Bigbox99

You're supposed to ride your thumb on top top of the spool to slow and stop the spool when the bait approaches the water or floor. When casting a baitcast reel you have to track the bait with your eyes as it flies and apply pressure to the spool to slow and stop the spool as the bait nears the water. It's a new thing to you but you are able to accomplish this.

I don't know but when I was fishing the Gilly 110 at night I would get two sharp little taps on my line and if I kept reeling nothing happened. I always assumed it was a tiny fish messing with the bait. Then I started pausing the bait when I felt the tiny taps to let the bait turn on its side and fall and then seeing if the bait was heavy. Everytime I did this I got a 6+ lb fish. I assume they were crushing the bait with their jaws and then scooping it up head 1st to avoid the spines. Not that this bait had any.

My 1st thought about a min into the video is that I would use a 6 gear reel with a moderate retrieve based on the action and the key word "hunt". Unstable baits that hunt are a favorite of mine and for the uninitiated these means baits that blow out spiral or otherwise have unsatisfactory action to those that work them too fast. My recommendation would be to slow down and let it go crazy darting and clacking.

The world needs a modern Honda Element. Curious to see what the Toyota Compact Cruiser turns out to be. Will it be a Toyota Bronco Sport or a Toyota Jimny.

Because they can. They don't actually design or develop any of their reels and order from an OEM. Same with Bass Pro or any other house brand reel.

I want to recommend the Steez A HLC but I have no experience with that reel. Only the older TD Zillion HLC which I use to long cast heavier frogs.

What I have found is that my reels/spools that excel at distance casting bomb friendly tail weighted baits like frogs or topwater walkers paired to a free flowing line like braid often are finicky or downright difficult with stiffer plastic lines and less bomb friendly baits. It's not unrealistic to hear one report that a reel is awesome at long casting frogs and then another say it's terrible with fluorocarbon and texas rigs or jerkbaits.

I have that reel and spool bit don't use it much. It can't skip and doesn't do well with light weight baits that slow down rappidly or catch the air. It does well with compact baits that cast like darts to take advantage of that free spinning spool.

You have, but you probably didn't notice it. Some people have a higher tolerances to noticing these things than others. Once I started fishing with aluminum frame and handle side plate reels and that effortless winding power became the norm it is immidiately noticeable how poor the winding power is with these plastic frame reels when winding in a fish especially through slop when the reel is under load. They still work and the spool spins backwards when the handle is spun forwards but that smooth and effortless winding power is gone. You are very well aware you are winding in a fish with these reels where as with a very solid feeling reel you really don't notice that through the reel.

I will add that there is a possibility that there may be no US warranty for these reels even though they are identical to USDM reels. They all have a line capacity by line type sticker on the bottom of the handle side plate as is commonly found in chinease market reels. If one of these come across a US Daiwa service desk it is possible that they would identify it as a CDM reel and refuse to warranty it. You can always remove the sticker if you like. I do because I think it looks tacky.

Aliexpress. I got my 80 from there for $105 a while back. Tatulas and Curados are much cheaper there than with US retailers.

Ideally you want more than just a small reel but a small reel with a light weight spool and if you intend to use light braid you want that light weight spool to be shallow. The cheapest Tatula 80 you can find and a Ray's spool would be the best value option. You can get by with cheaper but the Tatula 80 isn't going anywhere and parts will be available years from now. This is not something I can say about Amazon/Aliexpress mystery meat reels.

Tatula 80. If you only want to spend Piscifun XCS money then maybe the Piscifun Alloy M or Seasir M1. I would advise against the XCS. I have one and while it is a cool looking compact reel, the brakes are difficult to dial in and winding in a fish with the rod loaded feels like a chore.

OG TD Zillion HLC. Z200 on Long Cast setting. Maybe the Steez A HLC but that one seems to be wild. The type of frog you use matters too. I use Terminator walking frogs and can dump and entire 36mm spool of 50# braid with the Zillion HLC largely do to how well that frog casts. I wouldn't even throw it on a Zillion G. That shallow 34mm spool doesn't hold enough line for that frog IMO. It could even spool the notoriously over braked 17 Tatula SV if you cast hard enough.

I have tried many budget reels to get a feel for what's out there to provide feedback and help anglers looking at these reels. What I have found is that I HATE the plastic baitcastes because they all feel and sound horrible under load when cranking and lack winding power. The aluminum frame reels I have used have been more than adequate and some quite good for the price. These include the $48 Johncoo Ares, $50-$60 Piscifun Alloy M and $50-$60 Histar Black Mamba. The Ares and Black Mamba get an aluminum side plate and a double supported pinion too. I use both for high resistance winding baits night fishing from a kayak to keep my high end gear at home and they have been awesome for the price. The Alloy M has been a jig and plastics reel and been pretty good. It can't skip worth a darn or dump the entire 32mm spool of braid with a frog but does the in-betweens of these two extremes just fine with normal use and does have a nice compact shape for palming.

The original had issues with the gears getting rough but I haven't heard that about the MGL. Same reel but the MGL gets micro mod gears.

We actually get line dig in from doing bass fishing things like running high drag pressures if not outright locking the drag then yank on a fish on the hookset. Swinging in fish with the rod or "boat flipping" fish using the rod will also cause smaller diameter braid to dig into the layers of line beneath the braid taking the load of a fish being hoisted into the boat. Why we can't just be normal I don't know but these practices are common place in bass fishing.

Also, your line may have been spooled on backwards (yes this is a thing) and this is causing the line to misbehave. The filler spool the line came one will have given the line some memory and spooling this line on without taking this into consideration will cause the line to want to jump off the spool and backlash even when stripping line off by hand. The good news is you can just wait and the line will develop a new memory of the direction it was spun onto the spool. This really isn't a concern with braid so it's possible you may not have even been aware this is a issue you can have.

I spy a 1st gen pro qualifier

I so upset that the maverick doesn't have roof rails for a rack to car top or the ability to fold down the back seat to extent the bed length into the cabin for rods. The stupid Baja did this and its just a hacked up Outback. A fwd hybrid base model Maverick would have been the perfect vehicle for me. I will never not be upset about this.

All of that is true. It is also true for a small fishing boat. That's the catch. When you buy a kayak and turn it into a small fishing boat you often, but not always, end up with a more expensive and worse small fishing boat. I'm in the camp that if I want a little fishing boat I'll get a small jon and deck it out or that interesting plastic skiff posted on page one. Even an 8 foot pond prowler is night and day better than a kayak for stand up fishing stability. I have one. It has horrible endurance trying to move that barge around on trolling motor with one battery where as I can go all day on my kayak powered by me. There are pros and cons to both but a kayak is so far removed from what I see as a small fishing boat that any endeavor to turn one into one is going to be costly and going to miss the mark.

I also have a 4 door truck with a 5.5 bed. It works for hauling kayak and I can put the rods in the cab to protect them instead of the bed. The downside is I can't sleep in it and my 11.5 kayak hangs past the tailgate so I have to run a red flag and it affects my ability to park in parking lots or otherwise use the vehicle normally with the kayak in it. This is not the case for the Element. You forget it's even up there. You can also load it in like a pickup but it's not recommended even though I do it for short 5 min jaunts to the local lake. You will breathe exhaust.

Honda Element. You can even sleep inside of it like a homeless person. They're 6 feet of room on the flat floor between the front seats and rear when the seats are shoved forward. I actually keep a Colman cot in mine for sleeping. All the rods go on a headliner rack. Kayak on top of the roof rack with a Rhino rack loader bar that allows for one man one hand even loading and unloading of a kayak.

I don't know what these bars do. I assume reduse line slap on the reel frame when casting and line lay with the T wing. The only time you see bars like these on older non T wing reels were the PE variants.

I'm not a sensitivity guy. Maybe it because the bottom of all my lakes is muck and slime so bottom contact fishing really isn't much of a thing but if I can pull a weightless plastic across weeds and tell the difference between coontail and curly leaf pond weed on fluoro mainline then I am satisfied in the sensitivity department. What I am picky on is action and handle length. I can really appreciate the way a rod casts and how it handles the fish. I have found I prefer a lot of the JDM stuff over USDM rods. The icing on the cake is that they confirm the correctness of my opinion by looking high end and from this century. It's confirmation bias, but it's nice.