bulldog1935

On FEP-coated braids (like 832), if you need to cut any off, you feel it in the coating. Also, if the coating is locally bad, it won't glide when rolling an Allbright knot, but will peel and jam up the knot.

I obviously like my giant Avail and Studio composite handles and knobs. Both the handles and the giant knobs are lighter than the stock Daiwa handles and small I-shaped rubber knobs. The knobs are carbon tube, and the handle spindles are titanium. There are also grades of EVA, and you might be surprised by the quality of these. Avail handle Avail A knob; Studio Composite handle and knobs; Avail handle with S/C knobs I prefer the Avail handle in longer lengths, 8+ gears, and the shorter Studio Composite carbon handle in lower gears. The Ryoga bought used came with Avail handle, and I had the S/C knobs in the parts bin. Here's a BFS spool "kit" Avail just introduced for '24 Steez, which is 32-mm spool dia. Many people are griping about '24 Steez smaller spool, and also the new bigger price.

My bread-and-butter on SLPW-Z ('22 HD) is Ray's Studio SV spool fishing PE#1.2. Two weeks ago, I was fishing 15 g w/ MagZ1012, PE#2 and it was a rocket - I couldn't see my cast land in the dark. When I first set this up, went through SV Boost and (tiny) fixed-inductor AMO - on the latter, it took mag scalar set to 12, but it blasted out 2-3-g distance. (Ray's SV)

You'll find MagZ to boom out large lures and have no start-up problems. I've found the current generation of MagZ magnets are also strong enough to fish lighter SV inductor and even fixed-inductor BFS spools.

Firm beliefs should should stick with 1st person and never be applied to 2nd or 3rd person. Those of us who grew up fishing in the 70s naturally fished baitcaster and fly rod with left arm, and spinning rod with right arm. There are some natural advantages to growing up with this split use. When you get good enough with a fly rod that you only need a single back-cast for line speed to shoot past 70' (little kids ask why aren't you doing this? making whipping motions), you recognize fly cast is more in your line hand than in your rod arm. With spinning tackle, wrist jerk is rewarded with extra distance, but it's a bad habit brought to fly rod or baitcaster. With both, you should be loading the rod with smooth acceleration and total absence of jerk - jerk with a fly rod is tailing loop (wind knot) - jerk with a baitcaster is start-up backlash.

What's doing the work are your spool bearings. With a larger spool, 36 mm dia., your bearings are doing less work than with a smaller, 32-mm spool, simply because they don't have to spin quite as fast to peel the same amount of line - that's why larger spool diameter is smarter for big 2-3-oz swimbaits. Looking at the chart above, from hybric-ceramic micro-bearings to full steel shielded, 30 g is 1 ounce. Only the two lightest bearing styles are not capable of throwing 1 to 2 oz. But tournament distance casters are throwing 15 ounces to 1000' using unshielded hybrid ceramic bearings, comparable to the ZR bearings on this chart.

The multipiece rods that impressed me most below stratosphere were Abu Garcia, Daiwa (Black Label) and Legit Design. Unfortunately, only available in ML-BF, Abu Xrossfield 654 impressed me way above its price. I think you should raise your ante by $20 and look seriously at Daiwa Ardito.

Here's what the math tells me. They improved Stella so much for '18, the only thing they changed in '22 was slightly increasing the spool pitch - slightly lengthen the spindle. This tells me they decided '18 Stella was as near perfect as they can get it, and overdesigned, so they pushed the design a little harder with '22 increased spool pitch. Makes me even happier all my (worm-drive) Shimanos are from the '18 Stella series.

I'm waiting for @Eric 26 to fish his Alphas and then revise his first answer - really, instead, answer whether he would trade the rest of his reels for another Alphas. After 90 years of trial and Mostly error (and hitting bottom in the 1990s), in 2018, Shimano finally gave the spinning reel everything it was lacking - and then made it affordable. All my spinning reels came from this series, and they all swap spools. Like others on this thread, I've fished a lifetime of reels - fished through a lot of them - and baitcasters were Lew's from 1984 to 2018. With just a couple exceptions, all the new (and some of the old) baitcasters I've bought since then are all 34-mm Daiwa floating spool, and they all swap spools. Some techniques I used to fish for fun have become bread-and-butter for me, and that focuses my gear. Other stuff, I fish for fun just because they're fun. The math to always consider - how many reels do you need, and what would you have if you had bought half as many.

Oddly, the Japanese don't believe in karma. They do believe in Nyu-kon, which is that the object doesn't know what it is until it's broken in, and broken in right. Tackle and lures are not lucky, but they can be effective. For the longest time, my buddy Lou believed a lure wouldn't catch for him unless it had chartreuse somewhere Some time between the last two Redfish Rodeos, he threw that away, and increased his catch rate.

The biggest difference on Lew's is that P2 lets you turn the drive without a spool in place. In place, the spool spindle provides the same level of support as the P2.

When somebody tells you BFS only makes sense His way - sounds like DEI to me. BFS only makes sense your way. @softwateronly called out Abu (Pure Fishing Japan) baitfinesse. I've found these to be real workhorse rods, from $100 to $200. $250 Yamaga Blanks is an ultimate light distance rod. The difference, the Abu rod has a long fast mid giving up a little distance to be great at working lures. Put the two together, they're still cheaper than a $600 EverGreen.

The biggest gain in modern rods is cutting the weight in half to get the same result. Old style blank-making used linear fibers, non-structural scrim wrap, and cast resin. Modern rods use thin graphite tape, everything is structural, and they use a very small amount of nano-resin, which is also a prepreg tape.

Two speed Penn Senator goes back a long way. First consideration for me is how they achieve multi gear ratios, and sounds like a lot of weight that may not be worth the "convenience" (if any). I vote with the marketing ploy camp.

@woolleyfooley Here's your hint. begin casting some cheap, disposable UL mono. I keep a charge of 5-lb ultragreen and re-spool it on a storage spool. Set mag brake casting the lightest thing you're going to throw - find incipient mid-cast backlash and add a notch or two (mag scalar setting is 4 to 6 on SV magnets). You're covered for everything heavier. When you're confident you're backlash-proof, switch to X-braid. Facing the wind, add 2 mag notches. Also cast without wrist jerk - fixed inductor spools are the lightest made, but they also turn MagForce into linear mag, which should be everything you need.

I like JDM Tackle Heaven's website, but I've never bought a rod from them. They pretty much list everything, whether in stock or Preorder (OOS- never do this, it will tie up your money). I've managed to find better prices elsewhere. - Digitaka is a great deal, though they don't replenish inventory like others. I've bought most rods from fishingshop.kiwi, prices normally discounted. Kirill is in Miami and fields US business from there. They're a drop-shipper without inventory, who receive from all Japan distributors - if it's in production or a distributor's warehouse, they have it listed as In Stock. Your order doesn't transfer money - Kirill will send you a paypal invoice when Japan verifies the distributor, and will include shipping cost for a rod - if you don't like it, reply thanks but no thanks - he understands. I've bought rods from Asian Portal and Plat. The old way of buying from Japan is a broker (6% brokerage fee). I've always found the best prices from vendors who don't ship to US, but will ship free to my long-time broker Masamichi (noppin.com). I then pay UPS Express cost from his shipping charge. This includes Yahoo vendors, small shops, Naturum, which is kinda like Japan Academy store. The nicest thing about the broker is building up a cache from 4 or 5 small vendors across Japan and shipping it all together. Most recent Evergreen came from Yahoo vendor Shimaya Fishing Shop (discounted 22%) using my broker, vs JDM Tackle Heaven retail: https://jdmtackleheaven.com/products/evergreen-zephyr-avantgarde-zags-91ul-l-sweep-master-91 I also got a better price using the broker to buy a Transcendence from Hedgehog Japan website than buying from their US$ website. I also use noppin to bid for me on Yahoo auctions. We go back to 2007, I've recived 45 shipments - out of that, Masamichi made 2 mistakes, and ate the cost to correct both. At current JY155/ US$, consider all of Japan to be 30% off. Each side of the 2010 recession, we considered anything over JY100 / US$ to be worth Japan shopping. The Dollar is at its all-time strongest against the Yen. The trick is buying before new models come out with new inflated list prices - inflation is bad in Japan. This is why '21 Zillion/ '22 HD is such a steal at current prices - you won't get the next one for $200/ $240.

If I bought the 8, I'd put a 95- or 100-mm handle on it - that's me. I call it "resolution" but you gain back some feel, finesse and torque.

I can give you an example - a friend on FFR reported on a long Gomexus handle he added to a low-geared Vanford 500. He described losing several fish that charged him. I can think of a day on Kenai when >30" rainbow charged me, and I would have paid for an extra 3 IPT. (fly reel). Yes, you'd probably be happy fishing the 7.4-geared HG - that's a good balance between speed and feel.

6.4 L - IPT=24 7.4 HG - IPT=29 8.1 XG - IPE=32

@F14A-B that's why IPT is a more useful measure than gear ratio. A b/c with 43-mm spool is a honking surf reel (that's 1000-size spinner). 6.2-geared smll-frame spinner is equivalent pick-up to 8.5-geared b/c w/ 30-mm spool dia.

6-gear is my go-to for still water, improves finesse feel. @AlabamaSpothunter is correct. When the water's moving or I'm moving (wind-drifting kayak), I always fish at least 7- or 8-gear. One way to effectively slow down a fast reel is a longer handle, since you're moving farther to make a turn (using more arm and less wrist). Longer handle also increases torque. The main gear concern in rivers is a charging fish that can out-run your gearing and spit the hook. Stripers are the only fish I know that run down first - most fish turn up river until they panic - then they race down current.

@woolleyfooley That's '16 Steez SVTW 1016H wearing Roro X29 - will also fit all Zillion and every 34-mm-floating-spool Daiwa before '24 Steez. Roro X29 is discontinued with a final cache closing out at Japan Tackle. Also recommend you replace palm-cap bearing with Roro 1030 This reel and spool is the reason I bought my first Daiwa in 35 years. I don't know why Jun changed his reported low-end on this spool to 3 g. He first listed it as 2-g capable, and I can vouch for the smaller number (to extreme distance). I even tried Roro X29 on my CV-Z to check the match and magnet effectiveness for a friend on Tackle Tour forum, who wanted a 2-g spool for his TD-Z. Magnets did the job, and it was a pocket rocket on this reel. ________________________________ Izanas used to have a blurb about their manufacturing and polymer chain alignment in their Ultra-high N/dex fiber used as center-strand in their fishing braid. The result increases both strength and toughness. This is right up my professional bailiwick and even polymer processing class project using camera X-ray crystallography to demonstrate polymer chain alignment v. drawing conditions. For those willing to get out of themselves and learn, Gore and Izanas are in all the same markets. Neither sell fibers for another to make braid, but they sell the bulk-spooled finished product from continuous fabrication, exactly as described in the YGK blurb in my previous post. Rapala and Varivas, YGK, Duel, etc. spec their product from Izanas quality and pricing menu (fiber grades, weave, dyes, FEP coating formulation). They buy the line in bulk spools, and they final package pegboard spools. I've fished 832, YGK, Duel, Varivas, Seaguar, Yamatoyo coated braids, various grades and coatings, picked my preferences - and watched my friends wind-knot uncoated Power Pro, which kept me away from braid until the technology caught up with my expectation. The all braid is the same mantra couldn't be further from the facts.

Well no, 130 feet. (40 yds and change). My back-acre casting range is metered for setting up reels and comparing results. I mostly fish inshore, and use BFS for tide passes and dock nite-lites that concentrate tiny winter bait. Rods are 8' (Yamaga Blanks BCIII 82/B, Abu Prototype 8'3" Baitfinesse ML). BFS for bass, I have 6'7" Valeyhill Raison Odessa River kayak, I fish raced BFS Ambassadeur on 6' and shorter Japanese glass. Inshore kayak, 7' rods, and this Abu Prototype Kurodai (black sea bream) Baitfinesse is astounding. I also have surf rigs that will do the 100-yd thing 2-hand with 1/2 oz. @MickD it's because of USM and Pound-Test. JDM sells line by diameter and reports max breaking strength, along with the rest of the world. USM is hung up on minimum test, which is never a known value, and nearly doubles the actual breaking strength. Pound-test is like a bad chef - if a little bit is good, more is better. The concept allows poor quality control on line diameter and consistency. If you try filling a spool with 832 by reported diameter, you'll discover it's always thicker than reported. The Japanese have a specification committee, and JDM line always matches reported diameter - especially Izanas, which is the benchmark. Here's the marketing blurb on the original Japan X-braid, introduced in 2018 When introduced, this braid cost $1/yd - we're happy the price has come down.

@primetime throwing 2 g past 130' on a baitcaster is a rush. It's like a mini surf/tournament cast.

look in the upper left corner - they've switched from Gore to Japan X-braid.