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I have a couple of 8:1 reels and use them for things like throwing Shakey heads and texas rigs up to rocky ledges and slopes and any other situation where you might have to throw a line 30 or 40 yards when only the first 5 or 10 yards or so of retrieve matter. The higher retrieve makes it a small bit faster to get the lure back to the boat across the water between the boat and where the fish are. The truth is that it's probably more psychological than anything because it probably only saves a handle rotation or two. I use 6:1 mostly and can't honestly say that if feels a whole lot different, just a little.

Yeah, I don't do much business at WalMart either, maybe the odd last minute spool of line or a few on sale crankbaits here and there. I don't know how widespread it is, but I do know that some manufacturers will have special Walmart products. Marlin sells a rifle at Walmart that is just like it;s other model except the trigger mechanism isn't current, but it allows Wally to offer it at a significant discount. I know ABU has over the years had Walmart special models as well. The one that comes to mind is the Ambassadour 5500CL3, the Walmart version of the 5500C3.

Many inexpensive reels are offered in clam-shells to serve the needs of places like Wal-Mart, which offer reels for sale on pegboard displays. Most are also available in boxes as well. They aren't different quality, just different packaging to suit different retailing needs. Once reels get out of the big box price range, the clam shells are not offered usually.

I think maybe the reel is pretty important. The way I see it is that the anchor part of the line is the reel. The vibrations that you feel in the rod are parasites robbing vibration from the line as the line makes contact with the guides. The reel transmits what left to the rod through the foot. I think they both matter.

Yeah, the X-Rays are not the very lightest, but I think they are very sensitive. But they are not super heavy either. I've been looking at the Point Blanks for a while, but they just don't have that many options that I wanted, but I am eyeing the PB701LXF. But that is not a rod that I use a whole lot throughout the year so it is down the list a bit.

I don't really have an answer, but I do have a question. If you want a rod VERY similar to the Dobyns, why not just buy the Dobyns?

I didn't know that it took a certain type of person to keep their gear rigged over the off season...Just exactly what type of person is this? I really want to know since I apparently am one of those "types".

I just bought one, a Z-Bone. The cork was inferior, the build was good. I can build rods that well so it makes no sense to pay even the sale price just to get the blank I like. I can build that Z-bone with primo seats, guides and grips, and as nice of a build for around $300, so I don't guess it will affect me much either except maybe the X-Ray blanks will be easier to get now... I would guess that the new blanks will be nice blanks...but not X-Rays.

I've swapped probably 6 or 8 e-mails with them and I always get a quick response. The other day I was less than friendly I guess, but I got an e-mail from them offering a free carbon grip with any X-Ray blank and saying that they had all X-Ray blanks in stock. So I sent them an inquiry as why, if all the X-Rays are in stock, aren't my Blanks being shipped, and if they are not in stock, then why are they sending out e-mails claiming that they are? They replied that the grips are only for new orders.....and she didn't have any idea what they were sending out in the e-mails.....WOW. I then said that I really don't give a hoot abouit the free grips, I want to know when my blanks will be shipped. Then, she said that 1 of my blanks is done and that she put in for a cut sheet on the other and sent a list of blanks that they do have in stock and said I could substitute one of them if I care to. I was happy with a 1 month wait, but we are 2 months now. Too bad I love the X-Ray blanks so I'll probably have to deal with it a few more times I'm guessing. I think it just depends on what they happen to have in stock. After much back and forth with them I think that they have to make the blanks in batches one (or maybe a few) model at a time. If they happen to have what you order, they send them quickly. I would be happy with them if only they would list whether they have a blank in stock or not and if not provide an estimate of the wait. Next order, I will e-mail and ask them for a list of what they have in stock before I order. It should work out better.

I get answers from them too, but 2 of 3 blanks I ordered in early December are not here.

The website says that the rods are built in Texas, but no longer says that they are using blanks made in the USA.

Looked at the Kistler website today. They now state that the rods are made with Kistler blanks, ex) KC9, KC8, etc. There is no longer mention of North Fork Composites nor any claim to use made in the USA blanks. I know that I am about fed up with NFC customer service and the 2 and 3 month wait times...has anyone heard anything?

I think you might have missed the point. The systems really ARE the same. It's just that the "No Adjust" system has a knob that is hard to turn. I have Daiwa reels from the TD-Z to the Tat SV TW and I set them all by pressing the release clutch, then adjusting the tension until there is just the slightest of side to side. From there you should be able set the brake knob somewhere in the middle and then work from there if you need to make adjustments. The no adjust thing is just a marketing blurb meant to imply to folks that the Daiwa is set and forget. Trying to set a Daiwa by the traditional dropping of the bait till it hits the dock might work or it might not, but it is probably not going to be optimal as it will depend on the weight of the lure. The Daiwa system works off of the speed of the spool.

The Microwave guides are ceramic guides. They are either Duralite, which I believe is basically a reinforced Aluminum Oxide similar to Fuji's Alconite, or they are Nanolite which as I understand it are made of a type of ion deposition Zirconium, a synthetic diamond ceramic. No, those are pretty good guides and they should not make strange noises and peel off like rubber. There is something else going on there.

I've been using the G2 stuff and like it quite a bit. It is a little heavier I guess, but that never seemed bad to me as most rods over 6'6" end up being tip heavy anyway and they aren't THAT heavy, just a few grams behind the reel. I feel like the foam core on the traditional Fiber grips kills more sensitivity than does the extra couple of grams that the G2 weigh. I do like the way the G2 feel fishing however. That said, I too was looking at some of the NFC stuff and will probably give those a shot at some point. I can't at this point say whether the G2 is better or not, never having tried the Carbontex stuff yet.

Perhaps, but the purpose of the AT G2 stuff is to be light and to not kill vibration. It has no foam core, just 2 small arbors in the case of the full grip.

One of my sons uses the G2 Bushido grips and loves them. Me I prefer the 3K fabric pattern on the G2 full grips. The G2 stuff is very nicely done.

I use the Berkley Vantage quite a bit for the last year and so far I find it reliable and easy to cast. I haven't noticed any tendency to birds-nest myself. Before that I was using the Floroclear...Never again. I first bought a couple of 300 yd. spools to try it out and the 3 or 4 rods I put it on worked fine for about 1-1/2 years, so when it came time to re-spool my whole collection I bought around 25 spools of the stuff, enough to load up my reels and a good supply of spare. Fast forward to last season and I swear that I couldn't predict what was going to happen at all. When I lost 4, count them, that's 4 consecutive Hybrid Stripped bass within about 1/2 hr, that were at least 8 or 9 lbs due to line breaking, that was the last straw. That junk cost me 10x more money in lost lures than it ever saved me by buying it to begin with. The funny thing is that I could have 6 spools of say 15 lb test and 4 of them might be fine, but 2 of those reels would just break for no apparent reason at all.

100%....Add to that the number of people, who trash their own rods with carelessness like whacking them with car doors, high sticking, ceiling fans etc., and then want to send them in for warranted replacement. It seems that through the less than ethical behaviors like this that the warranty, originally a bond that protects the buyer from manufacturing failures, has become more of an insurance policy that requires the manufacturer to pay for the failures of the buyer. We all know that a rod that fails after 100 uses isn't going to be failing from manufactures' defect, but many of us will turn in rods like that anyway pretending that it's not fraud. The maker has to be careful, he can't just accuse the buyer of a con job like I just have, because he needs the customer to stay in business but at the same time he can't afford to pay for endless insurance policy on rods either. A 15 year warranty is very generous. That is in most cases going to be a decade and a half after any cases of actual factory defects show themselves.

Like I said already, I respect your view. My post was more about how I see it from my point of view. Neither one of us, or any of the rest of us for that matter, have any need to justify to anyone else how or why we choose to do what we do.

It's OK to be both I think.

LOL...and too bad for your wallet that you had to go and try something better. And even worse for your wallet is that a guy who is spending so much time and effort on knob bearings is surely the kind of guy that the bait monkey stalks. You can't un-take the red pill.

The G2 handles and reel seats matched to an X-Ray blank are the bomb, easily my favorite set up. Add some Titanium framed Torzite semi micro guides and a Steez reel and I see nothing out there any better.

I can respect that, but on the other hand, I didn't work my rear end off for 40 years so that I could penny pinch myself on my hobbies. These are not the old days, and why "make do" when I can do so much better than that with nothing required other than a simple decision to do so?

Where is your trolling gear? Just kidding, but seriously your set up isn't outrageous considering that each type of bait has a particular type of rod which is going to work best for you when you are using it. Then, to keep from spending the day swapping baits, you might want a variety of sizes, colors, etc of the same type of baits. I usually take 10 combos when I go out, but like you say, some days I might use most of them, other days I could have all but one at the dock.