bulldog1935

Wish I could see it, doesn't show up for me. My raced 4600 just got its own aftermarket handle - Haneda Craft titanium with wood knobs. Photo lights don't do justice to the polished and heat-tinted titanium - it's iridescent like a rainbow, with bands of gold, red and blue. The round drag knob is ZZeta. The red handle nut was left over from a Studio Composite handle (I used on a salt reel with a KDW titanium nut).

I'll always be a Super Duty G fan. I like the mag brake, and have limited use for centrifugal. This replaced my 25-y-o BB-25SW four years ago. I sold Tournament Pro and Team Pro SP when I discovered Super Duty would out-cast both. Selling those bought my Zillion, and I bought another Super Duty G at Lew's sale price.

Here's what I fish with fly rod and a T-130 sinking line - the 200R hook, way back and high, takes short-striking fish like crappie and white bass. White bass are why I bought my first fly rod at 16. In our tailwater one day after a flood-prone monsoon spring, I was swinging a deep gravel bar to check for rainbow holdovers, and brought up two surprise stripers. The second one finished off the hook, though.

I put a lure cart together at Asian Portal for most of these - they've done the math and figured out it now takes $175 to get their gratis FedEx.

the last of my winter lure collecting, first, all big balsa for bass - a few propellers in there, Reptop has a prop in the back (or is it Leptop?). salt lures - everything on the left glows and sinks for night fishing. The two lures on the bottom right are both tiny wakebaits for salt finesse - they'll get single plug hooks. We've caught over-slot redfish in back lakes on size 6 poppers, and the clear Ima Quoop 45 ought to be as shrimpy as anything.

@A-Jay Thanks for the acknowledgement. My 72-y-o kayak-fishing and classic-steel-bike buddy Lou recently retired from the business world, and took up a part-time city job as a Trail Steward. He chose four 4-hour shifts a week, carrying tools, a gallon of water and dog dish on a heavy city upright bicycle. Each shift is a minimum 20-mi ride (round) between two trailheads on the greenways, and a postman's response to the weather. The job is more like trail moderator, reporting graffiti and vagrants, picking up glass, repairing flats, stuck brakes and dropped chains - the city keeps track of him on real-time gps. He's going to be hard as a rock, but the first couple of weeks making those rides without a day to recover took a toll on him - and just after a few weeks, he's limber as all get-out.

Milk crate (container store) with a cargo net (amazon). Carries everything I need, including lunch. Quick-stuffs weather shell and layers, and keeps them there in a blow. Has also made a turtle without a single item lost. If you find the hooks, you can make these really useful bungees, but they're sold ready to go as Clinch-It, from mariner-sails.com You can lock your crate in place with a little creative rigging.

I have the B.A.S.S. reprint of this book, also - and for everyone else, the e-book is free on googlebooks. ________________________________________________ Totally different subject, though I sometimes carry a multipiece rod in a half-frame bag to fish headwaters crossings where parking a car isn't allowed: What a weather window we had yesterday, before the ice storm gets here on Wed. I got in a badly needed 30-mi bike ride. It felt so good compared to when I was dragging in the morning, wondering if I was going to get out in the cold. Classic Texas fashion, my layers were peeled after 8 mi, and it warmed into mid-60s, clear and light S breeze.

Their warranty is excellent. My OG ML casting is the only rod I've ever broken, on a really dumb high-stick set when I was taking the lure out of the water and the redfish wasn't done with it. I really like fishing this rod, light-in-hand, transmits lure action feel, turns fish with shoulders. The rod transmits every blade of grass. I called 13Fishing expecting a discount replacement - they told me if it was fishing it was warranty, I cut the rod label section, mailed it in and 10 days later, a new rod arrived. Oh, and I landed the fish.

I looked up the Fate Black - the whole line is listed as Fast. My experience is with Omen Green, the whole line is also listed as Fast, and they are, with ML flex in the rod tip. They list the Fate Steel line as Mod-Fast, so I would expect the Fate Black to be faster. Also notably in the OG, spinning ML and casting ML, the spinning rod has a "longer" soft tip, and is rated for 1/16 oz at the low end, vs. 1/8 oz on the casting rod. Between those, I'd take the casting rod for neds. Note the Fate Black ML is rated 1/8 at the low end - it may be just the rod you're looking for for neds.

especially people with fly rods have a way of proving Gary's thesis. People making long brave casts with a fly rod rarely catch fish. They reinforce bad casting and worse fishing habits. If you're doing this right, you get a fish every 3rd cast, and most of them are at your feet.

they could just be the scared-y-ist. Something you really notice in pounded streams, is that fish feed on a time cycle for defense. They bear it as the food drifts by, then when one starts feeding, the competition causes the others to feed. Then it all shuts down again.

Gary Borger gives a talk on fishing stealth, summed up as, "big fish aren't smart, big fish are cowards." In the wild, brave and inquisitive fish become food, and by natural selection, only spooky fish breed. He reinforced it with anecdotal data from "fish psychologists" who determined the IQ of a trout is 6, and the smartest fish is carp, with an IQ of 12. So no, hopefully, we never get out-smarted by fish.

Fishing is something that brings us together on this forum - not divides us. So-and-so thinks. That's always a case of one finger pointing out and 3 pointing back in. You don't know how anyone else thinks, and it might be better just keep some of your own winter thoughts to yourself. fwiw, BFS = Bait Finesse System (the reel modifications) began in Japan for mountain stream fishing for wild native trout. Most of the packaged BFS reels, this is what they were designed for. People, including the Japanese, have since applied them to bass fishing, and even more recently to salt fishing. The gear people enjoy fishing is just the gear people enjoy fishing.

let's see Glenn, I gently pick on you about starting 2 threads on a BR sponsor's product in as many weeks, and we're the one's over-reacting. We like you Glenn, like your posts, and you run a great website. Knot strength has always been highest priority for Seaguar, and I believe my post and 20 years' dedication to the product support that. @garroyo130 the newer fluorocarbons are co-extruded with two different formulations giving the core and surface different properties. What you really pay for in the highest grade fluorocarbons is that each diameter has its own formulation to optimize those properties. The reason I've mentioned Toray Exthread before, they take this same approach with lines spooled for bulk-loading, and I've found their small diameter lines to be remarkably tough and abrasion-resistant. @Team9nine has independently made the same observation, and I think we're kind of picking on each other over a couple of threads.

When a click-pawl reel goes off, you always get strange looks from the guy nearby who just stepped out of the LL Bean catalog.

@Deleted account c. 1933 Medalist, the glass is Cummings Water Witch from '70s I could make this thread run for 2 pages with (big fish and) reels I bought, fished 5 years and sold for twice what I paid. Two of my go-to fly rods are 1915 and 1918.

jealous, always wanted dorado on fly rod, but on a few offshore Gulf trips never found the flotsam.

no offense, but no shop is going to line any of my reels - for 40 years. don't feel bad, you should hear the horror stories of people who let fly shops load backing on their antique Hardy.

@Mary Jane Young The Japanese offer many nice handles, certainly double handles, and nice resin-impregnated wood knobs. Unfortunately OOS, but you might watch for Rorolure.com to restock their very nice and cost-effective wood paddle knobs. Shimano Yumeya will offer nice handles for your reel, also wood knobs. Daiwa S and Shimano A share a common knob spindle and swap knobs. Daiwa and Shimano baitcasters are different keys at the handle nut - 7 mm for Shimano, and 8 mm for Daiwa. I just have this one example to show, a Karin-kobu knob on my buddy's Tica

This. Everything is made in batches now, and demand will cause it to sell out before it gets restocked. This, in turn, is complicated by supply limitations in the last several years. It makes sense that St. Croix will use their bandwidth to hawk what they have to sell now. Just like you did the reels, keep watching the thread, and you should get plenty of recommendations. Or be patient, watch closely for the Avid restock, and pounce...

it's not green

@Mary Jane Young welcome and thanks for posting. Great kype on that fella. Now you have an excuse to buy a custom power handle. This is Livre SB with a swap to EF30(mm) knob.

The math and especially mechanics of materials is what's important here. Getting stiffness in a metal frame is not near as difficult as getting stiffness in a plastic composite frame. Shimano elected to make the stem shorter on their composite-frame reels to get the stifness the reel needs. It's simply the trade-off required to get the extreme light weight so many demand now. If you remember old chopped-graphite-filled plastic reels from the '90s, too many flopped in the breeze. this is a Twin Power, with forged body and forged aluminum rotor, and the only medium-frame Shimano I own (a buddy sold it to me since the posts I made above). And that braid spool thing...

Fishing for a BR sponsor again, and so soon. It's bound to get more than a few strikes. I promise not to be the guy to mention Toray Exthread - oops. On a rush out the door on Alaska business trip just about 2 decades ago, brand-R fluoro tippet was all I could pick up at the fly shop on the way to the airport. I've never caught a rainbow over 30", and broke off 3 that size at knots on that trip. Never fished any fluorocarbon but Seaguar for the next 20 years. guess I'll have to settle for a Texas tailwater rainbow as my PB I use Gold in big sizes, especially on my surf leaders. Compared to Blue, it's thinner, more abrasion-resistant, and I'd definitely say stiffer for the same diameter. That also gives it less memory.