bulldog1935

Thanks @Big-Bass Headhunters wasn't shy about copying Langley Target freespool. The result is very tasteful compared to many of their green offerings. Sad thing about this, it's the only way you can currently get a new Robelson lightweight composite rod handle. ps - since this will always be on a kayak, I made a rod-leash quick-release for it.

it was a cold winter

The important thing is fish how you want to fish. Following through with your wrist is where you get final smooth acceleration and accuracy (thumb is elevation accuracy). But snapping your wrist is where you get backlash. You'd call it finesse, I was fishing weightless on this reel and 15-lb mono in 1980. It was done with a centrifugal cast, an overhead spiral cast, which you can only do on the corner of a boat or dock. Start with rod in front and low at 45 degrees, swing behind you to overhead release - two hand works best. I PO'd a couple of guides, who told me what was wrong with my cast, then I doubled their weightless spinning cast distance. I always made them look good at the dock. Have to an edit about the centrifugal overhead spiral cast - nothing is out of control, and this can be just as accurate as any cast - that's in your thumb. Also with your thumb, slowly feeding a bit of line as you're accelerating through the arc has the effect of increasing the rod length. As far as loading the rod on a back-cast for a normal cast, whether side-arm or overhead, this never needs to be a snap, but always smooth acceleration going both ways. (snap is for spinning tackle)

Happy birthday. My birthday is Tuesday, and here's my present - I like your color choice, too.

Dollar made it up to Y146/$ earlier this week, but current is the highest I've seen it in the 20 years I've been shopping Japan. All of Japan is 30% off. um, I took advantage of it this month, too - it's ok, it's for my birthday editing a ps here - there's a great list of vendors who market direct to US posted on this thread - you're going to find them All to be reliable - unreliable would go against their culture. Selling direct to US is something relatively new - in the "old days" the only way to buy from Japan was using a broker (Rinkya, ZenMarket, Noppin.com). ZenPlus, btw, will order a rod right from Asian Portal inventory and ship it to you for less than AP - they simply have a better UPS contract. The greatest problems are the language barrier and receiving payment because of Japan banking laws - Most Japanese vendors don't want to deal with either, and this is where a broker comes in - brokerage fees are 5% on an expensive rod or reel, and maybe twice that on a small order of parts. If there's something you want from Japan that you can't get through digitaka, et.al., you use a broker. Masamichi at noppin and I go back so far, I consider him a friend. In the past, he has ordered a rolled-from-scratch on order S-glass inshore fly rod, found items in stock that I could only find OOS listings, contacted Smith Ltd about replacing a cracked plastic collet in a rod handle - things you could never get done using only google, facebook, etc. The rod and reel, btw, were Yahoo auction wins using noppin. The NIB reel was otherwise OOS, but I saved enough on both to cover brokerage fees and separate UPS express across the big pond. (most Yahoo deals aren't this good - takes some bird-dogging). My friend Nick recently used noppin to purchase the last Taper&Shape stream casting rod in Japan, and was delighted with their service and delivery.

It's green. The reel is Isuzu BC620SSS synchro reel (4500C size) finished for Headhunters lure shop. The rod is 6'4" Bright River S-glass 1/4 to 1 oz, wrapped in Headhunter green. While this will get some bass time, my real target for it is close leading redfish backs in mud marshes. ps - setting this up over the weekend, no words for how this combo skip casts. After setting my mag brake, made reverse spiral skips under all the wild shrubs around my casting clearing. Every cast against the roots, and the mag was set right - no backlash the couple of times I skipped on the grass.

If anyone wants to put their stated reel example to an empirical value test, Advanced Search on ebay limited to Completed-Sold will give you the value of your example reel in the current market. If the listed price that shows up is struck through, the seller accepted an offer less than his asking BIN price. _____________________________________ @Darth-Baiter style includes computer chips. Round stays in your pocketbook. If you have a niche for them (e.g. close kayak fishing) they can't be beat. Call it right place at the right time, but here's a 100-y-o fly reel design, certainly out of style, but still being made (on and off in limited batches) because of its function. I snagged a MkIV closeout at harrissportsmail for $230. I don't have it any more, it burned a hole in my pocket, and I sold it for $525 - used. (can't get deals like that at harrissportsmail any more - PureFishing, Hardy USA complained, and Alnwick read them the riot act) ______________________ Every BR reel thread has a way of turning into what's your favorite reel, and how do you prefer to spend your money. The context of the OP's question is specific - what reel will hold its monetary value if you want to sell it to others.

@bowhunter63 If you look at the current limited edition factory-tuned Ambassadeur, with full-BB level wind and idler, they're asking $464. Though it takes that much to buy an Ambassadeur and tune it this way using aftermarket parts. https://japantackle.com/casting-reels/abu/reg0000344.html Here's the PureFishing.jp link to those reels. kudos @redmeansdistortion for first finding these. https://www.purefishing.jp/product/abugarcia/ambassadeur-4500c4501c5500c5501c6500c6501c-factory-tuned.html and of course, we need a photo (this one came off my bench with a rare Akios LW barstock frame). @thediscochef also has a very good point. This forum strongly reflects USM trends, and values light weight almost first. Lightweight reels that retain a good portion of their value are not going to be composite plastic, but forged (not cast or die-cast) magnesium. (Barstock is also up there, but is a bench-made thing).

https://fiberglassflyrodders.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=76517 The essay I linked, I titled Paradigm baitcaster design - design changes on a reel model that became so universal, we wouldn't recognize a baitcaster today without them. Heading in a different direction, back to our OP question, Japan has an underground market in Isuzu bench-built synchro reels. These reels are in such demand, the Isuzu-branded reels are sold by lottery, and the finishes they make for lure shops are sold in advance by reserve. They also build Megabass Pagani. ^ these two are mine ^ these two aren't. Historically, the reels that retain their original value in current inflated dollars were bench-built - if you go back 100 years, it's Meek, Talbot and Jack Welch Heddon (vs. mass-produced Heddon) bench-made Pflueger (vs. mass-produced) - Kovalovsky, Bogdan, Fin-Nor. Valuable postwar mass-produced reels in today's market originally stood apart from the herd because of their quality and durability - green Penn, Ambassadeur. Here's one - Seigler USA bench-built lever drag.

I'm a huge fan of Lew's Super Duty G (LFS), which I have two for inshore, and also a fan of Lew's mag brake. Generally, their centrifugal is a better brake for casting over 1/2 oz. On TX coast at least, you're mostly fishing 1/8 to 1/4 oz, 3/8 for deeper flats and slopes. The reason, we fish so much <2' grass, even with 3/8 oz, you'll spend more time hauling up grass than fish. Lew's mag brake casts the light end almost as well as BFS. Not too many people love their Lew's enough to do this to them. My first one, the cathodic coating on the magnets showed filliform corrosion beginning after 4 years in the salt, so that's the first thing to watch for - watch and replace these, because the corrosion product of the magnet is more corrosive to the rest of the metal than the salt. When I replaced mine, I used stronger Nd-magnets, and had to use fewer magnets to get the same cam-adjustment profile

My drag gets set with a spring balance first time I set up the reel, and never changed. The only time it will get changed is swapping a spool on a spinning reel, and after baitcaster maintenance when the star drag gets removed. My drag has never let me down, from finesse to bluewater. When you use Cal's drag washer grease, never leave excess. If you wet the washer surfaces including the edges then remove all of it, you've left the perfect film on the drag washer. Also, you only use Cal's on carbon drag washers. Felt/fiber washers and silicon carbide washers should be used dry. Cal's grease is heat resistant, and doesn't lose its viscosity or decompose with heat - up to a limit. If you need to go higher (offshore), you can buy grades of heat resistance, e.g., from MTCW. A friend told a story about repeated bonefish break off because he had never used drag grease on his drag washers, and his carbontex drag froze up. His tune was changed.

My first baitcaster was a 6H in 1977. By 1980, I could fish it from weightless to 2-oz spider weights in the surf.

@Delaware Valley Tackle In 1954, Isuzu Ind. (not the car maker, but a family-owned machine shop) took apart an Ambassadeur. They were already bench-making fishing reels. They've been bench-making their own version since expired patent rights let them. It's an underground market, even in Japan. They built Megabass Pagani. (Bright River builds the Pagani rod handle). Isuzu's motto is, "Born in Europe, Perfected in Japan" Isuzu sells their own marked reels by lottery, and they mark more reels for lure shops across Japan - most of those are sold in reserve when the model is announced. They come off the bench with full BB LW. Last year's version of Smith Plugger was the 50th Anniversary model. Here's their drive, and my '21 small-frame Smith Plugger. To get one across the big pond, you have to bird dog Yahoo auctions, and buys I can live with only come up about once or twice/yr.

Hi friend, My 4600C3 is a 6.3-geared Royal Express - one reason for the long 90-mm handle. I picked up spare 6.3 main gear and pinion along the way (either ebay or Dad's Ole Tackle website, also Mike's Reel Repair in BC) - stashed them because I knew I'd probably want them later. I ended up using those gears when I built a custom 4500CT (non-level wind) entirely from parts for salt use - shore microjigging. And yes, the answer to your question, you only need those two gears to speed up your reel, and the parts are out there. Reel width decides the worm gear, and there are only two idler gears in all Ambassadeur history - all the recent ones are the same. For both of these parts, there are ball-bearing upgrade aftermarket parts that pop right in. These reels are a blast to work on, because all the parts are big, and everything makes sense.

We need to get some bass on this cool thread before it gets skated off to OFS. These are my short river kayak rods made for close fishing and for round reels. The old-style rods are new, JDM Smith Ltd. and Bright River, but they're made like old school bass rods from the 70s, with separate offset handles and rod blades that you can swap, like old Fenwick/Champion. Top to bottom, my frogger is Ambassadeur 4600C on graphite Smith GFO-60MH, 1/2 to 1 oz; The 4500C in the middle is on a 5' Bright River Concorde MM, composite glass, 1/4 to 3/4 oz; The 5'6" S-glass ML on bottom, Smith FO-56, is matched with a Smith Plugger, small-frame synchro reel, bench-made by Isuzu Ind. I have one other Smith graphite blade, ML that swaps best into the lower combo, making it 6'3".

C3000MHG is shallow spool, but it has larger spool diameter, plus beefed-up large-frame drag, spindle, and rotor in a mid-frame.

The recommendation would be not to go below PE#1 diameter to avoid line dig. That said, I've fished PE#0.8 on 3 BFS reels including Daiwa with no problems (and Big fish) A line I've gone back to lately is Varivas Super Trout Advance Max Power easier to link than say - but it's on 2 reels now - - https://www.varivas.fishing/products/super-trout-advance-max-power-pe-x8/ This is threadline, and needs a shallow spool to work best. I can strongly recommend this aftermarket spool, which has moving SV rotor to solve cast jerk. https://www.ebay.com/itm/113871839091 The vendor is in Thailand, where Ray's Studio is made. The reel below is going into 4th (hard) year without a backlash.

Tsunami Airwaves Elite. The staggered ferrule has great action.

the fact that bowing to a jumping fish is a conscious forced decision doesn't change its value or result.

All correct @MN Fisher a solid set on a running fish is better than jamming him on the strike. Have you tried "bowing" to a jumping fish? This is an automatic reaction coming from fly rod and 3-lb tippet - your rod drops and your arms go forward. Size 18 to 22 hook, etc. As far as solid hookset goes, this girl was in a constant tail stand with her head flapping when she came up. At the boat, she slammed her head on my hull 3 or 4 times.

@oldschoolbasser We have an Ambassadeur photo thread that needs more photos.

Hi friend, I just wet the knot with pink-label Zap CA+ while it's hanging with a light load My knots have lasted 3 years, though good thing I put on a new leader in the spring.

Wrong choice. I use improved Allbright knot on both ends - of course, I've been rolling these 40 years. Double-uni is the right knot to join mono of the same diameter, or braid of the same diameter, but not mono to different diameter braid.

Somehow, this discussion ended up on a different thread, also. Daiwa's Zero Set is just what it says, it sets Zero on the spool. Zero tension, zero side play. A little side play is a better result than a little tension. You can probably live with up to a mm of side play, but what you're really looking for is incipient side play. Find side play and dial it out. If you have too much side play, it affects the mag. If the reel is leaning toward palm plate, the spool slides that way and increases mag. More likely, you'll cast with the handle down, which can reduce the mag you went to the effort to set. As the spool slides that way, there's less inductor mass in the mag field, etc.

@WRB is correct - you want incipient side play. Adjust spool tension to side play, and dial it in to where side play just disappears. I know it's off topic, but you can mess up your Daiwa SV brake with excessive side play - the spool can slide toward the reel handle side during cast, and you won't have enough inductor mass in the mag field to work.