bulldog1935

Traditional short UL rods and pretty much all casting and spinning rods are parabolic taper. This is what makes traditional UL noodle-y and feel like the fish is turning you instead of vise-versa. With a good progressive taper "finesse" rod, longer should have a fast mid, which solves noodle-y I can't report on the BPS rod, but I've fished salt XUL and UL a dozen years now. If you look at Japanese small game (rockfish) rods, typified by Major Craft, a longer rod gets a longer fast mid section and a heavier butt section. These are designed for casting from shore (that's the rocks in rockfish). What you gain with a longer rod is casting distance, the ability to turn bigger fish, and the ability to throw heavier lures without changing the light end.

you don't want the 10-lb, and the 20-lb is marginal for baitcaster use, unless you can write-off backlashes from your skill level. The trade-off is the 30-lb will cast farther, and the 40-lb will give you less problems at the b/c spool.

If you check the thread about the differences between $200 and $400 reels, the exact opposite is true about $20-30 reels. They don't have a big investment in design/manufacturing/tooling. They don't have skilled labor. They use the cheapest possible materials and manufacturing techniques. They've built a reel with the function and smoothness to impress you to buy it, and hopefully the durability to last until you get out of the store. Keep in mind a spinning reel is the most complicated mechanism of any fishing tackle. The loads on shafts, gears and bearings/bushings are magnified by long and offset levers - the spindle, the rotor - even the handle. This is why we fished through the very best of them when we were young - the people making them didn't quite understand what was involved - they're getting better with computer design. You should set a realistic entry level target price for yourself, then review something like TackleAdvisors $100 reel shoot-out, so you can pick between design features, strong and weak points, that make sense in how you plan to use the reel.

A copolymer I didn't mention, and used for a dozen years on 500-size salt XUL, is Bluewater Firepower from Kamikaze Fishing in Australia. It's remarkably small diameter for copolymer, 4-lb is 0.14 mm, very low memory, casts extremely well, and abrasion resistant. It landed seatrout to 23", and even a double with 19" and 17". Long story, a friend has me customizing four of his reels, and he included a new Tica Cetus for a gift. I tried to order line for it from Kamikaze, but neither their website nor ebay will let US buy from Oz. Since I was buying Japan reel parts for my friend, I threw 4-lb Toray Exthread fluoro in my AP order, which is 0.17 mm diameter, and hope it's as good as its press (price?), but Toray says each lb-test rating gets its own different resin blend and processing.

It's hard not to like all braids compared to mono/fluoro, just because they don't have line memory. But I do like the good soft coated braids better than hard braid. My last braid purchase was 300 yds of YGK Oddport for a surf reel. Kind of cool, it came on 3 connected and keyed-together 100-yd spools. Kinda like the old days

When Rich Hedenberg (RH Composites) built me a surf rod, I asked him about Winn grips v. shrink-tube over EVA. He reported bad durability with Winn grips and strongly recommended EVA + shrink.

Hi Jim, I simply apply a drop of Pink Zap CA, then flick the line so it doesn't spread past the braid wraps. Usually do this under a strong LED light or my Ott magnifier/light. I wait a few minutes for it to begin curing on its own, then spray with accelerator. This is an 18+5-turn improved Allbright on my surf line to 30-lb Gold. (happened to hit one of the green meter marks)

Seaguar Abrazx IMO is the best-buy fluoro. With Seaguar Tatsu, you can gain a little less line memory at almost 3X the cost. Other than trying a Berkley copolymer that extruded to a smaller diameter and locked up my daughter's Penn 4200SS spool most of 10 years ago, catching speepshead on the flats, nothing but Seaguar for me because of their exceptional knot strength. (there's a long story about other brand fluoro tippet and 30+" Kenai rainbows)

I've been buying my YGK X-braid from JDM. I think it's noteworthy that Daiwa does not sell a braid that matches Samurai in Japan domestic market. The color, markings and diameter/strength on Samurai exactly match YGK X-braid Upgrade. I don't think it's a coincidence and, most probably, YGK provides Samurai This is the X-braid Optinium, which is the same line with 10-m color changes. A remarkable 14-lb test in PE# 0.6 (0.13 mm) - this diameter is 6-lb test in 832. I've also noticed from filling spools that YGK actually measures a bit less than its published diameter, while 832 actually measures a little thicker. (12-lb Seaguar blue on the left) My surf reels are loaded with YKG Oddport and Castman PE# 1.5 (0.21 mm) is 35 lb test PE# 2.5 (0.26 mm) is 46 lb test.

If I was after one workhorse spinning reel, it would be the Twin Power to get metal frame + metal rotor. For extreme UL touch, I already have the Vanquish.

hey Ryan, Fishing rods have been purpose-built for 4000 years, beginning from wood and reeds. These natural organic composites have directional fiber strength. Rhetorically, how fast can you make a piece of wood - it all depends on how you plan to use it, and how you shape it, but a hammer handle is pretty dam* fast. If you want to know about rods right after the Civil War, I've linked on this thread and others to James A. Henshall's 1881 tome on bass fishing. At that time, reach was everything - a rod was still a pole, and casting was a limited activity. Doc Henshall takes credit for designing the first bass rod under 12' (fly rods were most often 18' then). I've also mentioned on this, and especially threads on the rodbuilding page, that the modulus properties of split cane and S-glass are equivalent. Conventions, techniques and tastes have evolved over the past 120 years, but, you can find historic cane rods properly built for every purpose, from creek fly fishing to tuna and tarpon - and are still made today in labors of love. Of course, most people splitting cane today are making fly rods, but all are derived from well-functioning cane tapers from "the golden age" You're also going to find the rod tapers that we would like to fish today were generally not what was made for blue-collar mass production and consumption. Instead, these purpose-built tapers stood out from the herd, and were mostly custom-built for affluent clients. One of the very best and fastest fly rod tapers is F.E. Thomas Light Special, designed in the early '30s, and copied today by rodbuilder Dennis Stone. A "superprogressive" dry fly taper, this rod will accurately cast the leader alone, and gives the uncanny feeling of casting itself out to 50'. The 6' Thomas Special Mahogany Grade bait from 1914 in my OP is a jewel of a bass rod. Paul H. Young with his Texas partner Don West developed a series of extremely fast cane para tapers just for bass and inshore fishing. My rodbuilder buddy Rob Sherill in Dallas is a student of Don West and has built many of these rods. Occasionally, you can get surprised with blue-collar exceptions. In fly rods, it's the Tonka series (Prince, Princess and Queen) built and sold by H-I into the 1950s. In both fly and bait, Heddon cane tapers stand out. I also have a 5' Montague Flash bait that's quite fast as blue-collar cane rods go. The closest glass rods to this action would be the Speed Stiks and Lunkerstiks of the late 70s, and of course, all Harnell/Harrington rods. And again, what you're not going to find is a global modern market for these rods, because light-weight rods to do the same job as well are readily available. The people who build and buy cane rods today have their niches focused, and have a taste for the rod actions. The exception to that is going to be fly rods, and there's a good selection of new glass fly rods out there. The reason most graphite fly rods are 9' has to do with both the taper and the strength/toughness limits of graphite when going really light. Generally, cane and S-glass make a better fly rod below 8', and only e-glass can make a good progressive taper below 7'. Vintage fly rods that stand out in these short lengths include 6'6" and 7' Phillipson, and 6'8" St. Croix Imperial.

thanks guys, I've used them 2 years now, probably in triple-digit miles. I Really Like them. I began with 1/8-inch closed-cell foam and rolled it onto the paddle with 3M 77 spray contact cement. The trick is getting the position correct, but I also have a bent shaft touring paddle the same length for reference. The closed-cell foam grip was splitting on my 12-y-o stake-out pole - put X-shrink over it and still using it

I love the stuff over EVA grips - even made indexed-position kayak paddle grips using it over closed-cell foam. The best way to shrink it is boil water in a tea kettle. Initially shrink it with hot air, then go back, start at the middle and pour boiling water from the middle to one end, go back to the middle and pour to the other end.

you've certainly made an extra effort to additionally offend every single forum member who replied on your thread

if you can't say anything good, better to not say anything At its root, the purpose of sarcasm is to offend and keep offending - it transliterates as putrefying thought. Definitely never lay it on people you love. It also doesn't work very well on the internet.

About as close as you can get - Same family - temperate basses, and a native to Atlantic drainages: worldwide, there are 6 species in the family of true basses the slides are from a talk on white bass I gave a few times the reason non-native temperate bass are considered a nuisance is because they can't be eradicated, and deplete the forage base for native species. Yet fisheries bureaucracies continue to pollute with them - our state only 8 years ago stocked white bass 100 mi and far uphill from their native range, and where they can get to one of the last two creeks holding an A-strain of our endemic spotted bass.

I saw a guy launching at a local no-motors reservoir one morning (we were coming back in) - he had 7 rods rigged. I'm normally kayaking the salt flats, and can get by with two rigged, an MM or MH plus an ML, though in the winter will usually add a 3rd long UL rig. I always carry 3-pc rods in my bow hold, back-up spinning, back-up bait, and a fly rod or two. my lap hatch always has back-up bait reel and spinning spool (protected from the salt)

The Texas substitute for beef jerky is smoked, dried sausage. The best is venison (only feral axis deer can be sold), this is from Dzuik's meat market in Castroville and, IMO, the best offered anywhere in the hill country. This stuff's as hard as a rock - cut a piece with a sharp knife and throw it in your pocket. You have to take tiny bites and chew it a long time.

a work colleague had a great Vienna sausage story. They were on a deep wall dive in the Caymans. Somehow, they got the bright idea to feed Vienna sausages to angelfish (the guy's a PhD even). If you know saltwater angelfish, they get as big as garbage can lids, and have a beak for biting off coral. When they ran out of sausages, the angelfish went after their fingers, which look the same, and they were 110' down, trying to get away from the angelfish.

whew - thanks for that Sam - the drift of this thread was starting to make my Beach Cliff and even Vienna sausages look more appetizing to everyone

In the 90s, chopped graphite fiber was used as random fill in plastic molding to give us lightweight reel frames - those frames flopped in the breeze. If you look at modern composite frames, they use essentially woven carbon-fiber fabric to make rigid resin frames. Pencil lead and dry lube is a different form of crystalline graphite. The rigid fiber is a glass. It originated from processing carbon black, which is what makes tires so tough. Pyrolytic graphite is also noncrystalline, though hot isostatically pressed, increasing covalent bonding and fatigue strength (used in heart valves). More heat and pressure, and you eventually get to the different crystal structure in diamond. While carbon-fiber is technically more accurate, carbon and graphite are used synonymous.

probably no need to be defensive - I think fishing and sailing omens should be looked upon as cultural humor, and they're certainly always used that way among friends. Bad day - who brought the banana? See your buddy on the next kayak eating one, it's his turn in the barrel. I'm pretty sure no one ribbing friends has animosity nor superstition about it. here's what followed that lizardfish I apologize if I denigrated state shrines.

bananas on a boat? Terrible fishing omen. That's like catching lizardfish. Don't bring a banana on someone else's boat - you'll be Jonah. Saw my dad eat too many vienna sausages on the water when growing up. Add high humidity and s. Texas sun reflecting off aluminum hull and seats - easy to lose an appetite.

the photo was to get the sunrise transmitting pink light through the wakebait how's this?

TackleAdvisors proof tested paperclips and found most didn't come close to their load rating, with the exception of Tactical Anglers.