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It's a carpsucker. Not a joke, a real type of fish. I think it is a quillback carpsucker but can't see the dorsal fin very well.

They are made in Korea. Buy one and let us know, I'm pretty curious how one piece aluminum frame = 5 ounces.

Here's my thought on sensitivity. Take a lure attached to a rod via a loose line of any kind. Do anything you want to the lure without making the line tight. Can you feel that in a rod? Nope. You can only feel it when the rod tip moves because the line is pulling on it. You can also feel when the line is being pulled less. That's how you feel a lure like a spinnerbait, alternating more and less pull. Is that vibration? In my mind a pull/no pull cycle is not vibration. I could be wrong. Does the string between two cans vibrate when you talk into one can? I dunno. Deep thoughts.

I've only done marbling with all finish epoxy. How do you do it with regular epoxy?

No one on that forum has a bigger ego than the guy who owns it now. He knows everything about rod blanks. Too bad he can't sell his (admittedly pretty good) product without lies and endless sales. And yet the sales always get me. Guess I'm the sucker.

Stradic FL is on sale at tackle warehouse $180 for 1000 and 2500

Stradic FL is on sale. Way more solid than either the Miravel or Ultegra. Aluminum frame at the same weight as the Ultegra. Plus if you are making your own rods, might as well have a reel worthy of your creations.

In the river I think gimruis is talking about the fish stack up the mile or two upstream from the dam where there is deeper water when the water temp gets into the 50s. Smallmouth above dams is a pretty reliable fall pattern in MN.

I'm curious how much the Hundo actually weighs. I have a hard time believing they can get a reel with a substantial aluminum frame to weigh 5 oz. Maybe they mean 5.9 oz? I know selling stuff is all about hype and advertising these days but some of us still appreciate honesty when is comes to facts (how much it weighs, where it is made, what is it made out of, etc).

Mojo bass is an SCIII blank now, so the blank price is more than $60. And mojos are made in Mexico, same as the rodgeeks blanks. Just like everything else, blanks are priced at what people will pay. Components also make a big difference. You can get a $10 set of guides or a $100 set of guides. Good cork is very expensive. You can't save money building rods equivalent to complete rods less than $150 or so. You can build a $500 rod for $250. The $60 blank goes in a $100 bassX rod.

Yes, they move up some, but not like in the spring. Maybe in the 10-14 foot range. I find them to be more weed associated in the fall, following baitfish vs crayfish that they eat in the summer. Garrison reef and Pike Point have been good fall areas.

I'll try. The Daiwa has a much nicer and lighter rotor. The handle and knob on the Daiwa are much better as well. Daiwa has nicer gears. More bearings = more things to rust. Sometimes bushings are better. Pflueger has a prettier paint job. Buy what you like and enjoy it, but give 10 people both reels for a year and I guarantee at least 9 prefer the Daiwa at the end.

I totally agree that most folks wouldn't want to pay for American made. I just wish companies wouldn't try to pretend products are American made when they aren't. Also, you can get reels made in Japan for less than 300 bucks, and I am sure their labor is not cheaper than the labor here. Anything you buy in the US is helping people in the US, regardless of where it is made. You are still giving money to stores, shippers, advertising people, etc who are in the US.

Yeah, they are made by Daiwa. Some sort of mongrel of BG/Eliminator with the air bail. And yes, given that pedigree I would expect them to be quite smooth.

Good to know. You read my mind, I was just thinking of asking that. We'd only have 5 or so reel brands if they were all sold under them name of the company that makes them.

Penn low profile reels are Doyo. In their various forms Doyo reels are the best casting reels that are not shimano or daiwa. I believe the highest end Doyo sold in the US is the Abu Zenon. 13 fishing reels are nice too, but not super high end.

The basic differences between JDM and USDM are that JDM models tend to have more options, shorter handles, and shallower spools. As above, lots of JDM models are made in South Korea, China, Malaysia, etc. Nothing magic about JDM, most of the reels are the same as USDM with different paint, gear ratios, etc. They are cheaper these days with the exchange rate. A Steez or Stella or Antares is the same reel whether USDM or JDM. You go JDM for the price or more options, but the quality is the same.

Shimano, Daiwa, and Doyo (Abd, Lews, etc) make nice reels for sale in the US. Pick the one you like best, or get some of each. No one makes low profile baitcasters in the US. No matter what the website says. Sixgill may put some parts together and call the reels "assembled in the USA" but by any reasonable definition are not made in the USA. Neither are Bates reels, which they actually do say they are foreign made in the fine print. All this nonsense about where fishing tackle is made is getting old. I wish companies would just be honest and tell us where things come from rather than try to be deceptive. Good stuff can be made anywhere in the world. Bad stuff can be made anywhere in the world too.

You are correct, I was lumping them together with the original NRX (he's won tournaments on those too).

The Bassmaster Classic was just won with NRX rods...

I've built on the Immortal ML casting blank. It's way too stout for BFS. In my opinion it would be called at least a medium power rod in any other lineup. I think the CCS power is around 600 grams and what I would use for BFS would be around 300 grams (typical medium light spinning).

I have a legend elite and I also dislike the TVS reel seat. I was able to remove the old grip and reel seat (but not the graphite tube in the reel seat). I put on a fuji vss reel seat and matched the cork on that with the cork on the old foregrip. I then put a full cork grip on from the bottom. Works great. Not the perfect fit you would get by stripping the whole rod, but I don't think there is any way you could tell it was done from the bottom with the finished product.

I prefer ECS with kdps. I've only used TVS with spinning rods. A word to the wise though, the fuji SK hidden thread hood is not compatible with the ECS seat. It won't go far enough down to lock in the reel. That mistake required some careful reshaping of the ECS. Oops. Fuji PTS looks good, but is too wide to be comfortable for me, and I find inserts to be pointless. The nice thing is that factory rods are built with all kinds of reel seats, so you can go to the store and hold them and figure out at least which ones not to use.

Let's be honest. Dotty didn't bite his jig. He was sight fishing, fish put her mouth toward the jig but didn't bite. He thought she had it and set, but the jig was never in her mouth. You cannot legally catch a fish that doesn't bite your lure. Stop talking about jerkbaits and such. This was a single hook jig. If you hook a fish outside the mouth on a jig, the fish did not have the jig in its mouth when you set. This isn't hunting. You have to make the fish bite for it to count.

I would cut off two inches. 13 inches will go well past your elbow and be annoying. It won't change the useful length of the rod, which is based only on where the reel sits. Hacksaw will work fine on the blank. Slide another rear grip on from the bottom and it will look like you meant to build it that way.