bulldog1935

@LakeWinni Line twist is inevitable w/ spinning, whether you loop line off a flat source spool face, or take line off the bottom of a source spool on an axle. I prefer loading spinning line from the bottom of the source spool on an axle. Initial line twist when loading a spinning reel occurs because the diameter of the source spool is different from the diameter of the receiving spool on the reel. Line twist is more destructive (and expensive) with braid than with mono. You solve line twist by always fishing spinning tackle with a swivel - a micro-swivel is plenty good for this. You'll never think about line twist again. I hope this thing is on. My only swivel example happens to be on titanium-wire bite traces for toothy salt fish.

gotta tune you guys to gear-forum protocol - it's not sexy if you don't show the gear

My Abu salt finesse rod w/ Silver Wolf caught everything on the redfish rodeo last fall. v - not my trip fish, but the best photo - v Also MinnowZ on 1/8-oz TexasEye jighead caught everything - these 3 colors, reflected light on left, transmitted light on the right. The first morning on the heavily hit flat, I could tell from the fish sign I was on 200 redfish, and they were moving toward the tide pass and the guide boat that was staked out waiting for them. Normally, the middle color, Mood Ring, is the morning choice because of the mullet sheen and transmitted pink. But it was too visible on the heavily hit flat. When I switched to the bottom, opaque color, The Deal, it was just the right subtle blend color with mullet sheen, and I caught 7 fish on 12 casts. One redfish will make your day. Already told my river bass story from last year too many times, but S-glass ML finesse rod, Smith FO-56 w/ Smith Plugger, and my cheating inline keel spinner for bottom-bouncing on the shallow flagstone. You get to watch big bass slamming their heads into the mudballs wanting to eat it.

I would never let a (20-something in a) shop use a motor on my reel or spool. I use a clamp rod holder, line through the two bottom rod guides, source spool on an axle in a vise, and wind through a phone book with weight for adjustable tension.

Light is big fish sipping tiny winter bait. If they spend too many calories going after the tiny bait, they lose instead of gain calories. This is a regular niche for me, and my favorite annual winter finesse fishing, I have two extreme finesse rods just for it. Almost identical, and the differences reflect the advantages of the two configurations - spinning and casting. Both highly sensitive rods, though long, they weigh 73 and 75 g. Side by side, 500+ catches, there is Zero sensitivity difference. The spinning has the ability to fish sub-gram jigs. I prefer it for complex rigs like tandem jigs and weightless cigar cork dropper. The casting performs better on complex hooks, never fouling the hooks on the line.

I did the math one day. After removing the initial ounce with spool swap, getting 1500CI down from 9 ounces original to 6 ouces final - those last 2 ounces cost $200/oz. @redmeansdistortion all those existing upgrades in your yahoo.jp 2600CI made it a really good buy in a tough-find reel.

@redmeansdistortion Perfect - that's everything you want. Of course, part of the fun with Ambassadeur is making all those upgrades at your bench. Also worth pointing out, your new 2600CI is tough to come by.

It's time to look for a spool to see for yourself what you can do. (Winter is a good time to tinker, but it's no fun until you can get outside to cast) You're not going to kill the reel by making the swap to BFS, because everything you do will change right back to where you started. You're simply adding a capability you didn't have before. A recommendation, get used to the new set-up first casting disposable mono, set your mag brake at the lightest end. When you're backlash proof, install the better line you plan to fish. Exactly what you're doing with BFS spool and microbearing swap is taking a reel made to fish 3/8 oz, and making it fish 3/30 oz just as effectively, and just as reliably. The trick is picking one with a good mag brake. Daiwa SV makes this swap easy (you need the right spool bearing tool - Rorolure sells a good one). Super Duty G is a brain-stumper. It's not supposed to cast 1/8 oz this well, but it does. The reason I ended up with a ZPI Alcance was to chase this further, and there are no aftermarket spools made for Lew's reels. The Alcance - not for the faint of heart - matched with IXA bearings, is the fastest spool I have ever cast, including my racy Daiwas and Abu CT's

It's not like the Actual physics of casting 3.7 g hasn't been covered before on this forum in great detail. The ability to cast 2 g consistently beyond 130' may not be effective, but it is significant. This is effective. Being able to fish both slopes of a tide pass on your cast is twice as effective as only being able to fish the close one. @new2BC4bass Ray's Studio, Roro-X, AMO. The pork difference vs. a stock 1016 spool is evident. AMO and Roro-X fixed-rotor spools will fish 2 g on Zillion. Ray's Studio SV spool will fish 3 g and still allow the brake full SV function to fish 1 ounce. You get the last 10% of your cast distance from your bearings. A BFS Zillion will cast the light weight farther than an Alphas Air because the 34-mm spool doesn't have to turn as fast to get there. The 37-mm spool on an Ambassadeur CT can be set up to out-distance the Zillion. On my '77 Ambassadeur 4500C BFS conversions, I set the internal mag brake casting 3 g. This one casts it past 100' and 100% backlash-proof. The rod is 6'7", rated for 5-g at the low end, but this light-end performance is typical of Japanese rods.

We never show this side of the reels. That 2-hand rod is going to be finesse fishing for snook in 4 weeks...

Nothing could be simpler than BFS (coined by Hiroyuki Motoyama c. 2000) BFS = the combination of a lighweight shallow spool, low inertia bearings, and threadline. It's the people with a hammer and a square hole who make it complicated.

@casts_by_fly Hi Rick, I keep a running basket at FishingShop.Kiwi, untill I can put $200 cart together for free shipping, because they don't have a cost-effective shipping contract for smaller orders. (Logged-in, anything you add to Cart stays forever) This covers me on lures, lines, Meiho boxes. If you're patient and can do this, you save a bundle, because their prices are deeply discounted. Since I cover so many niches, the lure caches aren't that hard to put together. But I did have to go back to look at my order. The two above are Evergreen D-Zone Fry and Jackall Deraspin The smallest jigs are 2" and 1/8 oz. The biggest double is 3" and 1/4 oz. * Ima Zinx Mini and Pro's Factory MiniSpin * @casts_by_fly - not to clutter the thread, that's not counting the safety pin, but ballpark length from jighead to tail. The smallest Pro'sFactory is no longer than 2"

Mine might as well be rabbits. My finesse fishing covers limestone creeks, rivers, inshore to shore microjigging. Kayak. I only have one reservoir combo that will fit most of the discussion here, which is my ZPI Alcance with ZPI finesse spool and KTF microbearings - matched with Valleyhill 6'7" MM, rated 1/16 to 5/8 oz (fishes the full range). and PE#1.2. Versatile enough for a single rod in a kayak. With this, I fish TRD Neds, finesse spinnerbaits, and crankbaits from finesse size up to the rated 5/8 oz. Three of my LP inshore reels count as BFS, they're all 34-mm Daiwa, Steez, Zillion and Silver Wolf, with microbearings and interchangeable BFS spools - I'll fish PE#1.2 down to #0.8 for the lightest 2- and 3-g baits. No spinning tackle can keep up. Fishing shallow grass, any jighead more than 1/8 oz brings up mostly grass. First rod here was 7'1" Omen Green ML, I've added long shore rods from Yamaga Blanks and Abu Japan, and a very versatile 7'3" kayak rod from Abu Baits here include year-round standard MinnowZ on 1/8 oz TexasEye jighead, and finesse topwaters. Winter through spring forces us into tiny baits for both shrimp and glass minnows (glass minnows concentrate in tide passes and in channels under nite-lites) - these baits include SlimSwimZ on 1/15-oz TexasEye, stream trout minnows with single-hook swaps, and metal microjigs. The real rabbits are my round reels for river kayak fishing. These are raced-out Ambassadeur with microbearings and Avail spools, and Isuzu Kogyo with Try-Angle spools, on short Japanese S-glass and composite rods with offset grips made for round reels. PE#1. The baits include finesse topwater, finesse spinnerbaits and spoons, and my all-time favorite inline keel spinner for bottom-bouncing flagstone (absolute cheating). I wrote an editorial on true BFS https://www.bassresource.com/bass-fishing-forums/topic/256304-bfs-ul/

look over these diagrams at hedgehog studio to determine what you need. they're also a good source for spool bearings and tools you might need. https://www.hedgehog-studio.co.jp/page/117 According to Jun Sonada, his empirical tests show the combination of upgraded bearings and bearing oil can add 8% to cast distance.

hmm, inshore, too (ok, another bass rod in the middle)

The main differences are the mass of the Stradic rotor is greater (also stiffer), but both are composite. The Stradic body is forged alloy, the Vanford body is composite - Vanford stem is shorter to give the composite body near-equivalent stiffness. Everything else is the same in the 2 reels. If you have the 2 side-by-side you can tell slightly lower intertia in the Vanford wind. But with a Stradic in hand, you can't tell, and won't miss Vanford. same rotor as Vanford is used on Vanquish. (Vanquish adds magnesium body, titanium bail, more BB, and Japan-bench parts-matching)

The no-brainer is '23 Shimano Stradic from digitaka.

double and counter-balanced handles on spinning reels covered here

Daiwa's SS brake functions basically the same as MagForce Z and SV, but the new inductor geometry fits in a smaller space, and is 25% lighter - they also described a wider range of mag adjustment. All that makes for lower inertia and improved light end. It's probably noteworthy they're still coming out with new SV reels, so this brake is not replacing SV across the line. What you won't find is a big range of aftermarket spools for this reel (if any).

I'm a big fan of Rod Bond U40 for things that flex.

I keep looking for the naked woman on a bicycle, but so far only seen her in Cinelli ads.

I use velcro tape that's made for tying-off electronic leads (like for a PA system) - Amazon sells it under electronics. It's really handy when you're removing a spool from a reel or storing a loaded spool in a spool can.

There is no import duty into US for single shipments less than $800. You pay duty (through the courier) if the package value is declared above $800. Going on 20 years, I've used a Japan broker (Masamichi at noppin.com) to buy from vendors who don't sell direct to US - i.e., most of Japan. When I was asking to pack and ship a cache that included new high-end reel, rod grip, rod blade, and reel trim parts, he told me how to break up the packing requests into 2 packages to avoid customs duty. Masamichi's normal brokerage fee is 6%. It's a way to buy KTF/IXA bearings, Haneda Craft, Livre handle (any knob combo) discounted by SquidMania, Yahoo, Rakuten,...impossible-to-find lures...build up a cache of small orders. He has baby-sat custom rod building. (I've paid $90 for new Smith SS rod grips - check that against ebay prices.) Astounding savings on bike parts v. US importers (you can ship bike parts and tackle together). He'll make the effort to find stock, get questions answered that we could never get answered from here. Sixty-day free storage, you can build up a cache and ship it all together in one package. Not exactly a recommendation, but describing a system that has worked for me for a long time. I know several Canadians with easy border access who keep USPO boxes to receive mail order.

You shouldn't really need centrifugal braking until casting weights over 1/2 oz, and without jerk in your cast. (Ambassadeur needs it because the spool weighs over 1 oz). My favorite deep-spool LP baitcaster is my Lew's Super Duty G, with full-flange spool and linear mag brake. It's been a long term workhorse for me, and I like it enough to grab a 2nd Super Duty G on closeout. Only real difference between current Super Duty 2nd Gen and my reels is the P2 pinion bushing, which you don't really need if you don't wind the reel with the spool removed. This reel has always surprised me with its ability to cast 1/8 oz, which is go-to weight for my BFS-mod Daiwas. Note, Super Duty GX3 has centrifugal brake, and Super Duty 300 is dual brake. I'd suspect Abu Revo offers a range of braking systems in their reel lines, also. Like you, this is the configuration I prefer, maybe not for the same reasons. I gave away my Custom Inshore with dual brake, and sold my two centrifugal brake Lew's, because in my niches, they didn't cast with Super Duty linear mag brake. The fastest reel I've ever cast is my ZPI Alcance, which I always call Revo on steroids. May not be the best ever introduction to the forum, but I'll never understand why people choose to post contrary comments or off-topic information, especially when the OPs context is clear.

2-hand grip for my Smith SPX/ 4500C combo - at 6'7" OL, my longest freshwater round-reel combo. Wood vise collar and reel handle knobs to make my Bright River Concorde/ 4500C combo look more balanced, my shortest combo at 4'10" OL