fishballer06

My left handed Curado K finally arrived on Saturday while I was out fishing. Once I got home, I quickly opened it up and inspected it. Upon first holding it and spinning the handle, I was pretty impressed with the reel. I was bummed that it didn't arrive in time for my trip out on the boat on Saturday, but then my wife asked on Sunday if we could take the dog for a walk around the one local housing community pond. So this was my opportunity to get some on the water time with this reel. Here's my initial thoughts and first trip out impressions of the reel. Briefing: I've always had a soft spot for the Curado reels. My first baitcaster that my father and grandfather got me was an old green bantam Curado back in the mid 90's. I learned baitcasting on that reel and I still have that reel today and it still works just as well as it did back then. Since that time, I have owned (and some I still own) every model of the Curado that has come along. The model I got was the 201K-HG model. For those that aren't aware, this is the left handed model in a 7:1 ratio (31" IPT retrieve). I also have a standard model on pre-order (6:1 ratio, 26" IPT), but those haven't started shipping yet to my knowledge. Unboxing: These reels come in the standard Shimano boxing that we're all accustomed to. Upon taking the reel out, I was immediately impressed with the looks of the reel. The flat black look awesome on this reel, and it looks much more expensive than a $180 reel. The dark green spool and tension knob were a nice touch of the past. The one thing that struck me as odd was the coloring of the handle and drag star. They are a gunmetal silver color, and in certain lighting it looks more silver than gunmetal. With the coloring of this reel being so muted down, a shiny silver handle/drag star looks a little out of place. Shimano has black handles and drag stars on their other reels, so I'm not sure why they didn't stick to that on this model. Not to be confused with what I said earlier, this gunmetal silver in other lighting does look darker, so it's just a matter of what lighting you're in I suppose. Upon grabbing the handle, I immediately noticed that the knobs are bigger around that what I'm used to on my Chronarch's and Metanium's. They definitely beefed them up on this model. I'm not sure how I feel about these larger knobs, but I know some guys prefer a beefier knob, so I'm sure they'll appreciate this feature. Once I turned the handle, I was really shocked. This reel feels as sturdy and smooth as my Metanium MGL. Shimano has really dialed it in with the aluminum frame and micro module gearing because this thing is so fluid whenever you turn the handle. Comparing this reel to the previous I model, this K model feels light years better in basically every category. I'm not saying that the I series was a bad reel, but I feel like this model Curado is under priced with how refined it feels. On The Water: Prior to heading out, I spooled the reel up with 14lb. Gamma Polyflex copolymer line and mounted it on a St. Croix LTB 7'1" Medium powered rod with a fast action. My reel came with the internal brakes set to 2 on, 2 off, and the external dial set on 3 (adjustable from 1-6). I tied on a 3/16oz. swimbait jig head and attached a Rage Tail Menace grub on it for the sake of taking her out on her maiden voyage. So I left the on the stock brake settings from the factory and adjusted my tension knob until I had the desired fall rate that I wanted. Making the first cast, I was impressed with the reel. It was like the factory settings were made for my little swimbait presentation. I experienced no overruns during the cast and no backlashes upon splash down. Color me impressed considering I didn't adjust anything from the factory other than the spool tension. During the hour or so that I fished, I casted numerous different ways to see how the reel handled everything I threw at it. Side arm, overhead, back hand, roll cast, pitching. It handled everything with ease and no issues at all. I was able to pitch with ease and good distance, considering the presentation I was using was probably only around 5/16oz overall. My standard casting distance was on par with what I get out of my Chronarch's and Metanium's, so I was impressed with that. I backed my external dial knob down to 2.5 and got a few more feet on my casts. During the hour or so I fished, I managed to catch four fish and I lost two others. Everything in this pond is in the 9-12" range, so no monsters to really test out the drag, but big enough to bend the rod and feel a wiggle on the end of the line. The reel felt just as smooth retrieving my bait and reeling fish in as I thought it was when I pulled it out of the box at home. If you haven't fished a Shimano reel yet with the micro module gearing, you're missing out on a super smooth reel. I'm really impressed that Shimano has brought this technology down to the Curado lineup. Conclusion: So far, so good with this new K series Curado. I'm going to try to put as much time in with this reel as I can before we have ice here in Pennsylvania. I can't wait to receive my standard 6:1 reel either. From what I can see so far, Shimano has taken a big step in the right direction with the Curado lineup. I know people were very upset over the G series, but the I series was a vast improvement over the G, and now the K is a big improvement over the I series. Only time will tell, but I'd say that the Curado is back to being king of the $200 casting reel market. In my opinion, this K series feels better in the hands and performs better than all of the various Tatula models I've fished with. I know this was only my first outing with this reel, but I wanted to voice my opinion for everyone who is on the edge about this reel. I am going to put in more time with this reel and I will probably update this post or create a new one once I really break this reel in (just like I did with the Chronarch MGL). So stay tuned for more updates. If anyone has any questions, I'll try to help out the best I can.

Lefty Curado K's finally arrived!

She definitely has a mouth the size of a 5 pounder, as opposed to the size of a 3 pounder. However, like others have said, without putting it on a scale, you'll never know... If you had a tape ruler and knew the length and girth, we could give you a close ballpark number.

Well, whether or not they add more drag is subjective to what's currently in your reel. Old, worn out drag washers get weaker over time from being locked down and under pressure.

Jackall Flick Shake

So you're going to make an announcement at 3 AM telling anglers what lake they need to show up to? And then you're going to have a scale there to weigh every piece of equipment/tackle that each angler is taking with them? Am I understanding this correctly? If so, best of luck with your format.

I mean, can't this be said about a lot of rules/laws in California???

I've found in the past, that manufacturers understand their warranty process better than the random members of a message board on the internet...

Switch over to a rubber net, with thicker grommets. You'll spend less time digging tangled hooks out of the net.

We had our club "classic" tournament on Saturday on the city pool of the 3 rivers, here in Pittsburgh, PA. Only the top 20 guys in our club qualified to fish this event and it was our highest payout event of the season. If you're familiar with how the 2005 Bassmaster Classic and 2009 Forrest Wood Cup went on these waters, you'll know it's a dink-fest. So a 15-17" fish is a giant. My partner and I prefished the weekend before, and my partner fished again on the Thursday before the event. We weren't overly confident, but we thought we had a game plan figured out. Well, it ended up raining for about an hour on Thursday night, and this muddied the water up and totally changed the fish for us. After not getting anything in the first two hours with our original game plan, we switched to fishing the various bridge pilings in the river. We eventually came across a bridge piling that had millions of little fry everywhere around it. Upon pitching a bait at this particular piling and reeling back up, it spooked the little fry and made them act frantic. Immediately, 4 smallmouth came up and started snatching up the baitfish. This tripped me off on what I needed to do to get these fish to bite, and that was to stir up the baitfish that they were hanging around. So I backed off, and started throwing squarebills and 2.8" Keitechs and burning them through the schools of baitfish. This pattern started to produce for us and got us all the fish that we weighed in. I was the last person to weigh in, and I believe I ended up around 8th place. My fish got put into a weigh bag and I walked them down to the water to release them. Upon reaching in to get my big fish out for a quick picture, I saw something that I had never seen before. My biggest smallmouth (around 15-16" in length) had my smallest smallmouth (12.25" long) in his mouth and down to the back of his throat. How this happened, I don't know, but I was shocked to see that a smallmouth this small could fit a fish this big into its throat.

My bag went for 3.71. That weight alone would have put me in 26th in the '05 Classic with just my one day of weight alone. Had I put up that number all 3 days, I would have had 11.13 pounds. Putting me around 5th place in the Classic.

Honestly, it depends on the size of the lake you're having the event on, and the number of boats you plan on having entered. If you're fishing a 20k+ acre lake and having 100+ boats, that's going to be totally different than having a tournament on a lake that's 2k acres with limited horsepower and ~20 boats.

Last tournament of the year is over with. Here's the biggest fish I could muster up out of the city pool of the 3 rivers in Pittsburgh. If you're familiar with how the 2005 Classic and 2009 Forrest Wood Cup tournaments went, you'll know that this fish is pretty good sized.

Congrats on the fish. That fish looks to be around 3.25-3.75 pounds. Definitely not even close to a 5 pounder.

The city of Champ-yinz.

The Neko rig...

Is that a Brewer slider jig head?

Try using a snell knot on a straight shank flipping hook Or, use two bobber stops with your EWG hook. One on each side of the weight.

I'm looking for everyone's opinion on their favorite finesse craw/creature/beaver style bait and how do you rig/fish it? I'm targeting some river smallmouth and I'm curious to see if everyone is using something different than what I'm trying.

Like others have said, this isn't a collaboration. Shimano/Gloomis have been one company for many years. 10% percent lighter sounds nice, but keep in mind that on a 4oz. rod, 10% is only about a 1/4oz.

I have the HLC TWS reel (Japan model) and I use it for frogging. It does a great job skipping frogs up under overhanging trees and docks. It also can handle big fish in the thick stuff while frogging. Obviously the Steez is a Steez. So there's that.

3.3 and 3.8 are my bread and butter. The Lake Fork 3.5" Magic Shad's are another solid bait choice.

Don't go letting the secret out about the crappie colored Pointer's....!!!

I used to do this to my Bill Lewis Traps back in the 90's. It helps make them a little more weedless, which can be helpful whenever you're burning them overtop of the weed tops. However, like others have said, you're removing half your hooks, which can hurt your hookup ratio.

St. Croix Avid or Shimano Zodias would be my vote.