bulldog1935

I like your sentiment @A-Jay but can't see your photo...

Pirogues are perfect for the bayou, that's why they built them. There are some pirogue style kayaks out there, like NuCanoe. Kysek builds a fiberglass pirogue that weighs 43 lbs. On our coast flats, you'd sail away to the next bay system, and have to hitch home. Speed and distance (read as efficient and wind-slippery) are why we choose our kayaks.

Rode with the Sunday morning crack-of-dawn Alamodome sprint group and finished well up in the lead group. We take over downtown streets every Sunday morning, and kind of terrorize downtown while everything is still shut down. I was riding my '74 Raleigh International, on its 3rd rebuild since college, and built up much more French than Last English Club Racer. My also fishing buddy Lou today debuted the realization of a 3-year dream. This is a custom 650B rando from Lou's mind and out through Brian Chapman's hands. Brian built virtually everything, (of course the frame) crank, brakes, stem, racks. We always stop for coffee on our way back uptown. Here are some detail photos

What are the Current Anodizing Processes? | AAC Here's chalk stream corrosion on a reel from the mid 1920s. Putting them away wet and allowing the salts to slowly dry on the reel without cleaning them caused the gradual attack. The arsenic/sulfuric-acid bronzing used then wasn't must resistance. Note that the Erinoid (galbraith) handle knob is pristine. Sulfuric acid bronzing used then was also called lead finish, because the finished reels were coated with a lampblack paste - like pencil lead. This attack is from breakdown of automotive lubes used on reels - naphthenic acid attacked both the erinoid knob and the wiped off the "lead" finish - next to a mint, boxed version of the same reel. The green in the "cheese handle" comes from copper salts and corrosion of the brass spindle screw.

Hi friend, Hot Sauce Grease is Perfection on click-pawl drag gear in fly reels. High contact stress drive gears need more viscous grease, but Hot Sauce stays soft for a decade, and doesn't decompose - lithium grease is the bane of valuable antique fly reels. Zebco ran the grease in salt-spray tests for the equivalent of many decades. I like other oils better than Hot Sauce Lube, but the grease works great here: I do like the Hot Sauce oil for tapping threads.

Antique reels has been my hobby business for 20 years, and I've cleaned OP's antique reels up to 140 years old and valued up to $6000. Here's the dilute vinegar solution I use.

metallurgist, corrosion engineer, PE here - aluminum is attacked by alkali, which includes soaps, degreasers and even hard water. (best choice for degreasing aluminum is dilute vinegar) Anodize is already thin, literally numbers of atomic layers - that color anodize may be notably thinner than a deeper hard anodize.

I have one rainbow-anodize reel stand on my inshore size Tica. Blends pretty well on this reel, balancing the flamed-titanium Livre EF30 knob. But yeah, I wouldn't want a whole reel in that finish. the Dress Origin stand, which has one of the better hook keeper designs, is sold by Evike (AL, CA) - 2 different handle cap threads, Daiwa/Shimano common, offshore Daiwa. here's what reel stands are for - they make a handy hook keeper that also eliminates line twisting around your guides: the o-rings also pin line for wrapping a complex rig and taking the hook back to your first guide frame

Shorter rods give you an accuracy advantage fishing close. Longer rods give you a longer cast and a leverage advantage on fish.

until it gets to the other end - the thud is louder than the retort. And delayed by the subsonic distance. I normally plink from SK magazine cans, because consistent wax composition is important on .22 accuracy, but, occasionally shoot the Aquila 60g just because they're so fun. (clean and start over on SK)

our tailwater is taken over with tubers from spring break to labor day. A good cheetos fly matches the hatch.

Using tape to start braid on spool, you should still begin with an arbor knot and tape over it. If you want a thinner, tougher, cleaner alternative to electrical tape, acrylic-glue PE film tape is seriously thin and seriously tough. It's so tough, I use it for seizing ends on knotted sail line (kayak rigging). this is the first knot on a trolley line ring, which is going to be dragged along hull fittings for a decade

my daughter has a Henry H001, which sighted-in 3 connected pairs at 50 yd on its new peep sight - the last 2 pairs on bullseye were the same hole. Here's my .22 field artillery - '85 with Creedmoore sights and variable-aperture eye cup. I can hit a dime at 75 yds after two adjustment shots. the sight view with my favorite globe insert the fun thing about shooting .22 with peep sight is 75 yds is the same challenge as a high-powered rifle on a 300-yd range.

Where I grew up bass fishing, deep, clear, TX hill country reservoirs, there just wasn't any cover, unless you happened to stumble across where people leaded their spent Christmas trees to make crappie holes. I fished through 3 spinning reels over decades, all because of outclassing them in the salt. The short-lived one was my Mitchell 300 from high school - it was worn out after four years of fall jetty fishing (still have the reel). When I sheared off the handle pin on my 300, the only replacement (at Gibson's) was the long torpedo-grip (from the 400). Guess that put me in torque land, but what wore out those gears in four years of fall spanish macks from the jetties was the combination of me outclassing it and its nylon gear - nylon gear - holy crap, nylon gear. Likewise, fished through my 25-year Penn 4400SS and 4200SS (with help from my younger daughter) each on king mackerel and redfish - spindle/bushing slop developed, reverse-cone line lay. But reels were never really designed then, they were rule of thumb, trial and error. I've certainly never twisted line against paying drag, letting fish take drag against the rod butt, and recover with rod pumping has always been a natural reaction for me with spinning tackle, or even with baitcasters when needed - feet on the gunwhale for jacks and kings. OK, and I threw away one spinning reel from the '90s, it was the Cardinal-derived Lew's, of course from Zebco, but the plastic frame was so bad, the reel flopped in the breeze. Shakespeare WondeRods? I'll plead The Fifth. I did like my workhorse MH Berkley TriSport for both inshore and bass fishing. There are always regional preferences. Here, Conolon was King for for light fast power, and Silaflex was class.

Based on your version of the Five, internally, I would expect the 5500C to be essentially the same. The C denotes ball bearing. I prefer the reels with spindle adjustment caps on both sides, and there's a good chance you could swap parts between both reels. Abu Garcia hasn't had functioning schematics pages for about a year; I believe the Ultracast spools with separate spindle and the bearings in the spool originated with the 5500C3. The only date reference I have for Ulracast is 1990, but that relates specifically to the first black CT reel. However, the Five schematics I linked in my first reply show Ultracast originated between '87 and '89. As I mentioned above, both your Abu's drive the level wind mechanism off the spool during the cast. Your Tatula does not - the spool is completely disengaged from the level wind during the cast, so it should cast notably farther, simply because the spool can spin faster and longer.

of course you can splice mono and fluoro. I do something similar for coast fishing on UL, but I'm attaching larger fluoro leader for abrasion resistance. Double-uni or surgeon's knot both work for similar diameters but you can also loop-to-loop by putting a surgeon's loop or perfection loop on each. The loop-to-loop is actually stronger with different diameters.

I didn't learn on closed-face, but my first pick was a Heddon 236 spinning reel in a Heddon glass rod combo. Watched my dad toil with Zebcos until I finally turned him to baitcasters by buying his first for a birthday (and his second and 3rd). There are some better spincast combos and niches. I began my girls (3 and 4 years old) with Zebco UL-1 on Eagle Claw Featherlight glass UL casting rods. These things work pretty well for limestone creeks, and a boon for nursery seatrout. For nursery trout off Fulton Beach pier, certainly getting the wind behind us helped cast to the edge of the lights. We'd catch them at about 40/hr on weightless cigar cork, 3-4' leader, 1/0 croaker hook, and small live shrimp - following dinner at Cap'n Benny's, and just before ice cream. A ritual with every coast trip. But if you want a recommendation, buy a basic spinning combo suited to match the lure weights you want to throw - probably Light to Medium-Light.

Proper Drag grease is also how you prevent wear by carbontex washer edges on bronze main shaft/gear. also note you never need an excess of Drag grease, but a continuous thin film.

Again, I'm fishing mostly inshore and casting lighter lures (1/8 to 3/8 oz) for distance and shallow fishing. My reels with backing are loaded with Sufix 832 20-lb (0.24 mm). My shallow spool for 1/8 oz has no backing, and 22-lb X-braid, which is only 0.17 mm. I'm delighted with both for my fishing.

I've heard people talk about mentors, but I was always the tough to mentor type - I've been trying to teach my dad to fish since I was 12. My friends range from natural-born to just happy to be out. A couple who can over-think themselves out of fish in any situation. But the fish are always gravy. The good times with friends are most important.

Are you spooling the line under tension? I put the source spool on an axle on a bench vise run the line through a phone book - can put weight on top to adjust the tension I put my rod in a fixed rod holder with the line only going through one or two guides. I can also walk away from it and the line stays under tension. if I need to knot backing to working line, I do it on the loose side of the phone book, swap source spools, and the line to the reel still stays under tension.

8 miles is a respectable paddle any day. If you're doing it right, it all begins in your core muscles, and your legs will be almost as tired as your arms. Also should bring along some good calories and good liquids.

Some of the reels I've bought were only available in high speed retrieve at the time - as high as 8.3 gears. I put on a longer-pitch handle to tune them to my likes, which has the effect of slowing them down, and putting more torque into the reel through the handle. Something else to keep in mind, the diameter of a low profile spool is small compared to the Abu 5000 series spool, so the higher speed gearing may not be much more line pick-up per handle rotation than the Abu 5.3 gears. I looked up the Abu, 26"-line-picked-up/handle-rotation with 5.3 gears. Tatula is the same with 6.3 gears, and 30"/rev with 7.1 gears - that's not a huge difference.

A good probability your spool was not centered because of end-cap tension. Of course I can adjust both sides on mine, but I eyeball them as close to center as I can get. If you do get a new spool, it's only 5 mm deep for braid, so you shouldn't have the problem, anyway. But especially loading the spool, use the cap tension just to center the spool. With the NLW, the 0.21 mm braid tends to hunt to the lowest point on the spool, so it pretty much levels itself when fishing. Again, I do restore my hand level-wind in my working line a few days after every trip. It's worth the effort just for potential minor backlash to have a good line lay - a level wind reel won't do this: tight intimate lay in one direction, and wider, quicker lay in the opposite direction - it's pretty much backlash-proof unless you truly mess up. I also have spare deep spools for mono, and took these photos when loading the deep mono spool. Some NLW spools like Seigler are designed to get the tight line lay to the left by themselves, so to get perfect level wind, all you have to do is push the line for the quicker, wider line lay to the right.

pun intended, if I was in your boat, I'd grab a Metanium.