MickD

I cannot find what the frame material is on the ***, but they are probably stainless steel. A set of ALPS titanium frame guides retails for well over half the price of this rod. The stainless Alps uses is a great material for corrosion, will most likely never corrode at all in fresh water. Any rod should be rinsed free of any salt after using in salt water. Just noticed that Gander mountain is cutting the price on an elite I saw much more than $20. This one was $79.95. I expect it is a very fine rod based on specs. Don't believe cork descriptions-there is no objective standard, and what you get can vary all over the place. "Hand selected Portugese. . ." means next to nothing. I believe GM has this price in stores now, if they do, go look at the rod and buy there. You can see and feel.

Have you tried their lipless cranks?

Are you sure you want medium light power? Sounds to me that either rod will be a high quality rod. I'm not sure on the reel seats, but if they are significantly different you may find one better ergonomically than the other. Titanium frames are basically corrosion proof and very light , so the rods with them will most likely be very sensitive. Any titanium framed guide will have a high quality ring, and you most likely will never groove either set of guides. I've used a lot of Alps guides and they are excellent in all regards.

I have not tried the popper bodieas, but I expect they will work fine. All they have to do is float and catch water when twitched. However, the Chinese lipless crank bodies I've tried do not work well. They don't vibrate as much as commercial ones and they tend to turn over when fished fast. To get a custom finish on lipless cranks I'm using old commercial lipless cranks and refinishing them.

I've used both and prefer the octopus. Just reeling in the slack until the fish sets the hook against the tension is just not consistent with my "personality." That is how you are supposed to fish a circle. If you are "setting the hook" your hook-up rate will not be as good as just taking up the slack (with the circle). Previous posts seem to equate the octopus and the circle, but they are different. A traditional hook set is right for the octopus. Keep in mind that with turned up or down eyes, a snell knot is better than just tying it on with a normal knot-gets the pull in line with the hook point. If you are getting fish swallowing your plastic I think you are not feeling the fish well or not seeing your line twitch. I know fish can sometimes be very subtle, but if this is happening regularly, something is wrong in the technique or tackle. With braid and a FC leader on a hi modulus rod I just cannot remember the last time I had a swallow. I don't know what's going on with the eye hooks, don't get that either.

I have a BPS line pick, and it is so weak I gave it up in favor of a small crochet hook. It is especially valuable on today's reels which have very little room for fingers to pick the loops.

I guess you guys are a lot faster than I. I'm only half fast. But I wouldn't do it for $70, anyway. To enter into the arena of customer satisfaction, idiots mistreating rods, warranty questions, etc, would take a lot more than $70 for me. I'm not being critical of your practices, just commenting more on me than you. I think I can have an hour invested in a couple coats of CP then a couple of epoxy. Plus about 20 hours of cure time on my single rig.

So you're going to build a rod in which you have $200 and sell it for $270? You are very reasonable. thanks, Mick

Go breathable, not the welded seam type at the foot. Get the other foot type. I just cannot get me feet into my wading boots without the welded seam foot portion pressing hard against my toes. Get a wading belt- friend of mine pulled a guy out of a MI trout stream as he was rolling by with his waders full of water. You don't want to fill them up-it's often fatal. Mine are about ten years old, Cabelas, and have never leaked. If you're willing to go with the prices, the big names like Simms and Orvis would surely be top quality.

What blank would that be?

I've never used either, but I have repaired a Dobyns. Never a St Croix. The Dobyns cork foregrip was coming apart. Not great data, I admit. But I was not impressed with the workmanship of the Dobyns.

Anyone who casts spinnerbaits upwind and says they never get a backlash is untrustworthy. :-) I just cannot get FC to be usable exc on easy to cast lures, like lipless cranks. If you go FC, get the best-don't go cheap. Since Suffix seems to be top qualtiy on everything else, I expect their FC to be also. Surface and most cranks, I use any good mono about 15 pound test. For the rest, about 30 # braid with a FC leader. I really like Suffix braid. Haven't tried their gore version yet.

Pro Kote specifically advertises its superiority in this regard, and I know that when first on it will not darken a white blank. Whether it is long-term better than the others, I'm not sure. One reason I don't like it is that it takes so darned long to harden. I keep thinking it's not going to, but it does. Any epoxy needs to be measured exactly with syringes unless it's a weight-proportioned epoxy, then use scales. If you don't, sooner or later you're going to have a failure to harden. I like Flex Coat lite UV. An expert on another forum says the UV inhibitors are to protect what's under the finish, not the finish itself.

Both Daiwa and Shimano are very smooth and precise, good drags, and have been reliable for me. but the thing I really like about the Daiwas (2500 size) is that the bail closes very smoothly and with little effort. Significantly better than the Shimano Stradics and Symetres. I've not owned other brands exc for an old Quantum which was very rough compared with the Daiwas and Shimanos. I cut it up and use the stem for a guide alignment tool for rod building. My next reel will be a Daiwa.

After tying a couple more knots today, I think that the most likely source of problems with this knot is not "working" the weaves down hard into each other or not keeping them there. If you make the three sets of weaves and work them down tightly you'll see no space between them, they will actually feel hard, and after you put the two half hitches on, that knot will not slip on the leader when you pull it tight. If it slips down the leader the problem is either that you got lost on weaving or the weaves were not worked tight or held tight between your fingers while you went on to the next steps in the knot. Focus there.

Just get yourself a length of FC leader and a spool of braid, set yourself into you TV chair, look at the video over and over, keep trying, focus on working the weaves into a hard, tight, column of braid, don't give up, and within a couple days of this you will be tying the best line to line knot ever. Believe me, once you get it, you get it. And you'll have a line to line knot that will work with every combination of lines and guides. And it will be a piece of cake to tie.

It is not true that the diameters need to be close to the same. In fact one of the advantages is that they don't have to be. The leader should be the larger diameter, of course, and the heavier the leader the easier it is to tie since the tag end of the leader stays put better. I just tied a 50 pound FC leader and 30 pound power pro together and the knot holds perfectly. Ed, focus on my tips in the Aug 20 post.

In answer to the original question, I've found the easiest way to take out packing staples is to use diagonal cutters, grab one end of the staple and pull it out, then get the other end. Of course you don't pinch the staple hard enough to cut it.

There are two keys to getting it right. First, you have to make sure you keep the weaves correct. I do this by reaching under the leader then going over alternately. If you find that the tag end is all of a sudden on the other side of the leader when it shouldn't be, you've allowed the leader to move. The braid tag end always ends up on the same (left) side of the leader, and the line end of of the braid always ends on the same (right) side of the leader. If you find one on the wrong side, go back and get it right. Second, the arranging the weaves by pulling on the two braid lines at the same time has to be good, strong, pulls, patiently "working" the weaves into a TIGHT, compact row. You have to pull rather hard, and "work" it to arrange the weaves into that tight compact row. The row gets almost hard. Then do 4 more, "work" it again, then the final 4, and again "work" it. At that time you will have a single, tight, hard, row of weaves. Do your first two half hitches without letting that row of weaves loosen. Do the final half hitches and then wet the knot, and pull it using the two lines, not the tag ends. If you've done the steps properly the row of weaves will tighten on the line and you won't be able to move it. But if the "working" of the weaves wasn't aggressive enough, leaving the weaves a little loose on the leader, it will slip. If you've done it right and have a really tight knot that won't slip, take it apart and look at the leader. The leader that was under the weaves will look "krinkled" because when the knot is tied right the braid actually embeds itself into the leader leaving it krinkled when the braid is removed. Don't give up. With practice you will get the technique down. Pay particular attention to the two things I've focused on .

Larger guides will not make that rod cast farther. The line is small compared to even a micro inside diameter and flows freely. In fact it is the better line control of the micros, because of their smaller diameter, that is the reason for what most users believe is a longer cast with micros. Think of it as a long, thin, steady, cylinder going through the air with micros and the same long thin cylinder all wobbly, loopy, some of it sideways and curved with larger guides. This is true even for casting outfits. That little eye at the reel does not take all the action out of the line and the guide train design is significant.

Quick choking with smaller but higher guides may be counter-intuitive, but it's clearly not counter-productive. Pac Bay has made guides for this philosophy for years, the Microwaves are smaller and higher, the Fuji system is smaller and higher, and they say they have tests to prove it works better. I have a number of spinning rods built this way, and I really like them. Would they be as good with other guides? I don't know for sure, but they really do cast well. Of course you can leave all the guide controversy behind by using braid of about 10-15 pound test. It will cast great with any reasonable guide train.

It's really hard to know what differences lighter guide trains make. How can one tell if the rod would feel different with different guides? The closest thing to real data that I know of is the series of fisherman evaluations of the Amtac Microwave spinning setup. It could be psychology, but most of the evaluators of the setups (one with Microwave and one with cone of flight-which is an old recipe since improved on without using micro guides) say the rod with Microwaves casts farther and feels smoother. If Amtac had used a more modern setup for evaluations, the differences would be theoretically smaller. I don't remember sensitivity comments, but they might be there also. If you build your own, of course you can build whatever you want. I build and wanted to try micros so I have both casting rods and spinning rods with them. I think they cast farther and are more sensitive, but. . . Now that I have them I'm interested in a very small knot that will pass easily, and that knot is the FG. It's a great knot and not difficult after you devote some time to learning it. I very much doubt if builders will go entirely to micros, but you can help them with their decisions by writing them and making your wishes known on the various fishing forums. You know they read them.

Now you've done it! Opened this topic again. You'll have a bunch of folks arguing how hard it is to tie, how easy other knots are, etc etc etc. I have learned to tie it reliably and efficiently and I'm sold. I've fished it with micro guides and after fishing one so long that the leader was too short to use any more, the knot looked like I had just tied it. (20# leader, 15# braid) Not only does it go through the guides very well, but it doesn't get damaged by the guides like other knots do. I just tied a 50# flouro leader to 30 pound braid (yes, I know, wrong way for the pound tests, but I want the really tough leader) and it's a very small knot. If that were a double uni it would be huge with 5 layers of 50 # flouro. It's a great knot for line to line, and once you practice it a while, it's not difficult to tie. This video has a technique that requires no pretensioning of the braid, no pulling against your rod jammed into the front of the boat, you tie it in your hands with both lines loose. The keys are making sure you get the weave under then over then get the three stages of tightening the knot to the leader done patiently and correctly.

A "more durable" rod will be a low modulus rod, possibly even glass. High mod rods will simply not take "high sticking" which is most likely what happened with the tip pointing forward and snagging from a moving canoe. The fact that this rod broke in two places makes it very unlikely that it had a defect. It was simply highly overstressed. Give the warranty a try , however. If they cover it fine, if they don't, learn from the experience. But don't expect a more expensive rod to be more durable under this situation. Check out the very informative article at the link below for the most common causes of failure of high modulus rods. http://www.rodbuilding.org/library/rodusage.pdf

If the rod was pointing toward the front of the canoe, most likely broke from "high sticking." Like any hi mod rod would do. If it were pointing toward the back of the canoe, it would be impossible to break it. No rod will break when pointed at the source of the resistance.