The Rooster

Dude, I do the same thing when it comes to winter. I go crazy and start hitting the stores looking for new stuff or old stuff I just never got yet and would like to get (those are mostly lures).

How many different rod/reel setups do you take with you when you go fishing and what do you use them for?? I'm trying to get an accurate idea of how many I might need to get, like one medium heavy for jigging/T-rigging, one rod especially for crankbaits, and so on...

What kind of grease did you use on the gears??

Never fished with the Pro Max, I just looked at it in the store only. I wasn't impressed with it, seemed it should have been smoother than it felt. BPS Extreme on the other hand......I love those reels. They are very smooth, and actually they are on sale now for $65 if you get the Fall Angler catalog from Bass Pro Shops. Would be nicer if they went on sale for $60 and you could buy them from the site, but right now on the site they are still $80. They are very nice reels and you will not go wrong with one of these.

Well I have an old Quantum that has it but I have only used it once and I never liked it at all. Then I have a BPS Extreme and it had the option to order it with the flippin' switch but I got the same model without it instead. I've not missed it yet...........BUT I DON'T FLIP OR PITCH (probably need to learn that but never could grasp the concept of how to do it right). Then I noticed that none of the high dollar reels have it so I just surmised that it was a useless feature.

I'm very sorry for your loss. Sounds like he had some great experiences in life with fishing the Classic twice and being a lure maker and all.

I'm gonna check into this. I normally use a duffle bag that fits Plano boxes perfectly but doesn't hold up more than a year or two before the lining is torn out inside. That doesn't effect the overall bag for hauling the boxes around but it makes it so when I take a couple out the ones on the end pockets that have to stand up vertically can fall over and I end up having to remove them all in order to put them all back again. Normal tackle bags cost a lot more than this bag does and many aren't set up like I like so that's why I never used them. You might have the ultimate set up going with your system and I never thought of that at all.

Is a flippin' switch on a baitcaster just a gimmick?? If not, why don't I see them on the more expensive reels?? I just seem to notice them on reels in roughly the $50 to $100 price range. And none of the brands I think of as being more high end offer them at all, like Shimano, Pflueger, Abu Garcia, Daiwa, and others. Then you have the BPS line of reels that only the lowest priced aluminum framed reel has it on, the Extreme that is. None of the upper levels of those offer it at all. Same thing again with Quantum it seems, the KVD reel has it, and the Accurist PT has it, but the Energy and Tour edition don't mention it at all. This sort of makes me think of it as training wheels on a bicycle, it's for the inexperienced "flipper" and by time you upgrade you shouldn't need it anymore.

The Rick Clunn reel is on sale for $70, true enough. The Extreme is also on sale for $65 if you have the Fall Angler catalog, but on the website it's still $80. I was just looking at the Exceler and it looks like a good reel from what I saw about it but I didn't read anywhere that it has a metal sideplate. Just an aluminum frame. Of course I'm assuming we're talking about baitcast reels, not the spinning.

Is there such a thing as being a Shimano and a Pflueger mook at the same time?? ;D I'm gonna have all Shimano rods with Pflueger casting and spinning reels (considering BPS baitcasters are just Pfluegers in disguise).

What's so funny about this....?? :-? You got a little wind fall of money and you'd like some opinions on what to burn it on, right?? Here's what I'd do right now if I had some extra cause I'm wanting to get into jigs. Me personally, I'd probably get several 3/8 or 1/2 oz. jigs for a couple bucks each, and a bag or two of Net Bait Baby Paca Craws for trailers. That would be $16 to $20 here where I live. Lots of colors to pick from but green pumpkin is a good one and black is another. If I didn't spend it all on that then I'd get some 3/0 EWG Gammakatsu hooks and 1/4 oz. bullet weights for T-rigging the same paca craws with. A package of 5 hooks is $3 and some sinkers are another $1.50. That's the whole thing gone there.

Oh, how I wish that I had saved all my older issues of the Bass Pro and Cabela's catalogs. Just for comparisons to the newer reel models that have come out since then if nothing else. As it is, when the new ones come in each year I just chuck the old ones out with the trash. Only reason I remembered that Extreme was because I have one of the 6.4:1 versions with 5 bearings and mine is an HC.

5.4:1 is the ratio, should be the one that has 5 bearings instead of the newer 7 bearing model.

I've never used any of this kind of stuff but I've read enough about them to know that if I did I'd try the KVD before I used any of it. I had a can of reel magic I got from a grab bag one time in Wal-Mart's clearance aisle but I never tried it and now I don't even know what ever became of it. To my knowledge I never used any of it. I did see Bill Dance use it on TV though, he sprayed it all over the reel, not just on the line. I always thought that would have made it greasy and slick feeling so when I was gripping it I'd lose control over it and drop it in the water.

Which gear ratio did you get?? They make them in 5.4:1, 6.4:1, and 7.1:1. The lower the ratio the more torque you have.

When you apply pressure, I'd keep it on the metal bar that the crank paddles are attached to instead of just using the paddles themselves. It might be on there pretty tight and the paddles might be bent out of position before the threads give. Also look to see if there's any sort of set screw that would have to be loosened before you just crank it backwards. It would be on the part of the reel handle where it threads onto the shaft. If there's not then it should be good to go, but if there is then it will have to be loosened to remove the handle. I'm fairly sure there's not though. I just ordered a reel made this same way, it's the Bass Pro Shops Rick Clunn signature series, also made by Pflueger. I'll have this same thing to go through when I need to clean and relube it next year. But I've taken reels like this apart before and they've always just been the type to crank in reverse to remove the handle.

Don 't ask .... if you think you have a problem don 't ask me about it, I blew my last functional brain cell the day I purchased my first Megabass lure, strangely, now a 15 dollars bait doesn 't look THAT "expensive" . I have not quite yet made it to this point. New rods and reels suck me right in a lot of times, and new lures do too. Up to this point I had a line I didn't cross when it came to purchasing rods. That line was a little blurrier when it came to reels but was still there. Now I can see myself blowing through it like it was just loosely drawn in the dirt, but I still tend to think of fishing lures as $8 or less each. Took a while before I'd spend that much on them and even longer before I'd fish them in places they needed to go to catch fish. But I'm gettin' there......

Fisher, You are right of course about what you said speaking about our sport. I didn't think of it quite in those terms, I always tend to see a younger person all high and self righteous on themselves when this sort of thing comes up. I will attempt to modify how I speak of the sport of fishing myself from now on.

3 lures for $100?? What kind of lures are those!?!?

Just one now, I already sold the rest. It's mounted on a custom sub enclosure that I built myself to house the sub and the amp together and it fits behind the seat of my truck. It's a Phoenix Gold Octane-R 4 channel amp, two channels running my subwoofer bridged to it and the other two channels are powering the front door speakers. I'll have to reroute the speaker wires back up to the deck again after selling the amp so that they are getting signal that way. The amp and sub will be gone and I'll have some fast cash for some Shimano rods, and maybe one more reel. I'm attempting to get $300 for the amp, sub, box, and a brand new set of Kicker coaxial speakers that I bought and never used, some nice ones too, not the cheapest line of them. If I sell it for that amount, then I'll easily get two of those rods and one more Rick Clunn reel, and that will nicely outfit me for baitcasters, being that I have an Extreme already on another rod. I should be able to sell it all for that too cause it's all in mint condition, doesn't appear used at all.

I'd argue with the manager on that. You said you're done with that store so what do you have to lose?? I'd tell them specificly it was doing that right out of the box and that's the only reason you added the Hot Sauce to see if it would help and save a 60 mile drive. Now you've made that drive twice over this (you will have at that time anyway) and you want your money back. It's worth the try anyway. If it's a big box store like Dick's or some place then you might have a shot but if it's just a local tackle shop that's privately owned then probaby not.

I didn't see any on here that bother me and actually picked up a couple I might use................but only if any of you guys aren't around. Only thing I saw that I have a comment on is the part about any non-participants in the sport having a problem when someone says "filled the boat" about fishing, or "killed" referring to shooting a deer or something. I say it is what it is and they just need to get over it. They don't hunt or fish cause they don't like it, but having a problem with people who do is completely overstepping their boundaries and getting offended when someone says they killed something is just stupid. I spent about 6 years working in sporting goods at a Wal-Mart and it never failed that someone who didn't even hunt would be back there during deer season and act like it bothered them that other customers would be buying arrows and broadheads or rifle shells to shoot something with. : My hat's off to the guy who goes the extra mile in talking about it to watch what he says in order to not promote any negative publicity about the sports. Congratulations and thank you for taking your job so seriously to protect it for the rest of us. I just wish people would wake up and realize though that they eat animals for food each day that were slaughtered for their meat and those animals didn't even have a chance like the deer does when you hunt it. Where do they think hamburger comes from??

My baitmonkey has sprung free!!! I just ordered a new baitcast reel, the BPS Rick Clunn signature series, and now I'm working on a way to get a Shimano Compre rod for it in the next couple of weeks, maybe two of those rods. I supposed I could wait and save money between now and spring time (with Christmas coming?? YEAH RIGHT!!) but I have a car stereo system in my truck that I just listed for sale to fund the purchase of new rods and whatever else it will get me.....maybe another Clunn reel?? For as long as I can remember I've been into car audio, building a system for about every vehicle I've ever owned since I was 19. Fishing has swelled up and took over my life now though and I'm satisfied with listening to music on just a couple sets of speakers and a deck only. No need for 500 watts of power and subs pounding my head off anymore. So the system is coming out for the right price and the new rods should be here very soon as a result!! I just listed it for sale here locally in the trader paper that circulates the area. Wish me luck!! Daddy needs some new Compre rods!!! My wife might have to watch that I don't sell the furniture!!! ;D Am I out of control yet??

You have to have the fall angler catalog to order this (last time I checked a couple days ago anyway) but the entire combo is on sale right now for $99. The rod is normally that price alone. If the rod is all you want, it's on sale for $69 through the catalog. When I went to the website it still showed them as being full retail price and even explained why it would be that way in the catalog but not online. EDIT--just checked again. You can get the rod for $69 without the catalog for codes and all that, but the reel and combo are at full price. Get the fall angler catalog and you can get the whole combo for under $100 if you'd like. I know that's not what you were asking about, I just like letting people know of where they can get a great deal at is all.

That Nitro is new out this year I believe. It shouldn't be discontinued already. It's identical to the Browning reels though if you look at it, just it's a bit larger.