redmeansdistortion

The top looked black at first look probably from the angle of the lighting.

Is that a titanium Haneda Craft I spy on your Plugger?

They just stopped making them last year. The 700 and 1300 are near impossible to find outside of eBay now and go for good money. People will fondly look back on the SS Tournament the same way they do the ABU/Zebco Cardinal. They were made from '87 to '22. I have a pair of 700s and a pair of 1300s. One of those 1300s I bought with money from my first job in 1992 and it still feels just as good as the ones I purchased more recently.

No joke. I've had cars I've sunken thousands into just to take them to the track, break something, and repeat. Over the 20-ish years I was into that kinda thing, I could've bought a nice vacation home in northern Michigan on a lake with some acreage and maybe a small boat to go along with it. I had a lot of fun and made a lot of friends, but man was that the epitome of an expensive hobby. I gave that up the first time my wife told me she was pregnant.

It isn't in your head, lubricants thicken as the mercury drops which does have an effect on performance. The higher the temp the thinner the lubricants will be. I typically run the thinner stuff year round, it holds up well in the summer too. I'm not running the thicker stuff unless it's a conventional like a Penn GTi, Shimano Tekota, or Okuma Coldwater.

If you want to learn about lubricants, good manufacturers have technical data sheets for their products you can look through. For instance, most of your standard grease is NLGI2, which is the consistency of peanut butter. The NLGI scale is a measure of the hardness of grease. Some, such as Cal's Purple are NLGI1, which is the consistency of tomato paste. Cal's Tan is NLGI2 which is why it's marketed more towards larger conventional reels, and the former towards cold weather gear and lighter tackle. Many oils suitable for reels will have a viscosity of somewhere between 30 cSt and 100 cSt at 40C. Lower viscosity stuff like TSI 321, Super Lube ISO 10, and Mobile Velocite #6 will be anywhere from 5 cSt to 10 cSt at 40C. As a rule, I don't use any lubricants without a readily available technical data sheet or MSDS. I want to know what I'm using so I have an idea how it will behave. I suspect many of the whiz bang reel lubricants sold by some companies without any available tech docs are most likely repackaged lubricants with a pretty label and a much higher price. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NLGI_consistency_number https://www.machinerylubrication.com/Read/411/oil-viscosity#:~:text=The viscosity is typically reported,constant supplied for each tube.

While that is an option, the cost of shipping can make it prohibitive if it's a customer's reel. The only way to make it worth it is to place a larger parts order so the cost of shipping is offset. Assuming DVT orders just the gears from plat, the cost would be roughly $100 with shipping at the current exchange rate. At that point you might as well just buy a used SV105 for a parts unit from a Japanese seller. I've seen them for under $150 on many occasions.

Looks like JDM Fishing is out of stock on both left and right gear sets. As painful as this may sound, have you tried reaching out to Daiwa? I say painful because their shipping method is horrendously slow. They use FedEx Smartpost and it often tours the lower 48 before making it to your door. It typically takes me 2 to 3 weeks to receive parts from Daiwa USA.

They're good. I bought that same gear set to upgrade a TD Sol for a customer, got it in 4 days.

70mm Haneda Craft handle and Avail offset frame came for my ratchet AR 2500C. These frames really transform the reel. It palms just as good as my Conquest BFS now.

Keep in mind when using PayPal, they have their own exchange rate which is typically about 4% more than the market rate. One way to avoid this is to use a credit card with no currency conversion fee. If you do use one without the currency conversion fee, you're looking at a 7% to 10% fee dependent on the terms of the card.

A good friend and frequent fishing partner of mine chairs the local TU chapter. Mark is a heck of a guy and we began when he started picking my brain about BFS a few years back. He lurks on a local forum I moderate and registered just to ask me questions, which lead to me building out a couple of his 2500Cs and doing a presentation for the TU chapter on BFS. Building his out are what led me to pursue my own small Ambassadeurs. Mark is a long time reel collector like @bulldog1935 and has amassed a collection of highly desirable reels, whether fly, baitcast, or spinning. He's not an eBay shopper, but instead accumulates his the old fashioned way; scoring deals at flea markets, garage sales, and estate sales for seemingly cents on the dollar compared to what others pay in online transactions. Anyway, during my presentation I met a lot of great people. Mostly fly fishermen but also a fair amount that used spinning gear and not a hint of snobbery from either camp. Most seemed very interested in what I had to show and talk about, some have even taken to it. Mark doesn't swing flies like he used to now that he's into BFS, but I never got a snobby impression from him either. He lives a few miles up the road from me and during the cold weather he and I attend tackle shows and go rod and reel hunting in the flea markets. At times I feel people get the impression fly fishermen are elitists because many of them spend 4 figures on bench made rods and reels. Most of these guys are people of modest income like many of us, and like us they have that one hobby they splurge on which is fishing. How they do it is all on them.

I run 6lb and 8lb Berkley X9 on most of my reels, which are #0.8 and #1.0 respectively. Oddly enough, I've only ever had the dig-in issue on my Millionaire CT while my Millionaire Ringa, Ambassadeurs, and Calcutta Conquest have no such issues. I feel as if the CT is having that issue due to it being such a narrow spool. The other reels have wider spools and I have yet to have any dig-in. X9 is pretty good stuff and more firm than J-Braid and Power Pro. It's more limp than 832, but 832 is too thick for my tastes no matter what the label says.

You can launch from Walker's Landing right on the bay on Harsens Island, very easy to get to.

Carbon fiber sheeting is cheap, I keep stock of various thicknesses in 0.5mm, 0.7mm, and 1mm. Those 3 will cover just about any reel.

While I don't know any guides, you can rent fishing boats from Carina's Marina in Fair Haven, right by the mouth of the St. Clair River if that's an option for you. That area we locals call the flats, and the smallie action is hot year round. That particular area is also great for musky fishing if you feel so inclined. Also lots of big perch, gills, and rock bass in that area. During July, it's best to get out early as the tuna boats start congregating in Muscamoot Bay in the afternoon. https://www.lakestclairguide.com/service/carinas-marina/

The fiber washer you are seeing is pretty standard for Daiwa. Even my Millionaires and Alphas have them. They are rigid so there should be little worry about compression like you'd get from a Teflon, graphite, or felt washer. I've pulled apart 40+ year old ABU Cardinals which use the same style of washer and they are still perfectly fine even after decades of heavy use. The people engineering these reels have to design something that is both smooth and durable. They are looking for a happy medium between the two.

North Branch of the Clinton River is excellent smallie water and very kayak friendly. Clinton River spillway in Mt. Clemens is great for largemouth and during the spring also great for walleye and musky. When later May rolls around, hit Metro Beach (now known as Lake St Clair Metropark) and fish smallies off the point, or take part in the epic white bass run as they come up in there thick. Muscamoot Bay off of Harsens Island is the best smallie fishing you will find in May and June, but get out there early because the tuna boats come out around midday and the fishing really slows from all of the boat traffic. The flats of the St. Clair River by Algonac where it empties into Lake St Clair is also prime smallie water, they are thick in the reeds all spring, summer, and fall. Lots of nice pike and musky back there too, and some of the biggest rock bass and bluegills you will see. Another good one is Belle Isle, it is a state park so you will need a state park pass, but there is a lot of kayak friendly water around the island and very good smallie fishing. I hope this helps!

Even better when they go on about how fatiguing such a setup is. I spent decades fishing what most would consider a heavy combo, no torn rotator cuff or arthritis yet!

While I do own a number of rods occupying a range of price points, reels still excite me much more. It's that tinker factor that @bulldog1935 mentions. I can massage most any reel to do what I need it to do, but with a rod, what you see is what you get.

Unlike the Shimano DC reels, this one needs to be charged. 90 minute charge time gets you about 700 casts. I like the idea, but really dislike the fact that it needs an umbilical at times.

Major Craft seems to strike a happy medium between price and performance some other manufacturers seem to miss. I own a few of their trout rods and the fit, finish, and performance feels beyond what I paid for them. I own some rods I've paid double for and at times I find myself reaching for the Major Craft over the others. Granted, they aren't cheap with most falling in the $100+ range, but you can do a lot worse for the same money. Their factory is in Vietnam and they tend to run smaller batches. I've ordered a couple that were out of stock everywhere and the store was kind enough to tell me when production would start back up. I had to wait a month or two for a couple of them, but it was worth it.

I'm wondering if they will finally release the Calcutta Conquest BFS here since the Curado BFS has seemingly been a success for them. It's about due for a refresh seeing as the larger models were refreshed for 2021 and the '17 model is getting hard to find.

So far from what I've seen, they're most expensive here in the states when buying on eBay, whether it's through a Japanese or American seller. When I look at the Japanese auction sites, the price is considerably less, even when not accounting for the current exchange rate between the US dollar and Japanese yen. I see the exact listings on Yahoo Auctions as I do on eBay from the same sellers. The eBay prices from Japanese sellers is higher probably due to eBay fees whereas Yahoo Auctions charges a flat rate per item instead of a percentage of the sale. Sometimes that price can be 50%+ more than what they are asking on Yahoo Auctions.