Bigbox99

Too much spool tension. Many such cases.

I wonder what they could do with the the name? Make premium Curados with nicer detailing such as anodized metal handle lock plates and drag stars with a high end silver or white paint? It would probably be lost on the average Shimano buyer and flop. Make salt water versions of the Curado for inshore? They have already done that with the Tranx 150 and 200. Bring over JDM reels like the Stile, Engetsu BB and Grappler for niches in the US market like vertical jigging, lake trout and inshore? If they did that they would certainly call them Tranx anyways. I'm at a loss here.

They're legit chinease objects. You're not getting a Megabass ect but something that looks like them. You'd have to buy and try to see if they are worth your time. I have a number of complete chinease baits that outwardly, look identical to Megabass products. The will look the part but the action, durability and sounds won't be identical to the real bait.

So you can selectively apply high drag pressure on hook set and have a lower drag to allow fish to run when needed. Training your hand to thumb the spool on the hookset also will allow you to move to the next step which is thumbing the spool while using the base of the thumb to engage the clutch to let out some line when fighting a fish. This let's your thumb become the drag when you are landing a fish and see that it is barely hooked in just the soft mouth tissues. Better to give it line and let it dive delow the boat to tire it out then re-enguage the reel and have another attempt at landing the fish than to just to let it thrash on a tight line as you stare at it. Even if the fish is hooked well I'll still do it when using light fluoro and I don't feel comfortable with the amount of tension on the knot. Times when the rod is fully loaded and the fish is trying to dive away but the drag isn't allowing the fish to move I'll engage the clutch and thumb the spool to take some stress off the knot and play the fish a bit. I have zero tolerance for break offs on fish.

It's a good habbit to develop.

Not a fan of solid tip and plastics. The soft hyper flexible tips seem to rob you of the hook setting power needed with small jigs and plastics. I'd get the Phenix of the two or better yet the Majorcraft Days 68L BFS because it's an actual Japanese BFS rod.

I hear this is more of a shorter swimbait rod like the Swamp Survivor, Hyuga and Wild Side than a normal heavy powered jig stick.

The way cheaper than US price is from Japan and you won't get a warranty. Normally the lack of a warranty isn't an issue because its anglers that break rods from misuse and not rod manufacturering defects so those that are not rod breakers can benefit from a means to buy a rod at a massive discount. This is wonderful until the rod is an AGS rod. The AGS guides are incredibly fragile and will break with what is considered normal rod handling by even those who are not brutal on rods. If you own one of these rods you have to treat the guides as if they are made from faberge eggs. If you can't stomach that then the only path to own one is to buy with a warranty, be super gentle, and submit warranty claims as the guides break off. If you are 1000% convinced you can keep the guides undamaged then buy JDM and save a boat load of money. To emphasize, the guide damage doesn't come from fishing but from getting the rod our of the rod locker, vehicle or on the casting deck or rod holder. They don't stand up to the kind of rough handling other normal guide rods do even if you think the handling isn't rough.

That rod wouldn't be a terrible choice for trout and would have some cross over into bass fishing. It's a bit more powerfull than what I would look for in a trout stream rod but if multi species if your thing then this rod looks to occupy the boundary between a trout and bass rod. Someone has it on another forum and says the Daiwa Silver Creek looks really good on it.

Objects with attributes derived from how they are constructed will have an appearance that is a product of these attributes. In a carbon fishing rod context the smaller diameter the blank deep into the rod the generally the softer and and more deeply the rod will load compared to a larger diameter blank. When the difference is miniscule its moot but when the difference is large such as the rods above then it is much more apparent. For really extreme example, I can lay my XH flipping stick next my UL trout rod and immidiately notice that the flipping stick has a blank diameter over 4 times as large. I assume anyone with some working knowledge of fishing rods looking at both rods would be able to correctly identify that the one that is much, much larger is in fact much more stiff without having to be told that it is any times more powerful in labeled rod power.

Just get a 2 pc 6 foot or under trout rod from a reputable manufacturer. Like a Majorcraft Fine Tail or something. Avoid Tacklewarehouse. All they are going to have will be bass rods. Your UL BFS rod from a bass rod line will not be as well suited to what you want to do. I've seen it before. I only got a chance to own a Majorcraft Volkey BFS 65UL long after they dried up because the original owner thought it was going to be a trout rod for trout magnets but was way, way too stiff to be a trout rod. It excelled at 1/16 Bitsy Bugs and small trailers. Bottom pic is the Volley BFS. Notice how huge (and stiff) the blank is compared to the Fine Tail trout rod. I miss that Volkey.

I hate chatbots so much its unreal. That wall of redditor text and chatgpt didn't even directly answer the question. Braided line is a woven product and the texture found in the surface of the line from its woven construction produces this sound when in contact with the rod guides when moving.

Shorter than normal bass rods by a little bit but if you are after trout then you want a trout steam rod which is much shorter. Follow the advice of those offering trout stream rods to you if that is what you are after. If so, then ignore any rods labeled as BFS as those are going to be longer and stiffer bass rods

If that's the reel I think it is then it's changed hands a few times and was originally bought by @WRB iirc. Funny to see make its way back to BR in good hands.

Most just pay full retail at TW for a fishing thing, wait two weeks and think this is great buying experience. I'm thankful for them because the USDM system would collapse and US IPs would be range banned if everyone bought JDM. Also, in this particular case the AGS rods have to be handled with kid gloves or they get damaged. I'm soft on my gear in all ways but guides. I regularly bang them around against other guides of other rods next to them in the kayak or vehicle when grabbing a rod. I would certainly go USDM AGS over JDM just for the warranty if I wanted an AGS rod (I don't, because l know myself and what I would do to those guides).

Is this a left hand reel? Do you have separate casting and paliming grips of the rod and reel or are you casting in the same grip position you fish the bait?

The heavy fluoro is acting the opposite of a sping springing off the spool. The stiff plastic line can't get out of its own way and down the level wind and guides at the same rate that a free spinning centrifugal Shimano spool can dispense line. The work around is to compress the spool in the reel with spool tension to slow the spool to a point that its rate of dispensed line (at speeds where the centrifugal brake is doing little to no braking) is able to match the cumbersome outflow of the heavy fluoro. It's not ideal but it works. "Ideal" would be to use a reel that has a braking profile that can handle heavy fluoro without spool tension and to use the free casting centrifugal reel, also without spool tension, with line and baits that play off its free flowing strengths such as braid or less stiff smaller diameter plastic lines paired to long casting baits.

I'd give the Met or Curado the edge with braid for distance over the Zillion. The Zillion offers great distance but also tons of control to handle stiff plastic lines and skipping. That's the appeal of the Zillion. I can do both ends of the spectrum pretty well. If you live at braid and bomb casting end of the spectrum try backing off the spool tension in your Shimanos. You can run them as zero adjust spool tension reels too. The Japanese instructions actually tell you to do this.

The new to me $34 Gomexus handle. I've used the $50 machined ones ones in the past but this forged handle is a nice looking cheaper option. Looks great on the Tatula HD. Going to 5:1 gear swap it and use it for big deep diving cranks.

Yes but also no. BF has been around for a very long time with ultra light spools in baitbast reels targeting trout in streams. This is essentially identical to UL spinning in bait weights, rod lengths and powers but in casting form. BFS is a modern creation and is basically a bass fishing specific term invented by Yukihiro Sawamura when applied BF to Japanese bass fishing. He took his shallow KTF spools for Daiwa reels and paired them to a bass rods that have soft tips with strong backbones. These rods are much stiffer and longer than a similar power rated trout or panfish rod. The goal was to use light fluorocarbon line too stiff for a spinning rod for highly pressured fish in cover. This required a casting reel to handle the line and a new type of rod was made that could cast these light baits but still have the power to steer and control a fish around cover. Watch the video above in YouTube with captions set to translate to English to here his story. BFS is the newer niche bass fishing version of BF but for whatever reason BF was in stealth mode in the US despite being decades older and it wasn't until BFS leaked into the US bass fishing circles from Japan in the 2010s did US anglers get exposed to using light baits with a baitcast reel a mainstream sense. This has lead to just the idea of using a baitcast reel to cast light weight baits for any species for any reason to be labeled BFS here. There is a distinction but it has been largely lost. It's an important distinction because a L powered BFS (bass) rod is a whole different animal from a trout L BF rod. Attached is a light powered JDM BFS rod from 2013. Notice how large the blank is deep into the rod. These rods are very stiff deep into the rod and shut off from the 1st guide to the butt to control and steer fish. Trout and panfish rods are not built this way.

I use both a stake and sometimes a hinge/danforth style anchor in high wind for the soft bottom lakes I fish. I store the stake in the kayak by sticking the stake under the front webbing. I should mention I have this and hate it. It will move the anchor out of reach when seated forcing you to crawl around in the kayak to try and reach the anchor or desprately tug at the skinny trolly cord to rotate the kayak to a point you can reach the anchor rope. I gave up and just tie to the handles on the sides my Outlaw near the seat. Not a fan of this trolly or perhaps any of them.

If you want to buy a $20 Aleiexpress reel then buy a $20 Aliexpress reel. DON'T buy a $20 Alexpress reel from Amazon or where ever for $50+ because it's heavily marketed and "everywhere"

I run a looser drag and thumb my spool on hooksets. Just don't wig out on the hookset and yank at the fish. Just move your arms and load the rod. It doesn't need to be a violent event. This probably applies to all hooksets but especially with light line. A hook set is about delivering pressure to the hook to penetrate the fishes mouth. You don't need to rip and tear at fish with those Bubba hooksets you see in media. I think people do that because they find it enjoyable more so than that being a requirement to hook fish. This guy literally invented BFS (the acronym). Watch how he sets his hooks.

No, i ordered something recently and I got the normal horrible experience of ordering from there. Nothing out of the ordinary.

Yeah you can't do that with the owners hooks. You can just cut them off and buy a bag of the twist locks like the Gamakatsu hooks use from Gamakatsu, VMC or BPS brands. Others have them as well. I have a pack of soft copper ones I have been using on my baits the past few years. They seem to do the same job so I get whatever I run across when I need them.