fishwizzard

I wonder how much, if any, eye dominance place in which hand you prefer casting with? I am left eye dominant and write with my left hand, but use most tools with my right. When I got into shooting I started out using my right hand but quickly realized that my eye dominance forced me to shoot left handed.

Huh, I don't think my hands are big enough to hold most reels that way. I keep looking at the SS SV reels when they come up for cheap but I am a size-weenie and have never gotten a sense of how big they are, but finding pics of an OG Steez should be easier, thanks!

No, I mean on the other side of the weight, on the eye side. The way you have it works but it cuts into the hookgap for fatter paddletails and the blade will interfere with the tail a lot of the time. I like to have it in front with a smaller blade that hits the weight to make some noise in addition to the flash and thump.

I have a few finesse combos but the current favorite is a Megabass P3 Criffhanger w/ an Airy Red Pixzilla. Super fun little combo for anything 1/8-1/4oz. It's a great wading combo and makes the tiny smallies around here feel like tanks.

How do you hold the combo when fishing bottom contact? The way I palm results in my thumb resting on the spool, so just tightening my hand on the hookset adds enough "drag" to get a solid set. Also, what does the SS SV share a frame with any other reel?

How much, if any, of the eye-end of the hook sticks out of the mould? I will often add a split ring between eye and weight to attach a blade to but to not deform the ring I have to go far bigger then I would like. I wonder if it could be added pre-casting?

I prefer straight fluoro other than for topwater or fishing cover with a moving presentation. I fish most bottom contact stuff with a bit of slack in the line and braid/leader feels too dead.

I think 1/8oz swimbait hooks on a ~4" paddle tail can go either way, depending on hook thickness. I throw nail-weighted Fat Impacts on a Loomis 782c, so a lighter M/F, on 12lb Sniper. But I use lightwire Owner twistlock hooks. When I use the heavier/thicker weighted Owner hooks I prefer to step up in power a bit. The 2 power works well enough of them but the hooksets are not as solid.

I don't get that either, I never want the hooks behind my hand when I am hiking along with a rod.

Twistlok hooks are what you are looking for. I like the Owner thin wire 4/0 hooks for the 3.75 size, it good hook-gap and it leaves enough tail free to let it thump at high speeds.

If the nose is ripping, try switching to a twistlock hook. I fish the more fragile Fat Impacts nail-weighted on an 4/0 Owner and they a dozen or so fish most of the time, some lasting for twice that. If it's the tails then I would maybe look at the Gambler EZ Swimmer. It's not the exact same profile/action, but I have found them to be super durable.

I use a lot of shorter then 7' rods, my collection is about 50/50. Things I like shorter rods for: Kayak use. Easier casting, better fish control, easier lure-working, less high-sticking danger, and I can land to take a pee in far more locations with shorter rods sticking up. I am going to start using longer rods this year, some 6'6" and maybe even a 7'! Hike-in fishing. A foot less rod makes a huge huge difference in my bushwacking speed/piece of mind. Overgrown ponds are the norm around here and sometimes I am standing in a beaver drag and trying to cast with brush touching both shoulders. Any and all twitching, popping, jerking, and walking retrieves. From little poppers to some frogging stuff, I want a rod as close to 6' as I can find. BFS/UL casting. I love having a short rod and a small reel so I can make one-handed casts, it is so much fun in just a physical sense. I feel like I have a lot more control over lighter lure with a shorter rod, even one where I cast with two-hands. I do want to get a longer 7'5"-ish BFS rod at some point to see how they fish.

Came to post this. I wanted to make a tool that would fit in a 3500 box along with 15-20 senkos. A Sharpie body is the perfect size and length, it puts the ring right past the egg sack.

I think I already know it cannot be done, but to reconfirm, you can't just machine out an Alphas to take a 34mm Steez spool, right?

They Ryoga version is great, but I love the new smaller ones as well. I would swap most all of my reels out to them if I had the money. I also like the dreaded oldTat paddle knobs. They are the best I have found for wet-handed us so they are on most of my yak rods.

The jig is in the water, 3' from the bank. The bass shoots out, grabs the jig. The bass and I lock eyes. Time passes, in the distance, a bird sings. The bass spits the jig, we lock eyes again. The bass swims away. Time passes. I set the hook. The ring-rust is real folks, like I swear I just stood there for 2-3 seconds like a slack-jawed yokel.

A round bodied paddle tail like an RI Skinny Dipper t-rigged with a pegged weight sheds slime very well. The tail catches it but a hard twitch right before you lift it out of the water will usually clear it. If you lube it up with Megastike or anything grease it seems to shed the slime even better.

As a lifelong over-luber, I have been erring on the side of running my reels very very dry for a few years now and I have no noticed any reduction in smoothness. But my version of very very dry might be what they are supposed to be. I have a new TatSV that I am going to fish as-is until it starts fussing, so we shall see I guess. One of my first reels was some Lew's that had what I thought was a grease-port on the bottom. I will say for those who are wondering, a reel packed full of white lithium grease, while very smooth to crank, does not cast or fish all that well. I now believe it was a drain port incase the reel was dunked maybe?

I have had maybe half a dozen different SV/Magforce Z reels and maybe an 3-4 aftermarket SV spools and for the most part they all require little to no thumb other then at splash down, depending on the exact reel/spool. In all cases the spool tension is either set with a little side play or just a hair tighter. The average brake setting is variable, a Alphas SV w/ stock spool lives at 50-75% and up, a Steez SVTW w/ a 1012sv spool lives at like 30-40%. Even the old Fuago CT reels are set at 50% braking and rarely leave that. I am never dumping spools with them but I generally get (measured with a surveyor's wheel) 30-40y casts with non-bfs lures, which is about as far as I feel that I can get "100% it's my game to lose" hooksets with the jigs and t-rigged plastics I fish the most. I can drag my wife out in the yard to shoot some more videos if you guys would like, but it's going to show the same thing. With the correct casting stroke you can get an amazing amount of control and imho good distance out of the Magforce Z/SV reels. I have two non-daiwa reels, an Aldebaran 50 and a Concept A. Both cast about the same distances and both take more thumb at the end of a cast then the Daiwas do.

Oh, no argument there, I was speaking about a locking of all old threads. I think the usefulness of keeping them all open outweighs the slight annoyance of clicking on a completely irrelevant one. I would love a lot less separate "Tell me about *common/popular tackle* !?!?" threads and would rather people use and enjoy search functions, so I can deal with the occasional zombie thread. And honestly it's little embarrassing when you do it by accident so I don't think most people do it more then once, I know I am super careful about checking dates now

While most of the time it's just funny/dumb, sometimes I think it makes sense to add to a super old thread with new info, esp if it's a technical topic. Also in better times I would pay MSRP for a NIB oldstock reel if I came across one that I was into.

The braking system on your reels wants to have no spool tension to work as designed, that is why they make the knob hard to move. I suspect it's either defective or your casting stroke is to blame, the Daiwa system does not like hard snappy casts, but if you are having issues pitching then I would lean towards there being an issue with it. Set the spool tension back to fully loose and set the brakes at max. Make slow and east sidearm casts, making sure that the rod is loading on the backcast. It should not make a long cast that way but it should take almost no thumb at all. Now set the brakes to 50% and make the same cast. IF you don't notice a big difference in casting I would send the reel back. I will have to disagree with people who are saying you have to use your thumb, reels with Magforce Z or SV braking systems can be very very controlled. I do thumb my spool to slow and stop it but that is more of an accuracy thing. If you set I to take little to no thumb you are not going to win any distance contests but it's very easy to pull off with a smooth casting stroke. I made the video below a few days ago to help a friend diagnose a sound his reel was making, so I didn't thumb it at all so he could hear the "normal" castig sound. The reel is a Daiwa Fuego CT, which has the same brakes as your Tat. The spool tension is set to allow a little side to side spool movement and the brakes are at 50%. It's hard to see but I am using no thumb until after the lure hits the ground, you can see the line just in front of the spool jump when the lure hits. There is no backlash, just some line backrolling a bit.

I have had limited luck with his system but I use his jig heads for all kinds of stuff. That was a great doc and I really want a "Slider" hat now.

Gas would work but that will likely strip the paint.

I do the same but I use an o-ring for greater ease of removal. The "senko sized" ones work well for most jigs and the "trickworm sized" ones work well for smaller jigs.