance much if at all.

I have never used a power wrapper, used a cobbled setup for many years. Finally a couple years ago I got the track and rollers but not the motor. Until you decide that you want to stick with rod building, I would not invest in an expensive setup. Try one of the kits from Mudhole or Getbitoutdoors for starters. There are some very good factory rods out there, have caught a bazillion fish, shop the sales this fall for a good factory rod.

I'm not sure you would ever detect a performance problem, but for me I'd see that misalignment every time I used the rod and it would grind on me. Get it replaced and that won't happen to you.

A class outfit, always very responsive and helpful. Their wrapping thread has a lot more stretch than others, which has some advantages. I trust their fishing lines are very good, too, but expensive. The Pureline has 12 strands in 14 pound test and above. ghoti, any braid samples you don't want will be put to good use here. :-)

For the record, ice does not make them stick tighter. Ice helps. As counter-intuitive as it seems, ice shrinks the material making the ID of the female section bigger and the OD of the male section smaller. Might not work every time, but it is theoretically the right solution.

I had current somehow leaking to the water faucet, its path I don't know. When I would touch the metal faucet with bare feet and a wet brick surface, I would get a tingle. That circuit was not a GFI circuit. What I do know is that fixing the ground wire fixed the issue and since then a pro electrician re-did the wiring at the box when he put in an all-house generator, never mentioned any problem, and everything has worked well since. Relative to this problem, you sound like a pro, and I defer to you.

I got about 45 Volts AC shocks off an outside faucet once, traced the problem to a faulty (not solid) ground to the well pipe. Filed the corrosion off the well pipe, reattached, and good to go. Point is that a faulty ground may be a problem, too. In fact, I think a short would act differently than what you are observing, but that's just an educated guess. As stated above , proceed with caution.

Expandable plug, right? If you cannot get the expanded plug to fit tightly, so tightly that you cannot remove it without "unexpanding" it, then the sleeve is the wrong diameter or the plug is the wrong diametger. The nylon sleeve mentioned earlier takes a 5/8 inch plug. The brass one takes a 1 " ("standard" size) plug. The two parts are not interchangeable. You may have a ! inch sleeve in your boat and are trying to use a 5/8 plug in it. What is the ID of the sleeve in your boat?

What you saw may have been pieces of a deteriorated plug. I had one crumble once. You've got to answer the question Does the plug fit snugly?

You say you have a smooth hole. If you have that you already have the sleeve, I believe. The 64 dollar question is Does your expandable plug, the kind that someone earlier described as a "lever on it", fit tightly into the smooth hole when the lever is operated. The answer to this is either yes or no. If the answer is yes, then your leak is somewhere else, not through the plug or its mating to the existing sleeve and you do not need to add another sleeve. If the answer is no, then you have mismatch between your plug and the existing sleeve. The mismatch can be a plug too small or a sleeve OD too large. The expandable plugs are designed to be shoved into the right diameter smooth hole, and when the lever is operated, will expand to seal from water entry. They don't screw in. They are cheap, and all are the same size as far as I know, at least for fresh water outboard sized hulls. If it does fit tightly you don't need a sleeve at all. But if it fits tightly and the boat still leaks, then the leak must be coming between the OD of the sleeve that is already in there and the boat hull, through gaps in the cobbled epoxy job, most likely. (or have you considered it's coming in somewhere else having nothing to do with the drain hole?) If the leak is between the existing sleeve and the hull, then the black fitting shown above, with the proper prep I mentioned before, should work. It utilized a threaded plug with an O ring, you can see that in the picture. It's housing must be water tight to the hull, which is what I tried to say before. To repeat, the first question you have to answer before going any further is: Does your plug fit tightly into the existing sleeve? You cannot sidestep this - it has to be answered. Yes, or No. If unclear, come on back and we'll work on it some more.

The picture you sent shows an obvious (to me at least) cobble job repairing the drain hole area of the hull by epoxying in a sleeve which would accept a plug. It is very possible that your leakage is coming between the cobbled-in sleeve and the hull itself, not between the plug and the tube. If your plug now seats tightly into the hole then the leakage is most likely the tube and the hull. It appears to me that the fitting suggested by a poster, which has a housing which is screwed to the hull, will fix it IF its housing is big enough to totally cover the cobbled epoxy AND the surface to which it is applied is smoothed out to allow good, constant, contact between it and the hull. You would apply a high quality caulk between the housing and the hull. If what I think is going on adding this fitting would not require you to disturb the old cobbled fix; you would be covering it up so its flaws would no longer allow leakage. One way to test is to cobble a cork or rubber plug into the sleeve you now have to temporarily seal to the I.D. of the sleeve that is cobbled in. If you do a good job on that temporary plug, and the leakage continues, then the leakage is between the cobbled-in sleeve and the hull.

I realize there are products that can switch etc, but I have a very "clean" boat and don't want to get into running new wires and mounting new switches unless a last resort. I have room right in the starting battery compartment for a single bank charger, and that would be the cleanest, most reliable fix. thanks for all the comments, much appreciated.

Tape on a few 5's and 6's and try your proposed line/leader combo to see how it works. Doesn't matter which style or model guide.

For most bass techniques the use of a bobber will interfere with the feeling of the lure and the hook set. Exc for slip bobbers, they are a pain to cast, too. I'm not sure how slip bobber stops and some micro guides will get along. However, as mentioned , when the bass want it really slow and require accurate depth control, as the the float and fly, it makes sense and is effective. I expect the last time I used a bobber was fishing for pike with live minnows. But one way to get the depth control and very slow action is to use a drop shot, and the casting problems with bobbers are eliminated.

30 braid with 20 leader yields a pretty big double uni knot, so I would go with S Hov on the 6 mm running guides. Max sensitivity is not an issue with this rod anyway, so don't go too small and be fighting the knot issue all the time. Go to the Anglers Resource home page, click on the catalog, and find their charts for reduction guides in the KLH series for the line weight you will be using. It's more about the line than the reel, IMHO. I believe they will recommend a 25KLH, 12KLH, 7KLM, then the runners. I don't see an advantage in four guide reduction sets-I've done two with good performance. The only thing to watch for with these guides is they are tall. If they have to go into a rod tube, pay attention to its diameter. Same if they have to go into the rod tubes on boats. On my boat the tubes are far enough from the rod butt that it's not a problem. Fuji has a new corrosion resistant finish that is very good, and not expensive with some ring options.

I agree with your comments. I think that my engine is not providing adequate output from the alternator, and when I get that fixed, it may be OK. If not, add a single bank charger. thanks, Mick

It appears that my boat, which was purchased with on-board chargers and 24 volt trolling motor voltage, charges only the two batteries for the trolling motor. On my old boat, I installed an on-board charger that charged both the trolling motor battery and the starting battery. Note that the electronics (fish finders, 2) are on the starter battery on the new boat. Is it possible to wire the two on-board charging circuits to include the starting battery? I would think that wiring the starting battery in parallel with one of the trolling motor batteries would work. Anyone know whether I'm right or not? Thanks for your expertise.

Forgot the quality of the guides. While top end production rods usually have pretty good quality guides, the mid and lower price levels do not. What makes a higher quality guide? Reduced weight from premium harder and thinner rings (ever notice those fat ugly grey guides on production rods?) or titanium alloy guide frames.

One thing that will help at the beginning is to use a spoon or practice plug, then a fairly heavy crank, then go to other stuff like spinnerbaits that catch the wind. Even then, best not to try to cast the windcatcher lures like spinnerbaits up wind until you get very proficient. Mentioned above and very important are these three tips: 1. use a rod that loads properly for your lure weight. If it doesn't generate a good generous bend while casting, the rod is too stiff or too fast for optimum casting. 2. Start with shorter distance/lower power/slower casts and work from there. Even with slower casts , your rod should load (bend) significantly in the cast, just not as much as with a full distance attempt. 3. Don't try to go too light in the beginning. Use your spinning equipment for now. I'd say 5/8 - 3/4 once is a good place to start. Work on the fundamentals and be patient. Don't use flouro-too expensive and fragile, mono or hybrid as recommended above is the best place to start.

there are two areas where custom will get you better quality than almost any "production" rod: 1. Better integrity of the reel seat/grip attachments. I've had to repair some pretty well respected rods for these parts coming loose. 2. Better quality cork on the custom rods (if the builder is committed to better quality cork, no open pits, fewer deep longitudinal voids). Check the cork carefully on a "production" rod-you'll most likely find heavy use of pit filler.

You said no Ned, but this may be news to some: Rig a drop shot with one color Ned on the hook on the line and another color on the bottom instead of a sinker. May not be legal everywhere.

I like using a leader because the terminal knots are easier and more reliable, and I'm using up leader rather than the braid which I would rather not use up (due to cost and having to refill the spool more often in order to keep the spool full.)

Unless you're talking the exotic stuff I've found that AmTackle Bushido's are great blanks for the price, as are the Rainshadow Revelations which you probably have already built on. I really like the Pac Bay Quickline fly blanks, so expect the other Quicklines are just as impressive (shop around-prices vary a lot on pac Bay for some reason). Getting into the pricier stuff, good old SC5 from St Croix is hard to beat, RodGeeks for some very neat colors on premium blanks, and the Point Blanks from Anglers Resource are really wonderful blanks. We builders are very lucky to have thousands of blank choices. There are probably another ten or so major blank suppliers that I've not yet built.