redmeansdistortion

That's what it is, a 5500S. The Ambassadeurs bearing the S, SX, STX, and BCX nomenclature are made in China. Those with the C, CS, C3, and C4 nomenclature are still made in Sweden with the exception being the 7000, which is made in Taiwan.

Scratch built 2500C IAR, made from new and new old stock parts. The only used parts are the press arm and pinion yoke. And for comparison purposes, a bone stock 2500C on the scale.

Now that you mention it, the shipping estimate is fairly accurate. The big thing to look out for is you truly have no idea what shipping will run until you finish the checkout process. You pay the seller/store, they ship to Buyee, and Buyee will give you the shipping price once the item reaches their warehouse. You may get double dipped for shipping if the store doesn't offer free shipping, but shipping within the prefectures is usually fairly cheap either way. If you want to save on shipping, you can have Buyee ship all items together even if they came from different stores/sellers.

I've used Buyee often to purchase from Yahoo Auctions and Tackle Berry, never had any issues. Buyee handles the final packaging and they do pretty well. They use DHL to ship our way and packages get here just as fast as they do from anywhere else. There is only one catch to this, there is no free shipping regardless if the store or seller on Yahoo Auctions states that shipping is free. You are paying the shipping charges through Buyee since they are the ones actually shipping to you. Free shipping usually implies that shipping is free to the Buyee warehouse(s) only. So far, I've bought two rods and half a dozen reels this way. Both rods I purchased ran me about half of what they cost new and were in like new condition. If you look at Yahoo Auction listings, you'll see the same listings on eBay from the same sellers for significantly more.

That's quite possible. We as Americans tend to be numbers driven, more is better, and sometimes less is better depending on what it's referring to. Look at how reels are marketed; speed, bearing count, line capacity, maximum drag, and weight. A reel that brings in a lowly 23" per turn with a few bearings and a maximum drag of 4lb will fly under the radar of the average American fisherman. That's probably why reels like the Daiwa Presso/Pixy/Alphas, Calcutta Conquest 50S, and various iterations of the Daiwa Millionaire were never sold here or saw very limited release. It's that American "go big or go home" mentality.

Go hook into a sturgeon on the St. Clair River, scratch that itch.

They do, just not here. In Japan, Daiwa spinners come in D (deep) and S (shallow) nomenclature. Shimano reels will have a S (shallow) or SS (super shallow) as part of theirs. The shallow spools were designed for thin braid, while the standard and deeper spools for mono or thicker braid.

Daiwa and Shimano also make some of their 1000 sized reels in the shallow variants. To my knowledge, these spools are designed for thin braid as mono will fill them quickly. My friend runs a Daiwa Luvias LT 2000S-XH and it only holds about 60yd of 4lb Trilene XL, but if he's running 5lb Power Pro, it holds a lot more.

Speaking of poachers. Our DNR managed to nab snaggers and donate 460lb of fresh salmon. https://upnorthlive.com/amp/news/local/poaching-investigation-recovers-460lbs-of-salmon-dnr-donates-to-families-in-need

Welp, just ordered the rest of the parts for my scratch built 2500C. A year ago it would've been $350 more. Every part is brand new except for the clutch spring and pinion yoke.

DNR busts a lot of poachers when the spring walleye run is on. By law in the state of Michigan, you can't be in possession of more than two daily limits. Either two in the freezer, or one in the freezer and one on your person. Guys will go out every single morning and catch a limit. Many of them have bragged to me about it. The COs aren't as dumb as they like to think, they take notes and know who's taking more than they should. They'll sit at the boat launches and wait for suspects to return and check their live wells or even accompany the offender home to look at his freezer. First offense they write a ticket and take your fish, second time they confiscate your gear and write a bigger ticket, and strike three is the same as strike two but with a fishing ban that could be from one year to a lifetime dependent on severity.

I think it's just anglers in general. A lot of my fellow trout fishermen also sneer at bass, and a lot of musky fishermen sneer at anything that isn't an Esox. Walleye fishermen tend to not target species they wouldn't eat, which is a shame. Lots of guys I grew up and bass fished with now don't want to have anything to do with it. "They don't taste good". Bass fishing isn't about meat fishing for most of us. Heck, some of the old timers are raised with the "I eat what I catch" mentality and will take a home a stringer full of random fish just because.

Fact right here. In my 35 years of fishing, I've caught countless 5lb+ smallies out of the Great Lakes and connecting waterways. I can count the 5lb+ largemouth on one hand. The smallies here are out of this world. Back 20 years ago, I used to fish musky tournaments on Lake St Clair with a friend and his brother. We'd hook into tons of smallmouth trolling big musky baits. They'd absolutely hammer a 5 oz Bull Dawg.

Lake St. Clair. The best part is, it's a 15 minute ride from my house :D

Lake Erie can get pretty nasty over here on the western shore. A couple of years back, me and a friend were in the lower Detroit River jigging walleye. We then decided to hit the delta where the river flows into Erie and made a U turn when we got sight of the water conditions. Huge waves coming up and the boats we could see were being thrown around like little toys. We were only in a 14' so we went back up the river instead. It was far too risky for the little boat we were in.

People outside of this area don't know the awesome power of the Great Lakes. They very seldom give back what they take, and this info graphic shows what happens to freighters if they aren't mindful of the conditions.

Self adhesive medical wrap is great for this. It's a cloth tape that only sticks to itself and doesn't leave any residue behind. Alternatively, heatshrink tubing also works good.

Small flat blade screwdriver, a 1.5mm tip works great with most E-clips that are used in reels. Insert the tip inside one of the notches and twist slowly till the clip pops off. Keep a finger on the clip so it doesn't fly off on you. For a reinstall, you can push it with a flat blade as well, preferably with a wider tip than the one use to remove it. Push at the front/center until it snaps in place. You may also want to do it inside of a plastic bag in the event it does fly on you. If you lose it, you can buy an assorted metric E-clip set on Amazon, runs like $8 and you get a lot of different sizes. Cheaper in the long run than buying them individually, plus you have other sizes in the event you need them.

With the water being low, I went and scouted pools and runs on the local river yesterday. A nice rain should bring in the steelhead so hopefully I'll be getting them soon. This is a tricky river to fish as the underlying topography changes quickly due to urban runoff, but most of these deeper pools should remain relatively intact. They don't really change unless we get some very, very heavy rain.

It is a lot lol. One of my SV700S spools has the TD-Z Type R+ inductor spring plus an added shim and that thing will absolutely bomb anything from 1/8 on up.

Plenty of those in the 200 to 250 range. A few years ago something like that would've been almost half that.

For what a 1,000 square foot shoebox runs you in Cali, you can get a 5,000 square foot mansion here a couple of blocks away from Lake St. Clair. If you halve the house size, then you can get a home on a canal on Lake St. Clair for similar money.

I don't think the factory has any specific settings they use. Each one of my Daiwa SV reels, whether it was made in Japan or made in Thailand had varying degrees of lateral play. My Millionaire CT SV had zero side play from the factory. All three of my Alphas were different as well, even being the same model. I set mine to where there's about 1mm of lateral play. For what it's worth, the Millionaire may have been set that way due to the brake only being a 10 step vs the 20 step on the Alphas.

I'm in Warren, a stone's throw from LSC. We have some good steelie action on the Clinton River from October through May. Are they removing the 6th St. dam over by you? I heard they were talking about it and restoring the rapids. Would be sweet. As far as dams go, Consumer's Energy is going to be holding meetings soon about removing the dams on the Au Sable, would make a killer salmon fishery if they did. Supposedly, those dams supply only 1% of their customers in the area and they cost too much to maintain. The plan is to have them removed by 2034.

You guys would laugh at the braid I use, my buddy calls it frog hair lol. #1.0 is about the thickest I use, and that's a similar diameter to 2lb mono. Leaders range in size from 4 to 8lb depending on how much wood is in the water. The bass don't get as big up here in the tundra, and I've wrestled big smallies out of the reeds on many occasions.