bulldog1935

For me, it's 7' MM rods, my best spinner is St. Croix Legend Glass, and my best baitcaster is Crowder IM6. I'll also agree with the speed not mattering, but if I have a high-geared reel, I like a long handle on it for lure finesse.

Eric, thanks for the vote of confidence, and I even looked at what's out there from Ray's Studio and AMO/Momo and a few other China makers. There are some nice spools, but the trick is matching spool and spindle dimensions. Some on the "Express" site are as cheap as $12, which isn't a bad gamble. Could look at spools made for various Abu Revo, look at their measurement drawings, and take accurate measurements on your spool. This one is for Black Max - overall spool diameter is 33 mm

If you're inclined to sell, though, it's still a seller's market out there - people are often having a tough time finding the gear they want. When I decided I didn't have a niche for Lew's centrifugal brake compared to mag brake, I sold EX condition Tournament Pro and Team Pro SP. They were 1 and 2 years old, admitted few hours use compared to my preferred mag reels, and sold each for only $15 less than the discount prices I paid 1 and 2 years earlier. They were snapped up on BR Classifieds in hours.

this is cheating in a tide pass Duo Spearhead Quattro Ryuki 70 (mm) Swapped the size 8 trebles with #7 Gami velcro. Too big to be a glass minnow, but can't imagine any lure that imitates the bait ball better.

in that case, light oil is the bane of one-way roller bearings. If lubed, they need viscous oil or grease.

I'm not familiar with that particular reel, but on original Lew's BB-1s, I replaced A/R dogs every few years, and fished them on the days the A/R went out. In the case of this weak, thin bronze part, it could only be hammered so many times before it cried uncle and forged to a shape that wouldn't engage. Full-time A/R roller bearing on BB-25 was a huge step up. I cropped this out of a schematic I found online. https://dassets.shimano.com/content/dam/global/cg1SHIFSPL/EV/06FX2500FB.pdf No, the FX does not have a roller-bearing clutch,, rather it has a toggle pawl that ratchets on the rotor. It looks like the spring 10138 keeps the A/R pawl normally engaged, and the A/R lever and cam allows reverse by loading against the spring to open the toggle. I would look first at the spring - it's either worn out, broken, or not engaged in the toggle.

You're going to get the whole catalog of reels recommended without giving a price range. It's low-geared reels that are hard to find - just about everything is offered in 6-8 gearing.

and I said it was interesting, because we're just about on the same clock.

I've only broken one rod in my life, and it was a 13Fishing Omen Green on a bad high-stick set. I was taking the lure out of the water when the redfish snagged it, and I bad-set just as he exploded. 13Fishing gave me a great warranty replacement, and I finished the trip with my Cabelas 3-pc back-up - made from TFO Traveler blank, and bought on close-out for $50. Not my favorite rod, does the job in a pinch.

@Boomstick 3 seasons, interesting number. Of course we don't have seasons here, well, summer and winter with intermittent summer, and we fish year round. The first X-braid I tried was by accident, Florida Fishing Products Distance Braid on my first inshore Stradic 4000, and it's been fishing since fall '19. Bought it because it was x8, coated, and I was unimpressed with uncoated x4 braids. I can't wear this stuff out, 15-lb is 0.13 mm, and I believe it to be the same line as Varivas.

@Fishingmickey Center Point, first bend below Lion's Park. Bring a wading staff - the rutted dolomite to get this far can be really slick. If you keep going, you'll find the shelf and deep pool where we sight-fish gar, and farther down is the unnamed waterfall that stacks white bass. Right below this is our hill country version of a natural lake - flood waters lifted the flagstone to create a deep hole and natural dam at the same time. Only Jimbo is intrepid-enough to wade to the next run down.

Specific to rods and not counting fly rods, all niche-specific, I fish 2 rods that cost more than $200, and 2 more that cost $400. All of these are extreme light in hand, and side-by-side, the more expensive rods are 25% lighter, and out-perform less-expensive rods in the same niche. I bought them with a purpose. My bread-and-butter rods were under $200, and do their jobs perfectly. Back to the fly rods, in tight quarters, no current rods perform with the mid-length, mid-line-weight "high-tech" glass fly rods from the '70s. Good shopping can find a half-dozen of these venerable glass rods for the cost of one new too-long graphite (or shorter graphite that Doesn't Work). Two really nice bass came from this photo field. Add a couple of newer spendy fly rods that have their place in coastal wind.

No one ever bashes low end gear or its owner. I'll tell you in advance where this same high-end-gear-bashing thread always ends up. Name dropping - "the pros are like me and people who buy high-end gear are incompetent" Colloquial humor doesn't translate across geography. Sarcasm transliterates on the internet, and never works, unless your goal is to leave a rotting taste in the reader's mind. No one defines their dollar crossover point the same as anyone else, though I guess Van Staal is high-end gear to everybody. No one cares about your math any more than you care about theirs.

the math is always the same. Thirty $80 combos cost the exact same as eight $300 combos. Seems like the better purchase is the gear you're going to use rather than accumulate.

Pretty much all of us who have tried different braids and focused in on a choice or choices for niches have moved past the problems of cheaper braids. Not looking to randomly find more problems. It's still easiest to talk about braids in silk thread sizes - this is PE#0.8

120' is a good cast. I have a Steez with Roro-X spool that will cast 3 g that far and a bit more. (2-g jighead) My custom Abu CT surf-lure reel will cast 1/4-oz beyond 70 yds, and easily hit the honest 100 yds with a half-ounce or more - that's on an 8' rod.

if I advocate anything, it's use mag brake for distance casting, light lures, and facing the wind, and centrifugal brake for heavy lures, but always use your thumb. What I linked above was just explaining, not advocating. Start-up overshoot - the first backlash - occurs because of the spool initially being jerked by the lure weight - this happens regardless of how you cast, though you can make it worse by adding jerk in your cast. Think of jerk as force-squared, and you only need force to keep the spool spinning once it starts. So the spool starts with way too much force left over. If you had an old Ambassadeur, you've be very familiar with it. Centrifugal brake takes off that excess energy on start up. Centrifugal doesn't do much on mid-cast, unless you have it set so high it shortens your cast distance - so without a mag brake, you should be using your thumb mid-cast. Daiwa SV is a special non-linear mag brake that duplicates centrifugal on start-up, then reduces to a linear mag brake for mid-cast.

this may help, once again, the primer I wrote on the 3 types of backlash ad 4 types of brakes

Now you're talking On top is cocahoe minnow on long-discontinued Stazo jighead with double hook. 1/4- and 3/8-oz - this is for fishing 3+' when you can't see the grass. Of course since you can't get Stazo jigheads any more, can substitute with similar-weight salt-hook jigheads. If I didn't already have a good supply of Stazo, I'd be using heavier Texas-eye jigheads here. In the middle is Z-man Texas-eye jighead in 1/8 oz and 3" MinnowZ for mid-column - stays in the zone, right on top of the grass, and never hauls up grass. On bottom in my upper photo is Texas-eye Finesse jighead in 1/15 oz with SlimSwimZ 2.5", which does well for imitating winter glass minnows in tide passes. What makes both the Stazo rig and Texas-eye jigheads so effective is the lure flexes in every direction, making them feel natural, and making the fish hang on to them. The best lure I know for the skinny water is TSL Grasswalker on unweighted swimbait hook. Neutral density, 1/4 oz, casts like a bullet - they stay in the shallow zone, and dog walk with just about any retrieve - best mullet imitation I know. You can also fish these on weighted swimbait hooks for bottom-bouncing winter tide passes - this rig will work anywhere a Vudu shrimp will work.

If it makes you feel better, in the C&R zone of our tailwater, we target the stripers that take big trout from the end of people's fly lines. Never heard of one caught one on a trout swimbait, (Castaic, etc.) but they take the same bottom-bounced cats whisker the rainbows will.

I bought a reel from Don, and he sent a bag of lure bodies - they come in a bag of salt. They look pretty good - neds with a thin pointed tail - but won't be rigging one until I get it on the water. Don's a really nice guy, btw.

While I'm guessing this is a bass-lure thread, a point about the trout and hooks. If trout catch and release is your goal, hook point keeling down protects the fish, though I've caught and released many fine trout bottom-bouncing a keel-up cats whisker on Teeny fly line. The reason for C&R concern is trout's spine is so close to their mouth, a keeled-up hook can impale their spinal cord. Only time I saw this happen was my daughter on Rio Chama with a size 12 nymph - it's ok, legal bag there, and we papered the trout for her dinner. When I'm fishing floating line, cats whisker + dropper, my cats whisker is tied with conehead, and keels hook-point-down.

Close, but here's DOA on a Z-man Texas-eye jighead - there's an algorithm to putting lure body on one of these jigheads- you grab the hook with pliers and twist the lure body into final position as you're just getting the bend-keeper to pop through. I also fished it for the first time last year with TTF shad tails in TS Beta storm tide, and this jighead moved to the top tier for my inshore mid-column - always in the zone, right on top of the grass, doesn't haul up grass, and hooks fish like velcro.

If you tie 8-lb and 20-lb mono together in any single bend knots, and pull until they break, the 8-lb will cut through the 20-lb. A small metal wire will certainly do the same thing.

Here's my improved Allbright, YGK PE#1 - same diameter as your braid - to 10-lb Seaguar Grand Max That's the smallest microguide size on a BFS rod. Don't know about FG knot, but when tightening this knot, I'm holding both standing and tag ends of the fluoro together, and rolling the braid wraps while tightening the braid tag end (usually have the braid tag end in my teeth) - and not pulling hard, just shortening the wraps and taking up slack. Before final tightening, I take up fluoro on its tag end. This is a slippery knot, and rock-solid. Sounds like you should be holding the fluoro tag end together with the standing braid until all slack is out of the braid wraps. Tag ends are the parts of both lines that you trim away when done. Standing line is the long part you're going to keep.