bulldog1935

complete and total absence of line memory lower mass/inertia on b/c spool farther casting with everything

That's much better than using a hardware store screw. Next to impossible to find a truss head on a metric screw here. It's probably a 2 mm or 2.5 mm screw, aluminum alloy, and standard lengths for Shimano frame screws are 5 mm, 6 mm, and 8 mm. It would be cheap enough to buy a gang of different stainless panheads to find the right screw thread and length from Bolt Depot ($0.08 ea), but you wouldn't get the correct screw head, and would have to use a washer. This is mainly why I didn't chime-in to make the suggestion.

I set my drag with a spring scale, always at the first guide, and usually limited by (1/4 of) the rod max line rating, so to 2-1/2 lbs on this rod. But even my ML and MM rods are set to 3 lbs drag. The plug was one size smaller than this one (38 mm), with size 8 barbless single plug hooks, and came undone in the net. Laid them on the dock table and took a quick photo of the 18-inch snook before I released it - he's close to hopping off there - I just drop my camera on lanyard and get him back in the water quickly. The 45 mm plug above took my first BFS redfish the month before, a 14" rat - he was solid on he size 6 barbed hook. There's really not much drama involved - both fish take good drag, and the first 3' of the 8' rod move around frantically, but the butt section has good power and control. Looking forward to one of these with shoulders on the rig.

Stazo flex jig I'm still fishing a cache of these from the '90s, have an ebay search set up, and buy a few more now and then when they turn up.

I suspect it will spin out with a small enough drill bit and the drill motor reversed, When the head is broken off the screw, there's no tension on the remaining thread shank.

@Pohaku That's a good question, and I don't know the answer - I also have friends fishing '18 Stella, Vanquish, Stradic and Twin Power with the original line roller - it's not going to freeze up on you in a few trips and maybe not in a few years. But Shimano sells a lot of this part. When you get to the point the line roller does need rebuilding, upgrading to the MTCW part would be wise.

@JS8588 I put my money in the Shimano-since-'18-Stella-spinning-reel camp. I have all 3 sizes, multiple reels in the small and large frame, and spare spools for all 3 sizes. I fish them hard from salt finesse to near offshore. I've mentioned before that spinning reel is the most complicated reel design, and really didn't get good until they began using computers for balance and mechanics of materials in design. The spindle and rotor are big lever arms acting on the drive. I've pushed reels before until they deformed to a reverse-cone line lay and wouldn't recover (time for a new reel). Shimano did their homework in mechanical design on these reels, and '22 Stella is going to be the next step in the right direction. OK, since I use all my Shimano spinning reels in the salt, they also all have MTCW line rollers.

casting consciousness grasshopper is only JDM

@Deleted account you certainly know how to clear a room

I had a Daiwa Millionaire 6H for about 5 years before the first day I tried a weightless rig and spiral cast, which is a really long overhead cast beginning with the rod pointing forward and down (you can do this from the corner of a dock or boat). Learning to load the rod centrifugally is a big advantage for maximizing distance, casting minimum weight, and skipping is the same idea, except you're loading the rod in the opposite clock direction from an overhead cast. The right rod for the cast is Everything. Backlash is always a fair discussion here. Thumb, reel adjustment, smooth cast acceleration, are all honed skills. It disappears from your conscious mind. One day you just recognize that you haven't backlashed a baitcaster in two years - that's when I was ready for braid.

All great modifications on the new reel - improving the frame structure, longer spool stroke, but I'm especially happy to see they improved the line roller. The line roller has always been Shimano weak point. The MTCW upgrade has been around for awhile, though, and is an instant improvement for salt use. @garroyo130 Shimano's line roller from Stella down is chromed bronze, rubber seals, and stuffed with lithium grease (what's the point of BB). Even Tica and Daiwa use TiN plasma-coated inside and out. The seals don't stop saltwater, they only retain and concentrate the salt.

TSL grasswalker is a 4" neutral density soft jerk-bait, 1/4 oz, you rig on a swimbait hook. It dog-walks subsurface with just about any retrieve, and is the best mullet imitation made. It fishes slow really well. A couple of good solid sets, but let them eat it first. https://troutsupport.com/products/trout-support-lure The red is choice for low-angle sunlight early and late. The best 3" soft bait is Z-man Minnow Z, rigged on 1/8 oz Texas-eye jighead (this would be a cloudy day color with turbidity from high river discharge) Small shrimp and glass minnows are major food in winter. You can fish a DOA shrimp below that popping cork. For bottom-bouncing redfish, Vudu shrimp is choice. Big flashy lures will take specs all winter for slashing into bait balls of glass minnows, but both snook and redfish are pickier, and want something finesse size for their winter glass minnows. Of course, they'll both eat big mullet, but may not if they're cuing on glass minnows. If you see redfish loitering, they're probably sipping glass minnows - if they're grazing, shrimp. 2" swim shad lures rigged tandem work well, and give you a little more weight to cast. Tie them together with a long piece of leader and make the lengths uneven with a surgeon's loop. Glass minnows show up under dock lights at night, and are concentrated by tide and wind currents on structure during the day. Glow in front and blue in the back is choice for dock fishing. Especially snook will take the blue lure at night. Compared to striking bass, give salt fish more time to eat their food before you set the hook. Especially specs will climb up the back of bait, injuring it with their canines, and come back a 2nd and 3rd time - redfish take everything to the back of their throat and crush it.

@Eric 26 The entire concept that there is somehow a war between spinning finesse tackle and baitcast finesse tackle is puerile at best. I've been at this for well over a decade (14 years), since beginning with my daughters (decades longer if you count UL). The BFS addition is new, though bait finesse goes way back, and prewar spinning reels began as finesse tackle (it was called threadlining). Spinning finesse and baitcast finesse are allies in the war on fish tacos.

Everybody here thinks you're a nice guy, that's not a problem. If I knew how to talk you down from this, I'd try, but even that would be off-topic. If I quote Jude, I'll get kicked off the forum. Rick has LEO skills to call on. This is a gear forum, the topic of this thread is specific gear. It's not about people or "kinds" of people (there's no such thing) or what you think they're thinking, which never works - you can only think about what you're thinking. Stick to the gear and leave people out of it, or at least give them the benefit of the doubt, don't quote them out of context. Gear and fish, and why the gear is fun to fish. If you can't say something good, don't...

@4g63power Great reel, Snazzy handle with my favorite Livre b/c knob. The long handle is both a mechanical advantage and lure-presentation advantage on the X-high-geared reel. Exactly why I eventually put the counter-balanced SB handle on my high-geared Super Duty. The purchase of the handle + ff knob worked out well for me, because I had a cobbled handle on my offshore jigging reel that benefited from the very light and large EF-37 knob that came on the SB. The 14-g knob replaced a 40-g pot-metal knob on the Gomexus carbon handle, and took all the torque out of the rod. The low-geared Caiman doesn't need a long handle, but you can't beat a big lightweight knob - poor man's Conquest.

Inflatable kayaks are a good option to look into. You have to watch the sun, though - more than a few bursts because of sitting in the sun have been reported. The Tarpon 100 @michaelb mentioned is a workhorse. I set my daughter up in a Redfish 10 when she was 12-y-o. She's graduating from TAMU this spring, and it rotates for me as a river boat - 44 lbs. Very stable, wind slippery, and surprising efficient glide. That's one thing about tall pontoon rafts off the river, you have a good view, but you're at the mercy of the wind. adding a ps for @carrageenan My kayaking buddy Josh, owner of TKF forum and the best inshore fisherman I know, used to rig kayaks at JerryB's in Corpus while attending TAMU-Corpus. He's also kept up with the industry better than anyone else I know, and maintains this spreadsheet on kayak models - it's all there. Polyethylene is here to stay, and if you can find an older model boat on craigslist with low bottom rash and stored out of the sun, it's worth buying.

Reducing the loaded spool mass and inertia reduces the need for start-up brake, and gives the same mid-cast brake result with less mag force, That means more of your cast goes into casting. You get distance with less effort, which improves both reliability and accuracy. these are ZPI Alcance magnesium spools, 7 and 11 g. This simple mod to a Revo impresses me more than any other reel I own. The two spools represent a braid spool and a mono spool. There's nothing BFS about this reel, it's all bass, but it will throw the fool out of 1/8 oz. If you note the rave reviews on recent Okuma Haikai, most of those probably stem from the new 9.5-g low-mass spool. You gain more than light end with low inertia. Low mass and inertia with big weights reduces the need for start-up brake - I hope this thing is on.

You're going to find people who prefer dual-mag Lew's, who prefer the new centrifugal, and who prefer the linear mag brake. A lot is going to depend on how they fish and how much weight they throw. After my first Super Duty, the second Lew's low-profile reel I purchased was a Custom Inshore with with dual brake - I put it away after a year, then gave it away. For my money, the add-on centrifugal of the dual brake isn't worth its own weight - it's less useful than simply removing the weight it adds to the spool. Helping prevent backlash is the whole idea of any brake. I honestly thought it would help my buddy Lou give baitcaster another try - it wasn't enough for him. Personally, the only backlash in my memory bandwidth was April 2018 - it was caused by a single line wrap on my rod tip. Swapped in my spare reel and finished a great morning. This is my friend Mark, down from Arizona for a month at the beach with his wife and friends. It was really a great day to paddle to Little Cut - the flat drained hard by two days of SW to NW blow, and this is the tide coming back in with the prevailing SE - he had already released 5 specs before I got my first lure rigged - they were impaling themselves on 3" swim shad Overall a great trip, I fished the SW one day and the NW the next on two different flats with my buddy Josh, and all three were bang-up days.

random display of even more "elitist" tackle and the "sinners" who use it... "...and put us on fish"

My home turf has the water and the fish to throw in the UL or L trout rod. Hill country limestone creeks have endemic Guadalupe bass. When I took Kevin Townsend here, he noted they will live in faster water than trout occupy in coldwater. We call them Texas Brook Trout, and 15" is a lunker for the species. This is on a fly rod with a sinking line, but the BFS UL with a sinking trout plug will plug right in here. I've mentioned this before, the Japanese began BFS-tuning the small Ambassadeurs for stream trout fishing a decade ago. They've since applied the reels to finesse bass fishing, and it also caught on here. The salt finesse is even newer, with BFS rods showing up only within the past few years, though the Japanese have been finesse fishing salt with other tackle for hundreds of years. The US recognition of BFS is a bass thing, but all off-shelf BFS reels made in Japan are made first for stream trout fishing. The Japanese don't market stream and salt BFS rods to USM. Japan tackle exported to the US is aimed at our traditional definitions of bass and salt as they see it (good luck finding a low-geared spinning reel). For every model they export to the US, they offer 5 other models to JDM. @volzfan59 BFS = Bait finesse system - baitcast reel with the combination of a shallow lightweight spool, low-inertia bearings, and light line. Proof that it's not a fad is that big bait reels are heading in the same direction, with lighter-weight, gradually shallower spools, and touting low-inertia bearings. Daiwa uses their own mag-sealed "micro bearings" in every upscale reel size now.

If you look at BFS not as a fad, but as improved small braid or light-line fishing with a baitcast reel, it all makes a bit more sense. Yes, at the extreme, you can build a baitcaster that will throw 2 or 3 g. The same BFS reel can throw 3/4 or 1 oz. Rods to match a BFS reel don't have to be UL, and can be all-range My all-range bass rod, 1/16 to 5/8 oz My salt rod will throw 2 to 20 g, though I'll admit to using it primarily for 3/16 oz and less. It blows comparable spinning tackle out of the bay. I built this braid Ambassadeur for a small-water frogger with 20-lb X-braid, and it's 100% backlash-proof, from 3 g to an ounce and more - no further adjustments after initial set-up.

The unfortunate part is limited supply train over the last couple of years - most of the good stuff has sold out, especially aftermarket spools. It seems the Chinese are restocking sooner than Avail and KTF in Japan. The AMO spools are really pretty good, and I believe that's what Rick bought from SDScustom on ebay. (This KTF-look-alike is a Ray's Studio spool from Thailand)

As I mentioned to Rick, the nice thing about converting an existing reel - it's a swap-in spool. You don't destroy the reel, you just have a different spare spool and line in a can. It's a good way to test the water, especially if you can find a good deal on a nice L or ML rod. It doesn't replace anything you're already doing, just adds to it. The cost-effective Shimano rod he snagged also has a nice wide lure range of <1/8 to 1/2 oz. @casts_by_fly Rick, let's take it off the board. I'll send you a board pm for what I know Ron

Both Steez and Zillion SV TW (1000 reels) are rated saltwater-safe by Daiwa. I've fished mine a year and couldn't say more than you couldn't pry it from my fingers, etc. Two things that Daiwa would lean on for this claim - good anodizing on both aluminum and magnesium, and their mag-seal bearings. Filiform corrosion that @Bass_Fishing_Socal alluded is a Paint issue with All aluminum and magnesium (pot metal to aircraft sheet). I fished my Lew's BB-1NG in the salt 40 years ago through most of 3 decades, and it's still here. My guide buddy Tim had a bad habit of putting reels away without any rinse or maintenance. His lasted a season - the powder-coated pot-metal frame absolutely came apart, beginning with filiform under the paint. Mine has both the original frame paint and wrought-sheet anodizing with a bit of boat rash. Even this non-salt-rated reel was such a hit in the Corpus area, Roy's Bait & Tackle eventually bought the parts inventory from Zebco.

@Phil77 - that's exactly right - and it doesn't even make sense. I went to the trouble to set up my SP with low-inertia spool bearings and braid just to cast 1/8-oz Z-man. I embarrassed myself when I discovered Super Duty will out-distance it with the same lure.