bulldog1935

That's stream UL set-up, Aioushi offset grip (from blank), Japanese Kuramochi Limbs ferruled rod blade seats in the grip chuck. Casts 2 to 9 g, and casts the 2 g farther than you need to fish. The reel is a 50s Langley StreamLite direct-drive, narrowed on bench by NK Maker in Japan. (he also converts old RH Langley to LH) I added a mag brake on my bench. (If you find an old Langley Target or Lurecast, I charge $35 to install tailplate magnets, and my mag-brake mods have competed in ACS vintage casting competition) The cork grip was too heavy for the light rod blade, and I couldn't feel the lure until I swapped in a carbon grip, made from LureSport parts. biggest problem with Czech nymphing is hitting your head with the anchor on the end of your tippet. I bust the river and go out of my way to swing a BWO dropper. The spinning combo in my first post, worth a closer look, is a Japanese ferruled spinning blade, Hitotoki Works Wickman, $40 grip kit from LureSport, and Tica Cetus 800. Casts 1 to 10 grams.

I've always used bowling alley wax on cane, but never needed on plastic rods.

I've cleaned a lot of rods, a couple of them over 100 years old. Best thing to clean cork is the steam spout from a tea kettle and a soft soapy sponge - light rinse and air dry. Many soaps and cleaning solutions contain ammonia, which isn't the best thing to use on plated, highly formed brass guide frames (no worries on stainless or titanium). The toughest thing you need to clean from rods is calcium, and soap doesn't help. Dilute natural organic acids (citric, etc.) cut right through calcium deposits. The right agents are in Miracle Polishing Cloths and jewelry polishing cloths, which are inexpensive, and last a long time. Chase with a soft cloth or chamois. @Angler Andy Boeshield is the best thing for anything coming from or going to the salt. This Lamson has been in the salt over 35 years. That's still the original friction-washer clutch (have a NS spare). Also used on the gear tracks and fasteners on my kayak, which has been in the salt 16 years.

I fish leaders for shock tolerance, and don't consume leader. Leader tag gets a perfection loop, and I loop on paper clips, micro snaps, wire bite trace, etc. Linear contact in loop connection is stronger than any single-bend knot. This is an intentional long perfection loop, so I can also loop on a cigar cork dropper rig. I fish 18" leaders with microguides and 4' leaders with full size guides. Longer surf rods get 6' to 8' leaders. Improved Allbright knot.

um, if you count bearings, two are required on most reels for casting. Difference is on slaved-spool Ambassadeur, where four more bearings can be added to level-wind to out-cast Black Max. and Isuzu, where even the level-wind pawl can get 2 more bearings. This Ambassadeur CS Rocket gets two more in the spur gear and a third in the brass bullet for a total of 14 bearings, and 9 are part of the cast. Also remember most reels with high bearing counts include 4 in the handle knobs, 1 to 3 in the drive, and one on the thumb clutch.

There are 8 matches for this rod on Fiberglass FlyRodders forum - unfortunately, you need to be registered to read the forum because of AI bot Cloudflare firewall. It's glass, best date is '77 to '83. Tip-in-butt-sleeve ferrule is a sign of inexpensive offshore rods. The joint is known to produce a dead spot until you load the rod past it. Glass should be very forgiving and load deep On the heavy side. You could help that tip weight by balancing with a heavier reel - old Martin multiplier or a Medalist (even an automatic). It would be a good rod to learn on because it's so forgiving - I learned on an old glass Shakespeare about the same configuration. FWIW, after fishing Sage RPLX for a decade, I went back to old cane and glass. Same SW300 model was offered in multiple lengths, including 6-1/2' and 7' All glass in these lengths has a fan club.

I never had a wife on BR before.

@Pat Brown Buzz baits are impossible to beat when schooling bass are jumping shad. FIL caught a striper from my boat one morning.

Both were surf reels from my bench. 5500CT on 8' 2-hand rod. First 2-hand cast with 1/4 oz went 75 yds into my neighbor's back acre. Oops. 2500CIT mini-surf cast 1/4 oz plug consistently to 200' crossing a tide pass in April. Probably more impressive, the 7'8" finesse rod was hooking fish at 180' on the far slope.

BKK Fangs - across the board treble swap for me. They tend to be under-rated - their hook gap is bigger than the rating. Several online tackle stores import BKK I'm also using BKK single senko hooks.

Unsolicited advice. Daiwa went through many variations to improve wide-range response on their mag brake. They arrived when they improved their magnets. Now, the same magnets get different weight ranges with different inductor mass and inductor return spring rates. Orange, gold, purple are increasing inductor mass. Jun Sonada on JapanTackle casts every one, does a great job of rating working range, and offers spool tuning mods. Aftermarket spools take advantage of Daiwa magnets for BFS with lighter spools and lighter and tapered inductors Here, the purple is different - it's Ray's Studio tapered SV inductor. Ray's filled the void copying L/E KTF Kahen SV spool, but the tapered inductor is Ray's own design.

The difference between Steez and Steez A2 is magnesium vs. aluminum body, and aluminum vs. brass gears. The other difference is the SV spool vs MagZ. Everything else is the same, and the spools swap. This thing has been on for a long time.

And of course the topic of this thread is re-release of a new Ryoga, which some, at least, have waited the 8 years with bated breath. I recognize OG Daiwa is keen to the faithful - it never was for me. It took me 35 years to find a niche for a 2nd Daiwa - '16 Steez - and my niche expanded to 6 new Daiwas, exactly because of the spools made to take advantage of the latest magnets. I will continue to recommend these reels to my friends, and I won't find a need for a 32-mm Steez.

Work is relative - the older magnets are not strong enough to register adequate response on SV Boost (confirmed in direct communication with Jun Sonada) and gives marginal response on SV (non boost). This works great with light weights, but when you increase cast weight to 1/2 oz, SV doesn't give enough start-up brake response to prevent backlash. Even with MagZ spool, this still needs end-tension to dial out hiccups. Consider mag adjustment ersatz - needs full mag across the spectrum. Going through every spool from Roro-X to MagZ, I found a tiny window on SV-Boost where CV-Z would out-distance every other Daiwa casting 3 g to 150', but the window was just that narrow - wouldn't cast 2 g or 4 g. I did find a set-up where I like the reel, casting 1/4 oz jerkbait and 1/2+ oz topwaters on the red MagZ 1012, PE#2.

Yes, from JapanTackle archives, Ryoga goes back to '08, with 37 model listings. '18 Ryoga made the changes to match other new Daiwa models, including current Nd magnets compatible with SV spools. From discussion on TT, the earlier frames are not compatible with '18 Ryoga. But to show how Daiwa relies on model changes, my '18 Ryoga received a Hyperdrive gearset swap from '21 Basura. Big gears in the offset gearbox increase drag capacity over other Daiwas by 40%, to 25 lbs. 34-mm floating spools, MagZ and SV, swap going back to '05.

The thing is, having both, I much prefer these. I will likely follow through and add a new Ryoga - kinda the reason for the OP, though the youtubes are campy at best.

@Micro Module Police you shoud be totally happy and without the inclination to gripe about absoluteny anything at all, if you buy up all the OG Daiwa CV-Z and TD-Z you can get your hands on. There are plenty of them out there to keep you outfitted in reels as long as you want to fish. Then every thread you OP, and Every Post you pen on every other thread will be Positive and Cheerful. But will happiness make your head explode (rhetorical question). Good luck.

People get hung up that BFS = UL. This is not true. BFS is a means to fish threadline on baitcaster. This isn't exactly off topic, since my Ryoga bunny shrimp combo above fishes KTF Kahen SV spool, silicon-nitride microbearings, PE# 1.2 (27-lb) and #3.5 (19-lb) fluoro leader, to horse redfish from going under kayak in foot-deep slough. Package BFS reels have increased LW pitch to let you fish down to #0.4 without line dig, but normal-pitch baitcaster with shallow spool will fish #0.8 and larger w/o line dig - that's equivalent diameter to 3-1/2-lb mono. I have six 34-mm Daiwas that all swap spools - this makes them versatile, because I can swap-in a spool for the task - deep mono MagZ spool for swimbait to shallow fixed-inductor braid spool for 3-g microplug.

I have a 5'8" 5-power frog/swimbait rod, and it would fit Ryoga nicely, but is a little more trick with Isuzu 720. Since I'm showing offset grips with separate rod blades, here's my favorite Ryoga match - Rivermaster 2-hand grip, Slow Taper S-glass rod blade, for skip-casting bunny shrimp under mangroves in mud marsh - with the 2-hand grip, it's 6'4" OL. Doubles up on 6'6" Black Label ML for inshore kayak flats drifting - this caught everything on a 2-day trip last April, and made me a Ryoga junkie.

I was pretty impressed with the magseal bearings that came out of my bought-used-in-salt reel. I replaced them all in kind, and though the copper shields were oxidized black on all the old bearings, they all spun freely. @newapti5 my palm plate doesn't show that gap, seals as solid as the screwed-down drive-side plate, and definitely no water leaks. And I like I said, it takes a focused effort to seat before the toggle will close. My 3 Zillions are all different on the lock-ring toggle - my silver SV TW, I have to use a popsicle stick to leverage it in either direction. I wouldn't expect Daiwa to make any significant design changes on a mechanism they use across the board, though they may have improved Q/C on latch or ring tolerances.

@newapti5 I was just in my '18 Ryoga last evening for post-salt-trip detail maintenance. I took the palm plate off to inspect bearings (I have full-silicon-nitride spool bearings, so I was making sure they were dry, spun freely and no debris) Palm plate is tough to align properly to re-install, but I don't get anything like a gap. If it's not properly seated, my retaining ring lock-toggle won't budge, but it glides when the palm plate is properly seated. I probably have a good one, because that ring is a big part, and can see a warped ring might make it too easy to close out of alignment.

When you get to '18 Ryoga, there's not much to improve - replacing stock for a limited purchase run is Good Enough. I definitely won't be buying a 32-mm Steez, because I like the ability to swap 34-mm spools between 6 different reels.

What do you think makes BFS? Shallow lightweight spool, low-inertia spool bearings, threadline - - it hasn't changed since it gained a name in 2000, and it's been around much longer.

Heads up on TT this morning, Daiwa is releasing new Ryoga and new shallow spool Steez SV Light

what a strange thread