Round reels, man that's so last century 😉

Just kidding, there the only ones that I own, though pretty just used for striper fishing in the salt.

@bulldog1935 Wow, they are awesome combos for the job, I don't go so long; I have a few 9' and 10' ugly and berkley spinning but conventional side, all two speeds with 7'4" rods. Those setups of yours are so cool. Thanks for sharing.

@bulldog1935 and I have dm’d quite a bit over the last year. Those combos are awesome looking, but some pics he’s sent me make me drool.

This one usually gets the most-pretty votes, my 6500CS Rocket on Akios barstock frame.

Don't let your grandad's Ambassadeur fool you - this one really is a rocket. (15 BB, 10 in the spool + LW)

Also, my C3 Ambassadeurs all have blue corundum drag washers, and deliver double digits to spare.

3 hours ago, ATA said:

@bulldog1935 Wow, they are awesome combos for the job, I don't go so long; I have a few 9' and 10' ugly and berkley spinning but conventional side, all two speeds with 7'4" rods. Those setups of yours are so cool. Thanks for sharing.

Like you, we much prefer 8-9' rods for tossing lures to pelagic fish sign in the surf guts.

Gulf Coast beach structure is a long, shallow way to the guts.

(Spots on the beach are p/u trucks, and there's just about 400' of water across the top crop of the Google Earth.) Two species in particular, pompano and redfish, require planting meat past the 2nd gut, so we need long rods for that cast. It's also a lot of fun to pendulum-cast 2 oz to 400' on a 14' rod.

Last photo, my buddy Lou is in front of the first gut casting my Tsunami 1102H - fishing spider weights, and you walk it back to the beach and stake it out. If you see feeding slashes or diving birds in the guts, you grab a lure rod and go after them.

On 3/25/2026 at 9:06 AM, FishTank said:

I would like to know what you think of this rod. I've tried one briefly that a guy had in our tournament group and it wasn't what I thought it would be.

I have almost pulled the trigger on it a few times. I'm a big fan of the P5 rods. It would be good to hear another opinion from someone that is new to it.

What is your opinion on the X bites?

2 hours ago, LonnieP said:

What is your opinion on the X bites?

My opinion is kind of brief and one sided.

I know of a few guys that have it and I was able to toss one around for little bit. It was ok but it didn't live up to expectations I had put on it. It felt soft and kind of underpowered for the way I would fish a jig. A Texas rig wouldn't be an issue. On the other hand, some guys like jig rods this way and are quite successful with them. Also, it was sensitive but again, I was hoping for more. With that said, it felt light, balanced and could cast a jig well but it felt way different than my NRX+ 894c. So much so that it might have skewed my opinion which is why I was interested in hearing what you thought.

I like pretty much all the P5 rods. I'm just not sure about this one but I am not totally against owning one at some point.

23 hours ago, Jaybert said:

Thanks ! I have MBR 782 & MBR 783 now so this completes my set of nice multi-purpose rods. Good to hear it was a good rod for you, lots of positive reports out there on the 844 of various series so I am looking forward to it as an all around rod for the heavier stuff !

Picked up the new IMX Pro today. I have a few of the prior gen and personally like the older school look of them with the green thread etc. I placed the order for this MBR844 before new IMX Pro was even released a couple weeks back. My order got adjusted to the new series in the meantime. Looking at the new one online I wasn’t sure I loved the black plain look of it as much as my prior gen models. I was worried id be disappointed. I can tell you the pictures don’t do it justice. In person they are really, really nice rods. New reel seat is nice. Blank feels crisp. I like the old school understated rod look with a full handle and these absolutely have that vibe while feeling modern. Other customers at the local tackle shop were considering ordering once seeing it. I’m already plotting my next one to be the BFS model. Very impressed and like I say in person they are more impressive than they look online.

3 hours ago, FishTank said:

My opinion is kind of brief and one sided.

I know of a few guys that have it and I was able to toss one around for little bit. It was ok but it didn't live up to expectations I had put on it. It felt soft and kind of underpowered for the way I would fish a jig. A Texas rig wouldn't be an issue. On the other hand, some guys like jig rods this way and are quite successful with them. Also, it was sensitive but again, I was hoping for more. With that said, it felt light, balanced and could cast a jig well but it felt way different than my NRX+ 894c. So much so that it might have skewed my opinion which is why I was interested in hearing what you thought.

I like pretty much all the P5 rods. I'm just not sure about this one but I am not totally against owning one at some point.

Thanks for your feedback. I bought the Xbites for lighter stuff, mostly Texas rigs, occasionally a finesse jig. I use a Steez Power Pitch for most of my jig fishing.

I ordered an Edge Delta 703S in November and it arrived yesterday. I was surprised with the new guide train. I learned there was a push from steelhead guides to go with this new guide because braid to leader knots and bobber stoppers pass through with less resistance. The rod overall is incredibly light. It will see both dropshot and Ned use.

Picked up a dozen A2's. 6 6.8's and 6 5.6's. Butter smooth...remind me of the old Chronarch 100a. They will be used for heavier baits with resistance. They aren't show trucks, they're boat pulling trucks 👍.

10 hours ago, KP Duty said:

Picked up a dozen A2's. 6 6.8's and 6 5.6's. Butter smooth...remind me of the old Chronarch 100a. They will be used for heavier baits with resistance. They aren't show trucks, they're boat pulling trucks 👍.

6 minutes ago, MiceNReets said:

You motor-boatin' SOB!

16 hours ago, KP Duty said:

Picked up a dozen A2's. 6 6.8's and 6 5.6's. Butter smooth...remind me of the old Chronarch 100a. They will be used for heavier baits with resistance. They aren't show trucks, they're boat pulling trucks 👍.

I made this my primary punching reel a few years back. Very happy with it.

Probably the last two surf rods I'm going to add.

Top is Breakaway Omega 10'6", 2 to 4 oz. Best thing, this rod makes a permanent home for my best bench result ever, 5500CT, which will cast 1/2 oz past 100 yds on 8' RH Customs lure rod - but my CS Rocket displaced it from that rod. Will use it here for casting big lures, nominal 2 oz, and double up for staking light spider weights. The Breakaway conventional reel seat is a spinning seat, nice because it opens up wide to accept the 78-mm foot on Akios barstock CT frame. So I trimmed a Breakaway saddle clamp to fit snug and give me a trigger.

The Yamaga Blanks Early 105 is an astounding lure rod, rated 15 to 50 g, but will fish 1/4 oz all day, and casts a heck of a 5-g metal microjig. Makes a great match with my bench 4500CT

Spool swap for my Conquest SE 30, now it's a proper thread line reel. In my infinite wisdom, I was building out a Royal Express for a customer and ordered the wrong knobs for the Avail handle. Instead of paying $30 to ship a $12 pair of knobs, I decided to make it worth it by getting a 36R spool for my CQ SE.

Factory spool with SVS intact

36R with SVS transplanted

Installed and spooled with 100m of YGK Upgrade 1.2

This will fish great on my Graywolf 704 5-21g. That rod is actually quite competent down to 2g, super wide range weight capability. Another month from now the white bass will be running down the street from me.

It took about two weeks for USPS to deliver my new P5 110 Special but man, what a nice rod. When I first saw it on a rack at a local store, I wasn't really impressed. I thought the tip was weird, it felt stiff at the bottom and the handle was kinda short. Well, I was wrong. This thing is a blast to fish. I was able to take it out, fish a 110 and a Karashi 80 on it and caught 10 little ones. For a 110, its perfect and for a Karashi 80, its pretty good but I'm still trying to figure out the right action for this bait. Its different from the regular Karashi. I moved the MG-ti to it. It can bomb cast a 110 and its pretty decent casting into the wind (I was kind of surprised).

I picked up a P5 Mark 56 a few weeks ago and it has been out a few times but no fish until today and I also haven’t had a chance to get a picture. I wanted to sort of break it in first so I could share a few thoughts. This big girl did just that.

This is another Megabass P5 rod that doesn't disappoint. The power and control are amazing. The sensitivity is ok but not a major factor with this type of rod. It loads big baits well on the cast but still feels light in hand. It paired perfectly with a Steez AII. The above fish didn't stand a chance.

I love looking over a thread like this one. So much great tackle to see! Lately I've been on a vintage rod and reel buying kick in part because that's what I have been finding. At one rod shop the owner just purchased an entire estate of an old custom rod builder who liked to strip off the cork from his rods and install heavy varnished wood. Holding each rod is like holding a slippery broom stick and heavy and out of balance.

The owner knew I like older vintage Loomis blanks and so I get first and second shot at the entire estate. So I carefully went through each rod and chose my top 5 rods, 3 GLoomis and 2 North Fork Composites.

The shop owner knows he is going to have trouble selling these Loomis rods because of the wood and poor craftsmanship of the dearly departed. He left glue visible and sloppy work on some rods.

So he is making me some decent deals. I picked up 5 of my choice today for $100. I'll be back for several more next week and carefully look through what is left. I plan on repurposing a couple of these rods.

Some will get cork back on them and spiral wrapped guides and updated some, while a couple of them may be turned into spinning rods and get more use out of them as spinning rods.

He held back 1 GLoomis telescoping 7'6" flipping and pitching rod to do more research on it. Sounds like the price on that one is going up already. I want some of his older LCI or Loomis Composites, Inc. rods sold by All Star rods out of Houston, Texas. He has two of them in there I may grab later on.

The 5 rods I did buy today are going to be a lot of work I can tell removing some of this wood. I may leave the wood foregrips on some in his memory, but the slippery heavy wood handled have got to go.

Just look at all those custom made solid wood broomstick handles on all these rods! Ugh! What would you do with these? Keep or strip and replace with something newer and lighter? Some of the foregrips are small and not adding much in weight and may remain on the rods, but the heavy wood slippery grips have got to go!

I passed up some good custom Loomis rods just to get at these first. I'll go back for the second "best of" grouping of rods next week.

Also picked up a couple of reels and other rods this past week. I got a nice 7'6" MHF Redbone spinning rod and Shimano Stradic 5000FH for $50. The Redbone rod is in the shop getting guides repaired, but the reel is all finished and ready to fish again. I put a Stradic FG handle on it rather than the white FH handle:

Smooth and quiet as when new again. All new bearings and rebuilt AR on this one, and removal of old friction ring and debris inside of reel.

And I stopped by a pawn shop in Palatka, Florida a few days ago and picked up an older Abu Revo S lefty for my 12 year old son. I offered the shop manager $5 cash for it and he took it. All it needs is rebuilding and a cast control cap.

Looking forward to re-examining all those Gary Loomis estate rods again next week. I don't find a collection like this one very often.

And actually the old guy's hard work at stripping off the cork and replacing with heavy wood is actually working in my favor and making all the rods cheaper and at $20 per GLoomis rod is definitely a worthwhile buy for me.

And since I have to remove the wood grips anyways, it makes the transitioning from a baitcast rod to a spinning rod less of a hassle and more worthwhile that way as well. Forced re-customizing of old custom GLoomis rods! Does not get any better for me! And I'm liking the price too!

@FloridaFishinFool all the wood has got to GO !!!!!

Nice find on the rods but I’d definitely strip all the wood and start from fresh blanks. Going to be some nice rods.

You are right. The wood has got to go. Most of it. I decided to keep the small wood foregrip on this one. Here is the first rod to have wood grip removed. I also removed the guides as the original builder missed the spine alignment by 2 or 3 degree so that is being corrected for this rebuild into a spinning rod.

Correction... the original builder missed the spine alignment by a couple of degrees for a baitcast rod. He was close. But since this is going to be a spinning rod now, the guides go on opposite side to have a rod properly aligned as Gary Loomis teaches it. Now I just need to get some new cork.

Its now 99% cleaned back to blank and dot on blue tape shows new spine alignment slightly offset from original build and original artwork.

Only 10 more of these to go...

This particular old rod had 3 different woods making up the grip. Its a GLoomis 766-1 heavy flipping and pitching rod. He had a cedar butt cap, and solid Florida pine wood handle grip- that cracked and split lengthwise from butt end, and the foregrip looks like tiger eye maple which is staying on the rod.

The old guy made a custom shaped Bass Pro "power hump" type of grip made out of pine wood. I plan on doing something similar in cork.

But first that wood has got to go! No power tools. Just careful nibbling away at the wood using the grain to my advantage to help split it off the rod blank. The tool of choice here are a pair of Snap On flush cut side cutters in the larger size with 3/4" long blades. The wood was no match for these sharp cutters. It also removes all the heavy epoxy from blank as well since they are flush cutters with sharp blades. These even chewed off the reel seat quickly.

I may wind up removing the wood grips from all of them. Way too heavy and out of balance. Going to take some work but its giving new life to classic old Gary Loomis custom rods.

I love it. They’ll be classics when you’re done. Excited to see the end results.

Just picked up these two beauties...

Never thought I’d buy an Abu Garcia rod let alone two 2-piece bait finesse ones, but various members posts convinced me. I wasn’t aware the 7'3" med-light model was a solid tip when I made the purchase (first one for me), and so far it feels great with cranks, swimbaits, and underspins from 1/8-3/8oz, which was my intent. Got it paired up with a bf tuned Alphas 800 and 6lb yo-zuri hybrid, straight up bombs wiggle warts, not too shabby with a #5 shad rap too.

The second, and more intriguing one for my style of fishing, is the light power 6’9” version (tubular tip). Outstanding for smaller 3/16 and 1/4oz jerkbaits. I see this one also getting use for ned rigs, flickshake, and mid-strolling. Got it paired up with my SS Air TW and 6lb Invisx fluoro, but braid is likely in its future as the sensitivity is not bad, but not amazing either. This rod/reel combo weighs in at 7.7 ounces total, like a feather in hand, and well balanced to boot. Gratuitous pics...

Since you can't have enough MH combos and a crazy price jump, I decided to get a few Abu MAX combos. I started with two and caught fish with them from day one. They are not bad for $84. I spooled them with 12lb mono, and I think I am going to get two more. They're going to have the same kind of lure on them at all times, so I won't need to change it often while I am on the water.