bulldog1935

XUL rods can be wonderful for their niche of casting distance and fishing light-touch with XUL lures, and the two rods above sound like jewels in that niche. These rods will replace UL spinning, and still have good butt power for turning fish. Also as mentioned, they may not strike bass the way you want. Here's my buddy Alex with a spinning XUL he built from a fly rod blank. I was fishing a fly rod the same day with Alex - we were wading and bank fishing a private-access impounded creek noted for 4-5-lb bass in pods. (Below, I'm fishing the same water with Kevin Townsend, of course, filming a fly-rod TV show) When I went looking for a bass-specific baitfinesse rod, for reservoir fishing from kayak, 1/16 oz low-end capability was primary, but I limited my search to the highest top-end I could find - I didn't quit at 3/8 oz, but narrowed my rods search to 1/2- and 5/8-oz top end. This gets into ML and MM rods, and I couldn't be more delighted with the Valleyhill rod I found, which covers me for 1/15 oz Neds and finesse spinnerbaits to mid-weight crankbaits, and can go out alone on my kayak. It's unfortunate that both rod series Valleyhill built on this blank are OOS and apparently out of production. The JDM market changes so quickly, you have to "keep your eyes peeled" to find a perfect niche rod. But both XUL rods discussed above will give you more feel fishing unweighted plastic and XUL topwater.

The actual unsolicited advice here is along these lines - you spend money on tackle, you spend money on kayak, don't take them out together until you've worked out your rod holders and rod leashes. There is no part of fishing that requires abusing your tackle. Fishing is about using your senses, and not ignoring anything around you. The more attention you pay to the details, the more your honed skills and gear reward your effort. There's an analogy to hunting and firearms. With any of this, you should be methodical and perceptive. Stealth is the most important skill with both hunting and fishing, and next is knowing what to do when the opportunity arises to strike - should have it planned ahead. When you've arrived is when the methodology is as important and enjoyable as the result.

yet no one else ever has, either. Plenty of examples on this thread of how and why to use X-shrink. It's easy and inexpensive to replace, and can be used to repair worn, chipped cork and EVA grips. No accident high-$ offshore rods come with it. It makes a 1st-class repair on a splitting foam grip, like this 14-y-o stake-out pole.

https://japantackle.com/tuning-parts/spools-casting-reels/shimano/tu002389.html Roro makes this 32-mm dia spool that's the only reference to SLX I've found.

I use a lot of X-shrink on salt rods., here over a too-small EVA foregrip, offshore slow jigging. 14' surf rod, the foregrip has a base wrap of cork tape This salt finesse rod had grip too small for human hands, the wedge in the rear intended to split 3rd and 4th fingers, but it split 2nd and 3rd on me, and split them wide. I made a trial using closed-cell foam, cut it off, and finished with cork tape and X-shrink. Ahhh. Indexed hand-position paddle grips using closed cell foam and X-shrink The best way to apply this stuff is using boiling water from a tea kettle - pour from the center toward each end.

My daughter has always cast, switched hands, and reeled right-handed.

@garroyo130 - my reel with the long handle above is 8.3 gears, which is why I put the long handle on it If you go with a low-ratio gear, keep the short handle.

Most of my bait reels are set up BFS to fish threadline braid, and most aimed at the salt, to fish 1/8 oz down. Different rods match shore-fishing and kayak-fishing niches. Sticking to bass, my go-to rod for our local, deep, no-motors reservoir is Valleyhill ROC-67MMM. This is a great choice for taking out one rod on 14' kayak, covering from 1/15-oz Neds and finesse spinnerbaits, to mid-weight cranks. I can swap several reels in here, and currently have it matched with ZPI Alcance with finesse spool and bearings. The other place I fish bass is our limestone rivers from a 10' kayak. Fishing shallower here, it's important the rod has backbone to stop a respectable bass from going under the boat (and running wide on the other side). My go-to finesse combo is Smith Plugger reel and 5'6" ML S-glass Super Strike (2 power). The short rod fits very well in narrow river channels, and skip-casts under cypress overhang. Bottom-bouncing this 4-g keel spinner on the flagstone is cheating. I recently added a longer 6'3" graphite Smith rod with the same finesse rating, and matched it with a raced-out Ambassadeur 4500C. The goal here is longer casts with the same light lures, and this will cast 3 g to 90'

I've found that S-glass rods, because of moderate tip, will fish very well a bit below their rated bottom end. I normally fish these in close-kayak niches. e.g., this one fishes 1/8 oz, and skip-casts that light weight with aplomb. and this one fishes 3 g like a champ (rated 5 to 14 g). A longer graphite rod from this same maker (Smith) will not fish below its rated bottom end.

There's one difference, I run completely without spool tension - I adjust only to dial out spool side play.

I'm a little more empirical about it, and would say they Set Up differently, and the different brakes have different jobs in different parts of the cast. If you follow this link, make sure you continue on to the Backlash and Brakes Primer link. I definitely mix and match my reels between different rods, and go so far as to swap spools in the different jobs. As for old Ambassadeurs, amazing what you can do to them with aftermarket spools, LW upgrades, and brakes. If you really want to educate your thumb, pick up a nineteen-teens non-level wind.

Messy electrical tape gets touted for this job, but I've found thin mylar-film PE/acrylic tape does this job even better. Tie a normal arbor knot and lay a square of mylar film tape over the line and spool - it's stuck. When you take it up, again, it leaves zero residue. Adding a ps about PE/acrylic tape - this stuff is so strong, I use for seizing knots on kayak trolley line, and the tape lasts as long as the double-braid sailcord.

I'll chime in. One reason to go with fluoro is to get the line sink, and is just about required in salt niches. Low-memory, higher grade fluoro tends to jump off the spool, and requires good manual bail technique, just as if you're fishing braid. (Toray Xthread is the best fluoro I've tried, balancing limp with low memory and toughness) I fish short leaders on all my spinning tackle, mostly to add an abrasion end, and you can always take the approach of mono working line with a fluoro leader to gain the advantages of fluoro close to the hook.

The Lew's B/C can't be set up to fish the light lures you're talking about - there are no aftermarket spool options for them that will get you there. When I made that move, I went to Daiwa, because of the wide range of aftermarket spools made for them. A BFS reel can be set up to fish 1/16 oz or even as light as 1.5 g, but it's probably not an off-the-shelf reel - these reels have cutting-edge shallow spools, the lightest down to 4 g, and low-inertia spool bearings. I'm pretty sure colloquial broad-brush fear mongering isn't involved, but education and an open pocketbook might be. It's pretty easy to argue those light rapalas and rooter tails were intended for light spinning tackle. But the right BFS reel will fish them. The first off-the shelf BFS reel that listed 2-g capacity is the '20 Daiwa Alphas Air TW, most sell it around $300, and the best Amazon price from Japan is $214. I picked the JapanTackle listing, because it has a good description of the reel. https://japantackle.com/casting-reels/reg0000282.html (I personally went the other route, with aftermarket spools and bearings for Steez and Zillion) There are different rod requirements for stream fishing vs bank or reservoir fishing, river kayak, salt finesse. I go back farthest in salt finesse, and learned a lot from the Japanese, who have been doing this longer than the rest of us, light-lure fishing in all niches, and racing reels for BFS since the late 80s. I've personally found minnow lures fish better on BFS, never fouling the hooks on the line, while loose line in spinning will foul the line on the hooks more times than not. With XUL jigheads and complex rigs like tandem jigs, I much prefer spinning tackle. Note the XUL ratings on this 14-y-o rockfish rod - even fishing this light, the rod has power, and this one has landed doubles of snook and seatrout. (Of course doubles on tandem is kind of cheating, because the fish fight each other on the heavy leader.) This was a $100 Rakuten buy, and fished so well in the niche, went back for a second 7'9" rod with slightly higher lure rating, and still fishing the two rods.

I have a Tica 2500 spooled with 10-lb Tatsu. Capacity is perfect for a single-charge spool. Fishes great - it manages this line perfectly, and the spool is too deep to lay fine braid - it will hourglass.

@gimruis When I was a kid, 14" was a keeper redfish, and these small fillets were perfect for pan blackening. When the min slot made it to 20", I became less interested in redfish to eat, and speckled trout fillets are so perfect to fry, or saute for fish tacos. (Also, flounder give you 4 fillets which are just the right size) After my buddy Josh showed us how to grill-blacken skin-on half-shell redfish fillets, it totally reversed my priority - this is the best food you've ever eaten. I also never freeze fish, but keep fillets floating in ice water in my cooler until I cook them. They'll keep for a week, and the ice water cleans out blood and bile - I learned this from a Rockport bud who became a guide. Also drain them on a stack of paper towels, min 20 min on each side, before you cook them.

It's only a rabbit hole if you overthink it, and published IPT has little to do with it (though they're probably reporting a full spool). Immediate IPT exactly = (Gear Ratio) x Pi x (spooled Diameter of line) What you're measuring with your test is how full your spool is, which is the Only Variable. No Tom, it only gets more complicated if you want it to get that way.

My 7'5" Valleyhill MH has 3 removable threaded weights in the butt cap. I don't think this is Fuji, but Fuji models are EWBC, TWBC (titanium), Rod Craft EC, Mud Hole CRB - they're mostly under $10, until you get to Mud Hole $25 system. Sure makes the long rod tip feel light.

I would say Do not pass Go, it's a great reel, especially at that price.

Frank, you don't need to apologize for coming up with an original thread OP. Feigning lack of imagination is colloquial humor, used too often in off-topic posts to imply those posting on-topic are elitist.

fly rod, 15", don't know the weight, but she had shoulders and broached several times looking like a stubby bass.

hmmm

9.2 oz, Steez (Ray's Studio spool), PE#1.2, on Valleyhill ROC-67MMM Same reel on my salt finesse rod, though, comes in at 8.5 oz. (was just talking about this on a different forum)

6-1/2 lbs on Daiwa Minicast.

it gets better than that - today's dinner was grill-blackened half-shell redfish fillets