bulldog1935

I paid $125 (new ebay) for my first Super Duty G. After 4 hard years, it was good enough to snag a 2nd at $140. The one thing you won't get from it is light weight, though it casts light weights remarkably well. In low end reels, you are paying a bigger share for name, marketing, inventory, seller mark up, which brings the list price of the $30 reel up to $100. Doesn't make the $30 reel any more desirable. Doyo-hate is a strange concept. Doyo is a Major parts supplier for both Shimano and Daiwa, and high-grade tackle has been made in Korea for 40+ years (e.g., Orvis and Hardy). The map shows Daiwa's top 20 suppliers, and Doyo is flagged.

what do I know about big fish on light tackle (10 lb fish) when I was 19, landed one almost this big on a Daiwa Minicast (my dad was freaking).

To me, the drag and weight are the least important things. Good 1.5-lb drag (even 2.5-lb for 10-lb test) is rarely a challenge. If you want lighter weight, go smaller. I fished one of these in salt finesse 7 years. The drag naturally falls into place if everything is aligned and the spool spindle and rotor aren't deflected by the drag load. (mackerel-stopping drag is something else) Think what happens to alignment when the spool is bent toward the rotor, and the rotor is bent toward the spool. At the other end of the long lever, the spindle load is misaligning gear contact, all happening while you're cranking harder on the handle. Design stiffness is the most important property in a spinning reel. kind of a shame no one seems to get this post - it's the crux of spinning reel design If you're fishing threadline braid, line management is the single most important. Even if you're fishing mono, the noted end of the reel is when it no will longer lay a good flat line profile to fill the spool, which affects everything, especially casting. F6 (6-lb fluoro) spool on Vanquish

he loves them Daiwa though he admits that Shimano line management is better - when '19 Stradic was introduced, it dubbed it "The Best $400 Reel You Can Buy"

Here's my note on Valleyhill and Whiplash Factory. The parent company is Chinese. They market only in Japan. Like NS Black Hole based in Korea, they have to try harder in the market they've picked for themselves. They offer a better rod for the price than made in Japan.

@AlabamaSpothunter Sticking to just the worm-drive Shimanos, Stradic to Stella, the current crop interchange parts with '18 Stella - the design is all the same. From Stradic with forged aluminum frame, composite rotor and anodized alloy gears, you're paying for MOC upgrades in the frame and rotor. All but Stella share the hard anodized gears, cheaper to manufacture, and which have gear tooth hardness equal to hardened steel. Stella has all the top-line parts, forged magnesium frame and rotor, titanium bail, and stainless gears. Stainless gears are expensive to broach, start softer, but improve both hardness and toughness with use, and effectively never wear out. Because of the alloy gears, both Vanquish and Vanford are lighter than Stella. Noteworthy, all these reels share '18 Stella over-designed A/R clutch and the same ball bearing line roller. The reels in between mix higher-grade components in the different sizes, swap MOC in the frame and rotor, forged aluminum, composite, and forged magnesium; e.g., Twin Power has forged aluminum frame and rotor, and the titanium bail. Ball bearings vs. bushings in a few spots. The other thing you pay for is labor. Stradic and Vanford are built on the Malaysia assembly line. The higher grades are built on Japan benches with parts matching for improved smoothness.

What you gain is gear life and accurate line management over the life of the reel. Low-end reels have die-cast zinc gears with large teeth, poor gear contact efficiency, weaker frames with wobbly gear bushings, weaker wobbly rotor bushings, that may all start off smooth and accurate, and will get worse with use over time, especially with hard use. Everybody on the forum talks about that start condition - nobody talks about the end. Spinning reels are the most complicated reel mechanism ever devised, and gear wear and rotor wobble has always limited their life. $160 for a JDM Stradic is not in your target, but this shows how well it manages threadline braid, and you could expect it to continue this way, for the life of several cheaper reels. If you have an hour to kill, Tackle Advisors $100 reel Shoot Out remains one of the best videos for looking inside design of spinning reels, and can help you make the trade-offs that will get what you want out of a reel, depending on your targeted use.

@Dogface There's a good Luxor take-down thread on ORCA. https://reeltalk.orcaonline.org/viewtopic.php?t=16436 About halfway down, BR member @Paul Roberts is lamenting gear lash in his really pretty but fished-through Luxor A. No one understood the loads on spinning reel gearing until FEM modeling in the last two decades. Before that, all were built by trial and error, and gear wear was a serious issue, no less of a problem in Mitchell or Penn into the 90s, especially when spools and spindles got longer.

The green reel was a Crack, where the Luxor design continued in the '70s. Airex was licensed to build the Luxor in the US, which they sold as the Bache Brown Mastereel, but IMO, the French-made reels were better. With the significant exception of Altex, Luxor was the smoothest reel made until the computer-balanced reels of the last decade. Sorry I don't have a better photo - when this one crossed my hand, Airex collectors stood on their toes to snag it. 1951 Wards catalog, which includes a Colorado reel (Humphreys) and Shakespeare's first flip bail (sold as Wards Sport King) The dated '55 price sticker on my Luxor A box was $14.95. The Bache Brown $22.50 price in 1951 dollars is $382 in today's money. Easy to argue with the guys who say today's reels are less value for the cost.

@Dogface Here's the collectible spinning reels that remain in my collection (I sold off a collection a dozen years ago). Before I stocked up a few Ticas and especially '19 Stradic, our bread and butter reels were Penn 4400SS and 4200SS. Often supplemented by the Altex mkIV, Penn 716, Luxor A No.1, and the Mitchell 410 with barstock spool. My daughter fishing the 4200SS, and a friend's daughter fishing the 716 The Luxor A matched with Gladding era H-I Star glass rod remains among my favorite light spinning combos. Hardy Exalta with Phillipson ES65 got a lot of bass-fishing time. The 440 Ottomatic is too valuable to take out of its box, but I did once to take this masthead photo for the FFR Another Spin page. https://fiberglassflyrodders.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=33

@PressuredFishing since I like you, I'll try to be kind about broad generalizations. Manufacturing and marketing dictates so many people's desires, perspective, and knowledge base - "educating" us is one way to keep us buying (the actual marketing term for this is The Snow Job). A lot of people will only buy Daiwa and/or Shimano, and some of that is feeling secure in the hype - disc drag fly reels, this year's fly rod model isn't obsolete, Euronymphing, etc. (do the math here - fly fishing and high-tech just don't go together). If you really want optional A/R, Tica builds a reel that's made to last, great line management, and take abuse - they also build a fair portion of Daiwa's reels. Fifty years of fly rods now, only E-glass works good fly rod tapers under 7', S-glass and cane have the same equivalent modulus, and shine out to 8-1/2'. Beyond that length, graphite fly rod tapers only make sense on weight alone. Split cane is a labor of love, and the friend making your rod today is working for less than minimum wage, but also doesn't need the work, and has a wait list. There will always be people who will only fish braided dacron (check the market, it's still made) and antique knuckle-buster, or mono on egg-beater, both with cane and glass rods, partly from obstinance, partly for personal aesthetics. Sport fishing will always be a personal and aesthetic activity - the Japanese take that to extremes, some with new pistol-grip cork.

The first Mitchell with (optional) A/R, 4th model CAP, 1949 (no, didn't buy new) My BIL was fishing half-bail Mitchell 300 inshore when he started dating my sister. With wartime patent extension, Hardy's 1932 Altex flip-bail patent right lasted until 1954, though everyone was ignoring it by 1951, when Mitchell introduced their first flip-bail (Shakespeare, too).

nobody misses them on baitcaster. I remember when A/R dog would go out on my old Lew's BB-1, it would turn to pandemonium trying to single-hand land a fish. However, growing up, my older daughter would always go to this 4-1/2' Airex solid glass rod and 1937 Luxor half-bail for creek fishing, even though she had her pick of any tackle. No form of A/R on this reel, and she was adept at landing her own fish.

It doesn't take long with a bail-conscious hand to let out a single loop of line when you need to. Everything about spinning works better with manual bail technique, and every complaint about spinning tackle is also solved by it. Optional anti-reverse and crank-auto-bail close are both going by the wayside.

Every time I place a Japan order, G-Nius is tossed in for a couple of bucks. Can't imagine what I did without these.

@redmeansdistortion Busting brush is always an exercise in leading rods and protecting reels. The stealth factor of fishing close and sight fishing with a fly rod also hones good habits. @islandbass - when you take a fall, it's always your knees that get bunged, never the cane rod or antique reel. Traveling to fish the salt makes you extra conscious about taking care of your tackle - the people I know who were always hardest on tackle, though, were guides and people who live on the salt. Good rigging in a kayak, and the habits you develop for handling fish tend to protect tackle as a priority. Boat rash matches its name pretty well - most of it results from tackle riding in boats, not so much fishing it. I know the excitement of catching fish makes my buddy Lou lose it - our Arroyo dock-fishing stealth is completely blown when he's rushing around, kicking chairs, dropping rods, slamming long-handle net (all the wood is a loudspeaker underwater). For my dad, it was always stepping on rods when he was going for the stringer. But even at 90, he looked 10 years younger holding his stringer.

@A-Jay some of it, I'm just the curator Russian River, AK ps - even though I have the net out, I didn't land this one - she tore the hook out when I got her back to my feet.

Mono = nylon monifilament Fluoro = fluorocarbon monofilament

@NorthernBasser I shop mostly in Japan, e.g., I keep a running basket going at FishingShop.kiwi. They charge $40 to ship, most everything is deeply discounted, so when you pull the lever, it ends up being a good buy. Lures, lines, rods, Meiho boxes, Studio Composite handles. Plus, I'll have $10 to $12 in bonus points accumulated. https://fishingshop.kiwi/Ygk-Bornrush-Wx8-200m-1/

A warning about Asian Portal. The $ price listed on their website was based on the exchange rate when the item (batch) was added to their website. They bill their fixed JPY inventory cost, which fluctuates against the dollar, and the current trend is the dollar dropping against JPY (JY 131 to the US$). I've received bills from AP that came in 10% lower than their listed dollar price, and 5% above their listed dollar price.

One reason the Japanese like high gearing on BFS is stream trout fishing, and throwing micro plugs upriver. I have 3 Daiwas set up for finesse, 6.3-geared Steez with Roro-X spool, 8.5-geared Zillion with Ray's Studio SV spool in ML, and 8.5-geared Silver Wolf with lighter AMO fixed-inductor spool. In my main salt finesse application, big fish sipping winter glass minnows, the low-geared Steez does have a touch advantage fishing micro plugs. Big fish don't spend a lot of energy chasing tiny bait, because they don't gain a lot in return. I have a shorter, 88-mm handle on the low-geared Steez. Both my high-geared Zillions have 105- and 100-mm handles, Avail and ZPI. You can tune both finesse and pick-up with handle pitch. It's easier to turn a short handle faster, because you use more wrist and less arm. The longer handle on high gears essentially gives you more resolution, since you're moving your hand farther through the rotation. Both of these high-geared reels work fine for me in their niches, ML with 1/8-oz jighead and plastic bodies, and finesse topwaters and micro jigs. Adding on-topic info. Alphas Air is making inroads for inshore ML on TX coast. A friend on TKF added his recently, following YouTube reviews on the same application (and followed my lead on Omen Green ML rod). https://texaskayakfisherman.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=2331798

Best bet, hire a local guide for your first trip. Their job is keeping up with where and how to catch redfish in the changing seasons, and day to day. I'm not going to have a FL answer for you, but they're fish I've pursued all my life on the TX coast. If you know the structure, you can plan trips in advance around tide movement that will improve your odds of finding the bait that draws redfish. On FFR forum, a new TX coast resident made 5 shut out trips before learning how to find and catch redfish. Once he paid his dues and learned his way around, he was bringing meat home every trip.

Single bend knobs usually cut, not break. Try improved Allbright knot. Double uni knot works joining two lines of the same diameter and composition. When you join mono or fluoro of different diameter, the smaller line will cut through the larger. Even worse with braid. The on-topic answer is learn a knot that won't do this.

@Eric 26 easy for me to find this from my profile (Content I Started) - it was the 1st thread I OP'd on BR. Even quicker to find it, search Meek or Talbot My sister and BIL have an upscale lake house (with a boat house) and he's one of those impossible to pick a gift. A couple of years in a row, I've given him handmade wood plugs from Japan for a collection in his lake house curio, and they've been well received. NFLCC is the antique lure collector's club, and Joe Yate's forum is their online trading site. There's some major speculating on the truly old stuff. About a decade ago, the empty wooden box for a Civil War era plug sold in auction for $12,000.

This spool from Rocket Reel Co. https://www.therocketreelcompany.com/product/tg-f1-tg-f2-rocket-spool-6500-standard-capacity/ as long as you're there, get these bearings https://www.therocketreelcompany.com/product/abu-replacement-bearings-4mm-x-10mm-x-4mm/ and the 6-pin centifugal I already linked from ebay vendors ABU part number on ebay, These will give you easy, reliable casts with minimal or zero end tension. I would recommend polishing all the spindles and bushings in the level wind and idler gear. Down the road, consider upgrading those to lighter alloy and ball bearing parts, Zr pawl - all aimed at reducing mass and intertia in the LW, making the reel easier to start, reducing over-shoot tendency, and responding to lower brake. https://www.mikesreelrepair.com/abu-dual-bearing-worm-kit-4000-6000/ With zirconia pawl and aluminum rider, this upgrade is $78, plus another $20 for ball bearing idler gear https://www.mikesreelrepair.com/abu-dual-bearing-idler-gear-kit/ I was trying to get @Cbump to comment on casting his reel. When I was test-casting it, 2 oz penny weight plus a flag, I had to cast gently to keep it inside my 150' back yard, but I was testing it for backlash (bullet casts to pointlessly high arcs), which it will never backlash. That was loaded with 22-lb mono.