CrankFate

Great reel. Too chromed out bling for my tastes. But I don’t believe claims that the gears are worse. People said that about stainless gears, I have reels with stainless gears, they stay truer to how they felt fresh out of the box than brass. I’d expect that to be the case with aluminum, because the “aluminum” in a metanium is probably that hard light titanium feeling low mass metal found in most newer reels in the worm and gearshaft and not forged aluminum foil.

It comes down to one thing, the feel. I fish at about 1/3 of whatever is recommended almost always, if not 1/4. You can tell when something’s going to break. At that point, don’t break it. It just comes down to that. The way I assess everything is simple, just hook a hook onto something like a fence, then raise the tip of the rod. Pull up until the drag slips or the rod is going to break or the line is going to break. Set the drag so it slips without breaking the rod, line or hook. You’ll get used to it. Even with new lighter rods. Landing the fish it the same thing, except it’s slippery and bouncing around. The problem for me is never landing the fish, it’s getting bit and setting the hook! That’s the hard part.

I assume when the mfg gets a hot item, like the Tatula reel, it’s easy to get people to buy the “matching” rod. Most casting rods are pretty unimpressive. That’s why, IMO, it’s always so hard to find the ones you need.

I love reels in the 8 to 10 ounce range for saltwater on heavier rods, fishing 2-3oz. But if I’m going for bass, I am a flaming weight weenie

That’s the same problem I had.

Sold and shipped by Amazon should be legit. But there’s always the possibility of a return getting reshipped. Trust me, direct from the manufacturer, I got “brand new” used broken washer and dryer pedestals ordered direct from Samsung.com, and they were the newest ones they had.

No weight specified, how could you tell if you’d want it? The weight of a reel is the most important stat. Without the weight there’s no way to know how light kept heavy a rod should be for it.

I sometimes rinse, dry, then spray the guides with liquid wrench. Let it sit a day or two and rinse it off with a good spray from the hose gun.

TXT701mlrb, it’s a nice rod, but the 1\4 to 5/8 rating isn’t even close. I use it for 1 1/2 oz and it’s perfect for that. Caught some good size fish on it, too. But there is no way to cast the rated weight, unless your just flippin. It is amazingly thin and light for fishing around an ounce and I love it for that application. Its supposed to be for “Shallow Crankin” but it is way too stiff for that purpose. The Tatula Elite is probably better for this weight, but the BPS Crankin Stick is better still, and I wound up getting two of them after bouncing every single rod in the store. Ordered the Tatula rod blind off the internet. Big mistake. The reel is a CT I liked it so much, I upgraded everything and now it makes my 2018 Tatula 100 feel too heavy.

This applies to iPads, too ?‍♂️

+1 I was surprised to see a greased Drag when I opened it up.

Well, I caught a SMB, once, and it was almost as big as the space between those two in the picture

Hmmm....these look good. Anyone have one? I’m gonna need two more rods that I don’t need this spring.

Dont do it. Trust me. I limit myself to a maximum of 3 options per outing. Otherwise you’ll become a collector. Once you find yourself buying a Bakelite spool for an obsolete reel that sucks, just to see how it fishes, it’s time to find another hobby, like testing different braid or crawdads.

Can’t speak on the new rods. The last years version are way overpowered compared to their ratings. I have the supposedly lightest one (7 foot) and it’s sweet spot is 1-2 ounces. It was disappointing because I got it for weightless worms and wound up using it in saltwater for fish up to 7lbs. No problem using it for that. Can’t load up a cast under 3/4 oz ☹️ The reels are awesome. I like the CT so much I spent about $400 customizing it. Already ordered some Abec bearings for the black 2018 for the levelwind and internals. Waiting to fish the stock spoolbearings before deciding whether to swap them out for ceramics. They really do have a nice stoppy feel to them, like mags, but better.

I’m just going to throw this one out there. Five speeds are going to be harder and harder to find. I believe it is because as the reels (especially the spools) get smaller and smaller, it takes at least 6:1 gears to bring in as much line as a 5:1 reel with a bigger spool. A small diameter spool like most reels have now, is probably too slow to work at 5:1. When I hear 5:1, I think the spool has to be pretty big. I’d go with a 6, for slow, unless it’s a pretty large reel. The Revo X is a 5 speed, good price 7.94 ounces. Or the MaxToro is a 5 speed that can be had for $75 on eBay, but it’s 12+ ounces! These are both big reels with advertised stats for 50lb braid. I have a bunch of different Revos, they will hold up to anything.

Half the fun is buying longer worms, fatter grubs, better craws, better colors, sharper hooks better weights and all that. Last year I started ordering Chinese copper weights, now I’m using them more than anything. No way I’m sacrificing twenty $7.00 tungsten weights, plus a $1.00 hook and $1.00 plastic into the water every 2 to 3 hours. I’m an expert at wasting money, but that’s almost $100 per hour. These are about forty cents each. I just hope they don’t give me cancer. It’s not worms, but it’s still trying something new to go with them. That’s half the fun.

I go out with about 5 plans. I also adjust my rig every few casts, unless I get bit. I don’t know anything about tournament fishing. Plan B, C, D, E and F are me thinking “in another 10 minutes or 10 hours the fish will start biting.”

I have no ghost stories, no UFO’s or paranormal stories. Had a run in with a tremendous black bear once, but when he came over to sniff at us, he wasn’t interested in eating us and continued on his way. I rarely fish at night, all the ghosts and UFOs come out at night

I like Shimano. I notice a lot of anti Shimano sentiments coming from fishing tackle stores and sellers on the internet. I assumed that this might have something to do with their pricing or price fixing and maybe small profit margins for those that sell them. But this is all just a guess.

Good point. If I could count all the times I was like......

I agree. I am extremely lucky. Except I never hit the lotto and other people usually catch bigger fish than me. I accidentally caught a few extremely large LMB,and yes, it was just luck. Meanwhile, I really intended to catch trophy saltwater fish that I fished my whole life for, day after day, after day, but never caught, even while outfishing most people 10 or 20 to 1 for them. The problem is, that no matter what I fish for—I fish the way your supposed to fish for LMB. The bottom line is it’s not just luck. You need to have the luck that goes with what you want. The big bass I caught were luck. My skill is only good for decent sized fish.

Shimano Aldebaran. Had thank you points on my credit card, I usually cash them in at the beginning of the year. Got it for almost half price.

I’m sure he meant stroke of luck from the double digit fish gods.

I prefer charcoal or black, grey at least. I do not like the “hey look it’s custom made” bad color choices most people make when going custom. Why do turquoise? Sky blue? It doesn’t look good. Just because you can pick the colors shouldn’t mean you have to pick bad ones. It’s rare to see good custom rod color choices. And don’t get me started on all the freaked out basket weaves from the top of the foregrip half way up to the first guide. WHHYYYY!!!? When the day comes that I get a custom, it’s still going to be grey, black, gunmetal and a tiny hint of blue or orange, like one or two threads wide as an accent.