I love the Vanquish reels I have. They have held up well and are a pleasure to fish but this one leaves me scratching my head. 

 

Check out what this guys has to say about it. Dude cracks me up but he has some valid points about the reel. 

 

 

Shimano reached a design in '18 Stella that's tough to improve upon.  

Since then, they're making small changes here-and-there, such as pitch rate and different drag cap.  

Vanquish stands alone as the best finesse spinning reel ever offered, and hasn't changed much in the last 6 years.  

But the difference compared to Stradic and even Twin Power doesn't prevent the cost-effective and beast reels from fishing finesse.  

From inception, spinning reel has self-destructed with normal use, and hit bottom with "performance" gains in the 1990s.  Big improvements in the last decade are from computer design.  Shimano has done the best job of designing life into their worm-drive reels, and are comfortable pushing their design with small performance edge.  

1- he's not wrong

2- I'll keep my waterproofing.

3- this affects basically no one.

 

I think I'll just stick to the workhorse stradic in the medium body size that fits any spinning rod I'll every use for bass.  Then I have a set of interchangable spools and parts should there ever be a need.

 

@bulldog1935- do you know of an inexpensive/good value replacement spool for the FL/FM stradics besides factory spools?

@casts_by_fly FL and FM don't interchange because of the change made to the drag cap - that is, it's reported they interchange if you also swap the drag cap that matches the spool series.  

When I wanted a shallow finesse spool for medium-frame '20 Twin Power, I bought a '19 Vanquish spool to get lighter magnesium.  

Otherwise, I've gone the other way, and added Yumeya spools, which gain cool looks, and not-necessarily-needed spool ball bearing.  

There's nothing really complicated about these spools - might check Ali Express for aftermarket options.   Quick search turned up Gomexus shallow braid spool for medium-frame '22 Stella series (Stradic FM) -

 

- with the current tariff situation, it might be cheaper than buying from Hedgehog.  

Both Plat.jp and Hedgehog do a great job of sourcing every spool option that's still in Shimano production/inventory.