MickD

I only use braid that heavy when I'm going saltwater fishing and can hook into big barracuda or similarly powered fish. For my bass fishing I don't go over 15. Braid usually breaks above its advertised strength, so I expect either 10 or 15 will be OK. Lighter braids don't seem to mind being twisted as much as heavier braids or mono/copolymer/flouro. I can see the twist in mine all the time, but it seldom gives me a knot. The swivel is a good idea, but I suggest a quality ball bearing swivel. I really don't think the cheap ones do a lot of swiveling. If your mono leader has a lower test strength, then you won't be losing the swivel with break-offs. If you are new to braid, you may have to learn some new knots. Do some research on line to line knots with braid and line to lure knots (if you are not using a leader).

I really like Suffix on baitcasters. You want to get a hard finish that doesn't unravel easily and doesn't absorb a lot of water. If it absorbs water it will get heavy and "jump" off the spool tangling in itself and bringing the cast to a hard stop.

You got it. when the line looks like that it did not break, but came undone. Lots of posts on here about good knots. Almost all will work fine IF done right, always lubed and always pulled hard to test after tying. The best flouro leader is actual flouro leader material, not flouro line. The leader material will be harder and tougher. But still has to be tied properly.

Not sure what's up, but try a few things to try to sort it out. I've never had a strike king do that. First, try a low rod retrieve, then a low rod slower retrieve. Any different? As previously stated, make sure all connections to the lure are free and even, line attachment eye oriented longitudinally?. Using a snap or snap swivel? Original oval strike king split ring? I use just a light duo lock snap. No need for swivel. Using a leader? I wouldn't think 50 Power Pro would affect the action that way, but maybe.

Sounds like bad flouro. Flouro is temperamental, and doesn't take well to getting kinked. Make sure you are not doing that. what pound test is it? Let me get this straight. You are using 50 # braid with a braid to flouro line and that is not breaking but the flouro to lure knot is?

All knots with fluoro, and to some degree mono, require lubing while they are being finished. It is my opinion that the place where the palomar shines is with braid. The other "easy" knots just won't be reliable. From watching this forum for a few years and seeing the same issues about knots over and over, I have concluded that some people learn to tie knots well, and some do not. EVERY knot has to be learned properly. With flouro and mono lube is required and properly finishing the knots with a solid, careful, "set" is required. If it's going to fail, it will fail as you are finishing and setting the knot.

I have a good contact at Winn if you are interested in discussing it with them. I think they would be very interested. I expect you have tried very high speed reaming so as to increase the material removal at lowest torque? thanks, Mick I expect Winn would like to figure out whether what you have is slipping of the skin or failure of the substrate foam.

Improved clinch should work fine on flouro if 1. you wet it as you pull the knot tight and 2. You "set" the knot well by pushing the column of twists into position as you pull the tag end, then pull very hard on the main line to really set the column of twists tightly into position. Hard to explain, but you want that knot to be really tight, and don't forget wetting as all this is going on. Wetting is important on any knot, especially true with flouro.

Look at the Z-man storage posts in this forum, covers it very well.

I think that in the totality of the fishing I do for bass, artificials are more effective than live bait. Same for pike. Walleyes and panfish, probably a tossup. The advantages of artificials are better presentation, controllable movement, tremendous variety of options to better match the mood of the fish, cleaner boat without all that black nightcrawler crap all over the place, no problems keeping the bait alive, nothing to dispose of or keep in the fridge, easy to cover a lot of water to find fish, more interesting than watching a bobber (although that can be fun, too), lures are always available, any time, any place. The last time I tried bait we were fishing for smallmouths and found that we could get lots of crawfish at the boat launch at night. We got plenty and were set to kill the smallies the next day. Total shutout. Went to tubes and did well. We catch a lot of bass on the fall, before imparting any action. It is not unusual at all. Jigs, tubes, super flukes, senkos, even surface lures like chug bugs.

Thank you for the tip. The Pantone color for the blue Winn grips is 281C , per Winn. http://rgb.to/pantone/281-c If you go here and try to find 281-c, it looks pretty good to me. But I don't have blue grips with me. Keep in mind that the colors will vary with computer calibration AND the angle you're viewing the screen with. If you look at 293, the pantone reference to the Pro Wrap Wildberry 449, you can see how it looks. I suggest putting your blue grips near the computer image of 293 and see how it looks. It looks too light to me. Bluegill is 2945 and looks too light. This site gives Madeira polyneon color match to Pantone numbers. Closest to 281c seems to be Madeira 1767, according to Madeira rep. http://www.madeiramart.com/index.cfm? Mudhole sells Madeira. Your local thread shop will, too. Best solution is IMHO to take the grips and one of your rod wrapping spools (to get weight match) to the thread shop and find 1767 Polyneon in the right weight. Or another color that may look better. With CP the color should not shift much. You HAVE to use CP with Madeira to avoid any problems with lube that may be on the thread and cause fisheyes. I would use two coats, but usually one will do. two always works. That's about it from here.

.ghoti, please elaborate on reaming problems. I've not noticed on grips up to their long tapered casting grip, (less than 8.5 inches) but if there is a way to wreck them, I'd rather be warned in detail than find a way on my own. I don't understand how the skin gets damaged. Damage coming from the reaming at the ends? thanks

I agree on not trying to match; it's very difficult. One combination that looks good is using the "same color" but a signficantly different shade. That isn't a piece of cake either, especially if you're buying thread rather than looking over your stock, but it can be done and looks very good. If you can get the RGB info from Winn and the thread-makers, you can hit the color very closely, but I don't know if Winn will give it to you, or if you can get it for the thread. Pro Wrap does provide the closest Pantone color numbers to their colors. Prowrap nylon Pantone number is 293, and here is an image with RGB for 293. http://search.aol.com/aol/search?enabled_terms=&s_it=client97_searchbox&q=pantone+color+293 If I were trying to match a Winn Grip exactly, I would email Winn and ask for either the RGB values of the grip, or the Pantone color. With that info you stand a good chance of achieving a pretty good match. If you find other Pantone numbers you want to evaluate, just do an internet search for "Pantone color xxxx."

I fished the second of the point blanks, the one with the Winn Grips, yesterday. I did not catch any fish, but cast various lures to get a feel for it. Regarding sensitivity, since during the retrieve most hold the reel and not the grip, the grip material is a moot point. However, I did force myself to hold the grip while retrieving a lipless crank and I could feel the action of the lure about the same through the grip as when holding just the reel. It appears that the Winn Grips are very sensitive. Usually light means sensitive, and the core of the Winn grips is rigid foam, so they should be quite sensitive. Regarding casting, I think I like a slower action for casting ease and comfort, but these rods were built with a specific task in mind, and that was to allow the very fast twitch on a hard jerkbait that Lake St Clair smallies respond best to. They do that very well. My son uses both of them for all kinds of lures and likes the XF action. He is a better baitcaster than I. Any other questions, just ask.

Don't bother, McCoy is highly overrated. IMHO Don't bother, McCoy is highly overrated. IMHO I have tried Yozuri Ultra Soft and found it a very good line for castability. What is the primary attribute you want in a co-polymer, beyond the absoloute necessity for it to be fundamentally as strong as its rating? You want it to cast well, assuming bait casting here. And McCoy's is nothing special. Yozuri Ultra Soft is. And P Line CX is. If it casts like a flourocarbon, and it sinks like a flourocarbon, then I don't want it.

I would go with the best color l could find in the non color fast thread. And use two coats of CP on it. Keep in mind that an absolutely perfect match is not necessary for a great looking rod. Abosolute matches are probably impossible since the Winn grips are a flat finish and your guides will be gloss. I have no idea whether the Pro Wrap metallics fade or not, but there have been a lot of comments on blue metallics changing color with exposure to sun, so I would keep that in mind before doing metallic as the primary wrap. My experience with other products, like flags, in the sun, is that the blue fades the fastest.

I wouldn't give up so easily. Overlap of an inch and a half is likely to work OK. The stress on the blank at the tip is not that high. If it were my rod , I'd give it a shot. I have rods I've broken an inch off, and I never thought they were really right after that. Could be my imagination, but imagination can be powerful. The challenge is always to find the right piece of another rod to use as the sleeve. If you try to repair it, and the repair doesn't work, where are you? Back where you started, and you can put a tiptop on at the fracture.

In most cases it can be repaired without a significant effect on the rod characteristics. http://www.rodbuilding.org/library/repair-oquinn.html

If only the guide was damaged it is easily fixed with a replacement. Not replacing it will compromise the ability of the blank to take stress and most likely will negatively affect the feel and casting ability. If the rod didn't need that guide, it wouldn't have been there in the first place. They would have eliminated it and respaced the other guides.

I have not fished either of the two almost identical PB's I made for my son. Will have to try them next time we fish together. I can tell you he loves them. The blank was selected based on CCS data that Fuji provided, before they went public with it, to use with Lake St Clair smallies on jerkbaits. Traditional crankbait rods just won't allow you to get the shart twitch they want, and these XF blanks do. This shows the power of CCS and being able to measure your blanks. My impression of the blanks is very positive, they are straight, look good, will look good with just about any wrap color, and are very light for their power. I think they are one of the premiere blanks available now. One thing to watch, their finish is different than other blanks, and it can be affected by the rollers in rod winding rigs. Do not tighten them into the rigs, and especially when curing the epoxy where they turn in the same place for hours, the finish can get smoothed at the roller points. It can almost be restored with a grey abrasive pad. Just cosmetic, not functional. Regarding overrating for lure weights, there was one model that had this problem, and I think Anglers REsource has fixed it in their current literature. It was a blank that they said went up to 1 oz and it should have been 3/4. Use the Anglers Resource current site or the PointBlankrods.com site for specs.

I don't have definitive data on all the options, but with what I have, and what others may have, you can figure it out. 1. Winn grips are lighter than cork. 2. Carbon fiber is lighter than cork. 3. Burl cork is almost twice as dense as plain, natural, cork. The answer is the same for full handles as with split grips. It's all about the density of the materials assuming all shapes will be the same. There is nothing in these materials that will allow shapes to be different, assuming you are not compromising ergonomics. I expect that the differences between Winn and Carbon fiber are very small. I expect, but have no data, that EVA is the heaviest. Carbon fiber is hard, so one might expect it to be higher sensitivity than Winn, but I'll bet you'll have a hard time feeling it. I just finished the lightest split grip casting rod I ever made, conventional Fuji reel seat (skeleton would be lighter), 3.44 oz with Fuji titanium K guides (RV first guide), Point Blank 691MXF blank, and it had no foregrip, Winn short cast grip with Winn butt knob. Any further questions I might help with, just ask.

In my experience with most grades of guides with braid, which is tougher on guides than mono or FC, it is rare for any guide to groove. But it is not rare for tiptops to groove, which is why I always use SIC, Alconite, or zirconium for tiptops. I would use all SIC, but in some cases you cannot get the model, finish, or size that you want in SIC. One aspect not yet explained is that the lighter the guides on a rod, especially on the tip, the more sensitive the rod will be. It is not that some materials are more sensitive than others, it's simply that lighter means more sensitive. Period. It happens that many of the lighter materials are more expensive, like titanium used in frames. You've probably seen micro guides, guides that have inner ring diameters of a few millimeters. The reason for this is twofold. First, small is light, so they are good for sensitivity. Second, some believe that with the right height of guide, and a very small ID, the line gets controlled quicker and casts farther. Also, not all titanium guides are created equal. While Fujis and Alps are just about indestructible, there is a brand whose titanium A frame spin guides are almost fragile. Interestingly, you can sink well over a hundred dollars in a full set of spinning guides, Fuji Torzite to be exact. Are they that much better than the more normal ~ $50 for a set of titanium Alconites? I personally don't think so. Another interesting thing is that most factory rods have a lot of sizes of guides, getting progressively smaller as you go out to the tip. It has been found that that is not the best setup for guides for weight (sensitivity) or casting distance. The best way is to have only about 3 guides getting progressively smaller, (spinning rod) then have the rest of the guides the same, small , size out to the end, Why do factories keep doing it in a less efficient way? Because they feel that customers expect the guide train to look like that and would not as likely buy what might be counterintuitive to some.

I can see this for spinning, but not BC. I'd spend all my time fiddling with backlashes. If one needs to cast a very light lure NOW, I just cannot imagine BC being the best option.

The improved cinch knot works fine. So does the cinch knot, but not many believe it. You need to do three things with these knots and they will work fine with FC or mono. First, when you are drawing them down be sure they are well lubed with spit. Second as you draw them down, help the process with nudges of a thumbnail which forces the line into the right position, while pulling the tag end to tighten the knot. Finally, while the knot is still wet, pull the main line very hard to "set" the knot. These are easy knots to tie and will work fine for any terminal use. They are not reliable for braid, nanofil, or similar lines.

Colors do make a big difference, but you just have to figure it out for yourself. I think the clearer the water the more likely that color will be a significant factor. And there is a lot of evidence that dark colors are more visible in murkier water. I recently experienced clear water smallmouths preferring one of two drop shot baits that were identical exc one had purple and green flecks, the other did not. I think fish tend to use motion first, then color most of the time. I think it's whatever triggers their specific "instincts" that day. Keep in mind their brain is said to be "pea sized." When you consider what some lures look like, yet work effectively, you have a hard time arguing that details of shape and appearance have a lot to do with it. What natural prey is shaped like a tube? Or a jig skirt? Or a spinnerbait? All of these lures suggest it's more about having the right cues with motion and color. If you think about it by visualizing what the lures look like to fish, look at them with your eyes out of focus, I think you have what fish see. And it's not very detailed. We have all encountered the day when slow works great, other days it does not. And the day when fast works great, other days when it does not. Why? I don't know. But the bass's instincts do. Even bonefish, which are in crystal clear water, take flies that hardly resemble their natural prey, but they have to move right to get most bones to bite. And sometimes, be the right color. Both with bass and bones, somewhat matching the color of the environment is often the best place to start, as stated in the previous post. Natural prey tends to take on the color of the environment. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.