MickD

The reel's drag can limit stress on the reel, so I see no need to worry about matching specs with the rod. The main thing with really big lures is that you are going after really big fish, so pick a reel which has drag capacity to match what you want to do with it.

In my opinion, it's not about one vs two piece or SC5 vs SC2, it's about the power and action specs. For your use I would recommend a medium power, fast action., not a med-light power. My favorite rod for the use you mention is a seven foot SC5 medium power, fast action. I also have a Rodgeeks 4 level, same length, same power, and it's fine for that technique too. I have built Rainshadows of the same specs, even medium heavy, and they are very good for tubes and jigs. I'm sure you would be more pleased with the REVS72M or MH. If mostly tubes, the M, if mostly jigs (skirted jigs with trailers or swim jigs with trailers) the MH. Revelations and Immortals are both very fine blanks at a much lower price point than most others. Most of my builds are Rainshadows. I have a couple ML power rods, and while they are great for snapping 4 in swim baits off the bottom, they are not right for tubes and jigs. They don't have the power you want to set the hook , especially in deeper water, and they are certainly insufficient for jigs.

What could possibly make a rod good for spinnerbaits and chatterbaits but not good for buzzbaits? The major difference between glass and graphite is weight, which means the heavier rod will be less sensitive and slower response. For the steady retrieves of all these lures, doesn't much matter. Lighter in the hand for graphite? Usually. It is possible for graphite to match the power and action of any glass rod, but it will most always have faster response due to lighter weight. Regardless of how many tines the hook has. We might be overthinking this a bit.

do not use rodbuilding epoxy to attach the tiptop. Too risky if you have to remove it again. Use rodbuilding tiptop cement which is a hot melt adhesive.

A good structural (not 5 minute) epoxy should work well on most materials. Flex Coat and other rodbuilder companies carry it and other good brands. For coating cranks that I've altered I have used Sally Hansen fingernail hard coating with good success. Work fast with this stuff. One thing you might try is to call Mudhole.com and ask for their advice. They carry both rodbuilding and lure making products and have a very strong customer service activity.

I think some here are saying action but mean power. Including the original post? Action is described by the words slow, medium, fast, extra fast, etc. All are "speed" terms and describe how the rod bends, not the force it takes to make it bend. Power is described by the words light, medium, heavy, or combinations of these terms that imply the force it takes to make the rod bend.

Probably a carp, fought like a carp. And it might not have been snagged-carp will strike lures. Not really common, but not that uncommon either. I had an experience like yours one time on a flooded MI river mouth, fought the powerful but slow steady fish for about half an hour, then it was gone. I think in time the hooks open a hole in the lips allowing a hook to come out more easily. Mine took a Norman DBN, gel-craw pattern. I never saw it , but cannot think of anything else that fought that way. Last fall in a hot water release area carp were all over the place, hitting blade baits and cranks. My son and I took probably ten or more from an area of about 2-3 acres.

The reason fly rod blanks were used for light spin rods was that at one time all the Ultra Light blanks were no longer than 5 or 5 1/2 feet, and many wanted longer rods. Longer rods give better casting distance and much better hook sets. Fast action fly rods, about 3 wt, 7 1/2 feet long made much better rods, but they are pretty whippy and sloppy feeling. As stated above, there are many great ultra light 7-7 1/2 foot rod blanks available today, so one doesn't have to put up with the fly rod's sloppy action any more. Walleye blanks of light power work well as panfish blanks, too. I would not, unless special circumstances like small streams or kayak fishing dictate, build on a blank shorter than 7 feet.

It is my understanding that the tip top, not the tip, broke. You cannot tell by photo which material was used. But you'll know right away by applying a little heat (and tension at the same time). Epoxy will not come off with gentle heat. If you haven't tried it on this problem rod by now, do it. You will hurt nothing if you add a few seconds of heat and pull at the same time. If it comes, problem solved. If it does not take it to an expert. There is a Lower Alabama Rod Builders group on Facebook, with a contact number.

If gentle heat did not work, it is because epoxy was used to hold it on. Not a good idea as the temperature it takes to get the epoxy to fail is about the same as the temperature it takes to make the blank fail. For you who said a little heat worked for you, yours was installed using some sort of hot melt, a much better way to install tiptops. EGbassing, I think you have three options 1. Keep trying to get the old one off with gentle heat and twisting and pulling and hope for the best, 2. Cut it off and put the new one on with hot melt (preferably one designed for rod building), or 3. Take it to an expert rod-builder/repairer and have him/her walk the tightrope between damaging the blank and getting the tiptop off. Most have done it before and probably have a better chance of success than a person with no experience. good luck.

If 5 minute, OK, but some are put on with regular structural epoxy, and it doesn't easily soften. So in trying to get them off, one is walking a tightrope between the temp at which the epoxy "fails," and the temp at which the blank "fails."

This is hearsay, but from people who should know: 5 minute epoxy is not as strong as the liquid slow cure rod-building epoxy. Also, use liquid-it gives the best possibility of getting the epoxy everywhere . You don't want to just use it at the ends-you should cover the whole area of the blank/sleeve interface with epoxy. My only failures of repairs have come when I didn't get enough epoxy in place. One end of the blank pulled out. Doing a proper epoxying job then fixed the rods permanently. If you are hearing cracking with an oversleeve, then I think you are not getting enough epoxy in place, using inferior epoxy, or too short a sleeve. Outer sleeves are needed, interior spigots only when the fracture is such that you think you need to reinforce the repair as much as possible, or when the rod is shattered such that a spigot will stabilze the parts within the outer sleeve. Interior spigots are no larger than the I.D. of the broken blank, so they cannot be as strong as the unbroken blank. Because sleeves are larger than the O.D. of the blank, there is a possibility that the sleeve can cause a "flat spot" in the action due to the higher strength. The use of glass sleeves on graphite rods is an attempt to reduce this tendency. Read the Rodbuilding.org article-well worth it.

If you spin a Q-tip in the rings of all the guides and tiptop it will snag on any crack and reveal it to you. I'd check them all, especially near the tip. Most likely tip-top. Tiptops can be either installed with hot melt or epoxy. If hot melt, very easy and no risk of damage to the blank, just a LITTLE heat while pulling on the tip top with a rubber band. It will slip off when the hot melt softens. Very little heat required. If epoxy, a little trickier because more heat is required, but most epoxies used for tiptops soften easier than typical structural epoxy. But heat is again required, but more heat. Do the same process, but if it doesn't slip right off, stop and try carefully to move it by gentle twisting, then pulling, maybe a little more heat while pulling. This is a little risky, but usually can be done without damage to the tiptop. Some will say cut it off-I disagree with that approach. Better to get help from a pro builder in your area if you cannot handle it without excess heat. The tiptops are specified by ring diameter (outer diameter) and diameter of the tip of the rod. OK to go next size up on the blank diameter spec, but don't sand the blank down to fit one onto a blank that's too big to slide into the tube. If more questions, ok to PM or email me.

I've been everywhere mentioned above, and here is my opinion. MOst of the time, regardless of what knot you use, you will "detect" it going through the guides. A little click is OK. If you start feeling it, you may damage the guides, but more likely the knot will not last very long. No knot lasts forever, but the less disturbance you feel, the less damage is being done to the knot. Your rig looks to me like it's too heavy to pass through micro guides unless you use the FG. As stated above, if you're using lighter braids with less than 10 pound leaders, uni to uni is easy, reliable to tie, and will work with a minimum disturbance with almost any guide train. This video, if followed exactly, will produce a reliable FG knot. Not a great knot to be tying in the boat while the fish are biting, which is why I use a lot of rods in the boat-break a line or leader, just stow it and pick up another. I tie the FG's at home. But this video, IMHO, give the easiest, most reliable, FG.

Small water, I prefer alone or with my zealot son. Big water, Lake St Clair and Saginaw Bay, I don't go alone. Better to have a partner in case something goes wrong.

You can get a Daiwa Tatula SV 103 on Ebay for $150- best baitcasting reel I've ever cast. I don't think they come in three ratios, but probably two. 5-6:1 is of marginal value anyway, IMO.

Monday 57 degrees along the mile roads, lots of fishermen fishing 8-10, did not see many fish caught. It was a funny day, supposed to be strong winds and hail, but that never developed. Very foggy in the AM , clearing about noon. Mostly gentle winds, but for a couple hours about 3:00, it blew pretty hard, with clouds. When it brightened we found a fair number of SM shallow in very turbulent water where waves from the southeast came into a seawall and bounced back. Also many LM, walleyes, and pike in same areas, some LM very nice size. Very little interest from the fish on tubes, chartreuse shallow squarebill was the best lure all day, but we did take a few nice fish on Rapala jerk shad rap or whatever the new one is called. If drifting soft baits, I suggest using drop shot to get the lure away from the dead weeds on the bottom. Or put a tube on the bottom, something else above. I have friends who did much better than we, but I cannot tell you where they were fishing. I'm sure you understand.

Lanny, please let us know what the final resolution is. I'm sure others are as curious as I am.

It is not the thumb-bar as I suggested earlier. When it is mis-assembled it only affects the ability to get the spool to free spool. Drag is unaffected, retrieve is unaffected. I just tried it on mine. The answer to how to assemble properly is to find the little lever in the side plate assembly and put it into the down position. Put the side plate on while holding the thumb-bar up position. Now after the side plate is assembled, retrieve by cranking the handle. You'll hear the little lever in the side plate click up into the thumb-bar as you retrieve. Now pushing the thumb-bar will put the reel into free spool. So you are down to either broken/sheared gears or failed drag. If it is the drag, how do you explain the fact that he can easily turn the crank, but no retrieval occurs, yet the pulling on the line as the fish did does not allow any line to go out. If the drag were failed to allow handle turning without retrieval, how is it logically explained that pulling on the line won't let line out? Looking more like gears, IMHO. Lanny, have you inspected the gears? What did you find? The suggestion to send it to a good reel servicer is a good one. You will get an expert to give you an estimate to repair, and if justified, then authorize him to do a complete clean and lube. This reel is worth saving, so don't give up on it easily.

He couldn't pull line out, and you couldn't pull line in? But the handle was turning on the attempted retrieve? Open the reel and look at the gears. Keep in mind that upon reassembly the thumb "switch" has to be in the correct position or the reel will not work properly. Maybe the side plate came loose, you tightened it, but when it was loose the thumb "switch" moved to the wrong position? If a gear has failed you should be able to see it with the side plate off, if I remember correctly. The earlier post about braid is asking whether the line is slipping on the spool, which can easily happen with braid since it is so slippery. But, the fish should have been able to take line if this were the problem. In your last post you say the drag is not allowing line out. Which is consistent with the fish not being able to take line. So the problem is simply that you cannot retrieve, the drag is OK and the line is not slipping on the spool. so take the side cover off and make sure a gear is not stripped and the thumb "switch" is in the right position before reassembly. I respectfully submit that the lousy spelling done on purpose is not helpful.

Largemouths love them, good advice above. Only problems with tubes is when the habitat you're fishing is too weedy. If you find good edges, drop them just outside, work parallel to the edge. Vary the retrieve to find what they want that day.

Take a well-tied FG apart and you'll find that the leader has been permanently deformed so that the braid and leader are interlocked mechanically. This happens during the very aggressive tensioning of the knot that is highlighted in the titles of the video above.

Probably not, but only you can determine that. I wouldn't trust 5/4, but I've never been able to get that knot to hold up when aggressively snapping lures off the bottom. Sooner or later, it unravels. The FG will not cause trouble going through the guides. If you stick to this method of tying it, it will be reliable.

The double uni is, in my opinion, the knot to use if your guides will pass it cleanly. Depends on the line, leader, and guide sizes. The FG is fine if you get to where you can tie it reliably. There are a number of ways to tie it, and I've tried a few of them. The video link shows what I think is the best method because it is easy to keep the weaves in proper orientation, easy to get 20 of them, easy to tie the half hitches. With some other methods I've had trouble keeping all the "stuff" together, and often my knots failed.

Yes, you are right. I did it all wrong. Never mind. :-)