MickD

I believe that what the last post is referring to is the fact that when all are linked with ethernet you can select the source for each so that the two in the back (and the one in front, for that matter) can read the from the same transducer. So they don't need separate mega transducers. Which should save some $$. Correct me if I'm misinterpreting.

Next time you go fishing don't take anything with you except cranks. Be sure to have a Rapala DT of appropriate depth rating. Force yourself to use only cranks and I expect you will find a way to catch fish on them. On my last SMB outing I caught fish only on cranks, although I tried a lot of other stuff. You have to know that if millions of fishermen catch fish on cranks, you can too.

I really don't think line capacity is an issue with a baitcaster unless you plan to troll with it. Even then, with the right line, any reel will work.

I'm not familiar with the relative prices, but the difference would have to be very significant for me to sacrifice the ability to easily cast lighter lures than 3/8. I also have never had a bad experience with a Daiwa "anything," but I have with Quantums (not recently-I don't consider them any more.) I think that sooner or later you are going to want to cast lighter lures.

If you are constantly whacking tiptops off, you are doing something wrong. That is abnormal to repeatedly lose tiptops. The most expensive tiptop you get will not retain to the blank any better than the cheapest. If you are constantly losing rings you are hitting them on the boat, most likely. I lost my first ring ever this year (a 25mm ring on a reduction guide) and it was abuse - I was fishing two rods and a fish knocked the rod into the head of my stowed trolling motor really hard.

I have used 40 pound braid on baitcasters and have not had the digging problem. On king salmon , too, so have had some fairly high drag settings. Of course most casting reels' drags (the ones I use, bass reels, not bigger reels) only go to 12 pounds or so, a few higher. I expect you'll get some responses from those who have used these lines with higher drag settings. Valid concern.

I've used a lot of both companies' products and have never had trouble with either. (other than color fading with old Power Pro) But if I know no details about the products I'll use Suffix. Every product from Suffix just seems top quality.

Would St Croix customer service not be the best source of info on this? The biggest issue is the size of the tube, not the ring. The tube must be just a little bigger than the OD of the blank at at the tip. As long as the ring is fairly close to that of the running guides, it will be OK. I always use SIC ring material for tiptops as that is the guide that will groove the quickest. Tubes are sized in 64'ths of an inch or in mm's, and rings are sized in 64th's with the size being the OD of the ring, not the ID of the ring. If you were to order a tiptop with the ring size the same as the running guides, or close, and the tube size just larger than the OD of the blank at the tip, you will have it. (get the same finish as the guides).

The guide rings are ceramic; plastic isn't hard enough. The tube and legs of the tiptop are probably stainless steel and the tube part of it is either hot melt adhesive attached or epoxied on. If it is hot melt it is easy and low risk to SLIGHTLY heat the tube with a butane lighter or similar heat source and pull it off. The best way is to put a string through the eye and provide tension when heating so the tiptop will come off when the hot melt melts and you won't overheat the blank. If it does not come off easily, with little heat, then it is epoxied and will require a lot of care and a degree of skill to get it off. I would recommend hiring it done by a pro builder. Won't be expensive. Bottom line is that with an epoxied tiptop the amount of heat required to get it off and the amount of heat that will damage the blank are very close together. Easy to over heat. Yes, it probably got bent after the ring came out or bent during the event that knocked the ring out. It has to be replaced.

If the Yucatan is slipping, it's not tied right. The video below is what I tied and while I did not test it objectively, it is obvious that it is a very strong knot.

the Yucatan appears to be a very strong knot. When tightened it causes the leader to wrap the line so it ends up being 3 leader thicknesses + two braid thicknesses in diameter, which is not nearly as small as the FG. But it may be small enough depending on your guides. The double uni is, I believe, about 5 leader thicknesses in diameter+ some for the braid, so is bigger than the Yucatan.

Here is the twist tie that I mentioned recently.

I never heard of it before your post. It will not be quite as small as an FG, but will be much smaller than at double uni, and as you said, very easy to tie. Will try it next time I need a line to leader knot. Thanks for posting about it.

Got it, thought you were referring to my post. Agreed, who would want a knock-off of anything? The reels I've bought have not been knock-off.

Not sure where knock off reel comments are coming from. In my post I mentioned a tennis racket, not reels. By the way the racket was a "name brand." Except it wasn't.

Does the motor have a third water intake, possibly under the horizontal fin on the lower unit? My old Suzuki did, and I had to tape it shut so the muffs would provide the water and the engine would not suck air into the third intake. I never used antifreeze, simply put the engine vertical and let it drain. But now with a new Merc, I'll check the manual to see what is recommended. I think most if not all water pumps have a small hole that will drain all the water out of the pump. But, check the manual. Too much at stake to not be sure you're doing it right.

I have bought a number of reels on Ebay and have not been disappointed yet. I have purchased new and used spinning reels and new BC reels. I am leery of used BC reels because they are so easy to screw up, like the clutch on a manual trans car. Treat it right, it will last forever. Treat it wrong and you can fail it in minutes. I look for the seller rating and only go with 99% or 100% satisfaction and a reasonable return policy (I've never had to return one). Usually shipping is free. I never buy insurance or warranties. I believe that the consequences of a seller screwing a buyer on Ebay are so severe that few sellers will risk it. I'm a little less confident of China sellers (my opinion only, based on a fake name brand tennis racket purchase one time).

It is amazing to me how we all "know" a lot less than we think we do. I would look to my engine manufacturer for the answer to this question.

Funny how some knots work for some people but not all. I have never experienced reliable Albertos. It could be because of the sharp twitching I do so often with smaller swim baits. Or there is something in my technique that is wrong, but I've tried it dozens of times, so have given up on it. The FG is a knot that has many ways of doing it wrong, and small differences in technique, that may not even be noticeable to the tyer, can result in a failure. It wasn't until I tried the tool in my previous post that I got to the point that the knot could be tensioned before the half hitches with no instances of the leader sliding out. One thing that might help is to notice the shape and symmetry of the knot before you tension it. If it looks loose, bumpy with weaves out of place, it most likely will fail sooner or later. If the weaves are perfectly aligned, tight to each other, it most likely can be tensioned properly and will not fail. The method on the internet which doesn't require loading the braid during weaving is, in my opinion, less reliable than the braid-tension method. Without the tension on the braid it is difficult to hold everything tight and to get perfectly aligned and tight weaves. I gave up on that one quite a while ago.

The biggest contributor to a successful FG knot is to keep the braid under substantial tension all the time. If this is accomplished the braid will lay on the leader tightly with every weave looking perfect. The challenge in doing this has always been that most of the time I couldn't keep the braid under tension in my teeth-sooner or later it would slip. Here is what changed my FG life-and is a lot more comfortable on the teeth. Get one of those reusable twist ties from a hardware store, one of those about 3/16 in diameter, about 6 inches long. They have a soft surface and a wire inside. Bend it into a V and wrap the braid around it a few times at the V, then bite on it and the thread together. No slip, no tooth discomfort, no chance of damaging the teeth, and you can hold good tension on the braid while you make the weaves. The form of the knot is perfect, and since each weave can be made quite tight, when you get twenty of them on the leader, there will be no slip. Now maybe there are some lines I haven't tried that need their coating scrubbed off, so that should help. But since I've been doing it this way I get a perfect knot every time, and no tendency to slip while doing the half hitches. I tension it very tightly after doing the weaves just as before, but now I never get one that slips during tensioning.

I've used left crank spin reels and right crank BC reels since I was a kid, and that's a long time ago. I am naturally a right handed person. Two years ago I injured my left rotator cup and found that with my baitcasters I had trouble jigging blade baits, so thought the solution would be a left crank BC reel so that my right could do the jigging. Within a few months I found myself trying to retrieve my old right crank BC reels with my left hand. I had gotten used to the left crank. I now prefer the left crank BC reel to my old right cranks. Bottom line, it's about what you prefer, and one can get used to either even after using only one for many years.

I also don't understand what you are proposing. Stabbing a Dremel into an empty spool to remove the 10# FC? If the spool is empty. . . Oh, just figured it out, you're going to drive an empty spool with a Dremel to take off 10# FC from the reel spool, replace it with 14. I expect Dremels are way too fast for this, but give it a shot. You doing spin or cast? 14 # FC on a spin will be a horror case. You can remove line from a reel spool without damaging it, and later reuse it, but maybe not with a Dremel. They turn thousands of revs per minute , don't they? If I were trying to not have my baits go so deep I think I would let out less line, experiment with the right length behind the boat.

I don't think you can go wrong with any Daiwa. I just ordered a new Tatula to replace an old reel that finally died. I still have a number of Cabela's Prodigy and other Daiwa designed and produced spin reels , and they have served me very well for a long time, and still do. Pfluegers are very smooth, but there is something about the geometry of them that bothers me. Like they are a half a finger off with the relationship of the foot to the lip of the spool. Don't worry about any reel's big drag number promise. You don't need a 20 pound drag; you need a smooth drag. And Daiwa's are smooth.

Another way of saying what Tom is saying is that while the gear mesh ratio remains constant (8 revs of the spool for every rev of the crank handle) the actual working overall ratio changes with how much line is off the reel. Therefore the crank effort would be highest with a full spool and lowest with an empty spool. The more line you take in with each crank handle rev the higher the effort will be. I hope this helps rather than hurts.

Just like the transmission gear ratio on cars, except the nomenclature is reversed. A 5.x to one reel is like first gear in your car compared to an 8.x to one which is like maybe third gear. The lower the number the lower the effort to reel and the less line per reel handle crank you will retrieve. The higher the number the higher the reeling effort and the more line you will retrieve with one handle crank revolution. Having said that, I have found little difference in effort between the different gear ratios, most likely because the reels are so efficient these days. Where I notice a difference is with trying to slowly retrieve a spinnerbait. With a 7.x to one reel I have I find myself always tending to retrieve too fast. So I've gone back to my old Calcutta 5.3:1 for my spinnerbait rod. I like the higher numerical ratios for everything else. Maybe a big, deep, crankbait would be noticeably easier to retrieve with the 5.x than with the 8.x.