bulldog1935

my daughter has a Henry H001, which sighted-in 3 connected pairs at 50 yd on its new peep sight - the last 2 pairs on bullseye were the same hole. Here's my .22 field artillery - '85 with Creedmoore sights and variable-aperture eye cup. I can hit a dime at 75 yds after two adjustment shots. the sight view with my favorite globe insert the fun thing about shooting .22 with peep sight is 75 yds is the same challenge as a high-powered rifle on a 300-yd range.

Where I grew up bass fishing, deep, clear, TX hill country reservoirs, there just wasn't any cover, unless you happened to stumble across where people leaded their spent Christmas trees to make crappie holes. I fished through 3 spinning reels over decades, all because of outclassing them in the salt. The short-lived one was my Mitchell 300 from high school - it was worn out after four years of fall jetty fishing (still have the reel). When I sheared off the handle pin on my 300, the only replacement (at Gibson's) was the long torpedo-grip (from the 400). Guess that put me in torque land, but what wore out those gears in four years of fall spanish macks from the jetties was the combination of me outclassing it and its nylon gear - nylon gear - holy crap, nylon gear. Likewise, fished through my 25-year Penn 4400SS and 4200SS (with help from my younger daughter) each on king mackerel and redfish - spindle/bushing slop developed, reverse-cone line lay. But reels were never really designed then, they were rule of thumb, trial and error. I've certainly never twisted line against paying drag, letting fish take drag against the rod butt, and recover with rod pumping has always been a natural reaction for me with spinning tackle, or even with baitcasters when needed - feet on the gunwhale for jacks and kings. OK, and I threw away one spinning reel from the '90s, it was the Cardinal-derived Lew's, of course from Zebco, but the plastic frame was so bad, the reel flopped in the breeze. Shakespeare WondeRods? I'll plead The Fifth. I did like my workhorse MH Berkley TriSport for both inshore and bass fishing. There are always regional preferences. Here, Conolon was King for for light fast power, and Silaflex was class.

Based on your version of the Five, internally, I would expect the 5500C to be essentially the same. The C denotes ball bearing. I prefer the reels with spindle adjustment caps on both sides, and there's a good chance you could swap parts between both reels. Abu Garcia hasn't had functioning schematics pages for about a year; I believe the Ultracast spools with separate spindle and the bearings in the spool originated with the 5500C3. The only date reference I have for Ulracast is 1990, but that relates specifically to the first black CT reel. However, the Five schematics I linked in my first reply show Ultracast originated between '87 and '89. As I mentioned above, both your Abu's drive the level wind mechanism off the spool during the cast. Your Tatula does not - the spool is completely disengaged from the level wind during the cast, so it should cast notably farther, simply because the spool can spin faster and longer.

of course you can splice mono and fluoro. I do something similar for coast fishing on UL, but I'm attaching larger fluoro leader for abrasion resistance. Double-uni or surgeon's knot both work for similar diameters but you can also loop-to-loop by putting a surgeon's loop or perfection loop on each. The loop-to-loop is actually stronger with different diameters.

I didn't learn on closed-face, but my first pick was a Heddon 236 spinning reel in a Heddon glass rod combo. Watched my dad toil with Zebcos until I finally turned him to baitcasters by buying his first for a birthday (and his second and 3rd). There are some better spincast combos and niches. I began my girls (3 and 4 years old) with Zebco UL-1 on Eagle Claw Featherlight glass UL casting rods. These things work pretty well for limestone creeks, and a boon for nursery seatrout. For nursery trout off Fulton Beach pier, certainly getting the wind behind us helped cast to the edge of the lights. We'd catch them at about 40/hr on weightless cigar cork, 3-4' leader, 1/0 croaker hook, and small live shrimp - following dinner at Cap'n Benny's, and just before ice cream. A ritual with every coast trip. But if you want a recommendation, buy a basic spinning combo suited to match the lure weights you want to throw - probably Light to Medium-Light.

Proper Drag grease is also how you prevent wear by carbontex washer edges on bronze main shaft/gear. also note you never need an excess of Drag grease, but a continuous thin film.

Again, I'm fishing mostly inshore and casting lighter lures (1/8 to 3/8 oz) for distance and shallow fishing. My reels with backing are loaded with Sufix 832 20-lb (0.24 mm). My shallow spool for 1/8 oz has no backing, and 22-lb X-braid, which is only 0.17 mm. I'm delighted with both for my fishing.

I've heard people talk about mentors, but I was always the tough to mentor type - I've been trying to teach my dad to fish since I was 12. My friends range from natural-born to just happy to be out. A couple who can over-think themselves out of fish in any situation. But the fish are always gravy. The good times with friends are most important.

Are you spooling the line under tension? I put the source spool on an axle on a bench vise run the line through a phone book - can put weight on top to adjust the tension I put my rod in a fixed rod holder with the line only going through one or two guides. I can also walk away from it and the line stays under tension. if I need to knot backing to working line, I do it on the loose side of the phone book, swap source spools, and the line to the reel still stays under tension.

8 miles is a respectable paddle any day. If you're doing it right, it all begins in your core muscles, and your legs will be almost as tired as your arms. Also should bring along some good calories and good liquids.

Some of the reels I've bought were only available in high speed retrieve at the time - as high as 8.3 gears. I put on a longer-pitch handle to tune them to my likes, which has the effect of slowing them down, and putting more torque into the reel through the handle. Something else to keep in mind, the diameter of a low profile spool is small compared to the Abu 5000 series spool, so the higher speed gearing may not be much more line pick-up per handle rotation than the Abu 5.3 gears. I looked up the Abu, 26"-line-picked-up/handle-rotation with 5.3 gears. Tatula is the same with 6.3 gears, and 30"/rev with 7.1 gears - that's not a huge difference.

A good probability your spool was not centered because of end-cap tension. Of course I can adjust both sides on mine, but I eyeball them as close to center as I can get. If you do get a new spool, it's only 5 mm deep for braid, so you shouldn't have the problem, anyway. But especially loading the spool, use the cap tension just to center the spool. With the NLW, the 0.21 mm braid tends to hunt to the lowest point on the spool, so it pretty much levels itself when fishing. Again, I do restore my hand level-wind in my working line a few days after every trip. It's worth the effort just for potential minor backlash to have a good line lay - a level wind reel won't do this: tight intimate lay in one direction, and wider, quicker lay in the opposite direction - it's pretty much backlash-proof unless you truly mess up. I also have spare deep spools for mono, and took these photos when loading the deep mono spool. Some NLW spools like Seigler are designed to get the tight line lay to the left by themselves, so to get perfect level wind, all you have to do is push the line for the quicker, wider line lay to the right.

pun intended, if I was in your boat, I'd grab a Metanium.

he fishes with his press agent here's mine - this same buck was caught 3 months later and photographed again by a bud. I actually never take more than 3 to 6 seconds for a fish picture - it's just an automatic sweep for me - frame and crop later.

Thanks, friend. They seriously cast out of sight, and with thin braid, you don't even need the level wind in a day's fishing. They get a good hand-level wind when first loaded, and sometime after a day (or long weekend) of fishing, I'll use a line winder to restore the hand level wind in my working line, so they're ready for next time. You don't tension the end caps on this reel; instead, you adjust them to 1 mm spool end play. The centrifugal brake, mag, and your thumb do the rest. I wouldn't necessarily not recommend rebuilding yours, especially if you want to take it on - I'm sure you could improve it a lot. There are some great parts out there - check Japan Tackle at least for ideas - Tuning Parts/ Spools and /Gears-Brakes-Level-Winder, also /Bearings. In BC, Mike's Reel Repair is a good source for custom and original parts, and a few good US vendors, but fewer available custom parts than you'll find in Japan. There's like a cult for these reels in Japan (for the CT's, it's UK), and many of the best reels were made in Japan (and still are). I believe the Avail Microcast AMB5500CMamiya spool may be the fit for your reel, shallow spool to hold 110-yd of 30-lb braid. If this is your spool, the one I linked may be the correct one: Definitely before you buy, ask questions about parts - contact Jun at Japan Tackle - he has excellent English. Back to your original question, the size bearings you need for your spindle caps are 3x10x4 mm.

The Ambassadeur Five became the Five Star. Here are the schematics available online. The 87 versions of the Five has spool spindle fixed in the spool, and bearings in the end plate caps. The 89 versions and all the Five Star versions have Ultracast spool, with separate spindle, and bearings in the spool. Something else about the round Abu's, the spool drives the LW mechanism during the cast, and truly slicking them requires ball bearing swaps to the idler gear and worm shaft (the custom BB parts are also lightened). IMO, the ultracast reels can be worth spending money on custom parts to make them slick. But it would have to be something you really want to do, because a new low profile baitcaster has complete free-spool with LW disengaged during cast, and will work a lot better than you are currently getting on the Abu - a new low profile baitcaster would be less money than customizing an Abu, The one place round Abu has serious cast advantage are the Non-LW surf reels, such as my custom C3-CTs I rebuilt these with everything slick, everything light, mag (+centrifugal) brakes, and shallow spools for braid, and this was a big dollar project - kept me busy much of last year.

Understood, don't have your specific reel, and gave the generic answer up front. Like @NOC 1 and his results, I've been very happy with Air bearings in my spools for inshore casting, light lures (1/8 to 3/8), and big fish. I have to clean and lube my bearings annually, anyway, and except for drive bearings, heavy shielded bearings are more trouble than they're worth.

It's a brand, and a cost-effective copy of the Hedgehog tool - Hedgehog states in their product listing that it won't fit certain Daiwa spools. The Daiwa tool has a rotating anvil that reaches those deep pins, and flips for shallower pins.

I have the Billings tool that works on most of my spools, but with the SP spool I show in my photo, with the main spool bearing recessed in the shallow spool - the Billings tool won't reach that pin, and the Daiwa pin tool will.

Aside from the obvious uses of anchor trolley, two things that should be required on every kayak: A bow line the length of your boat that you can deploy from your cockpit so that you can be towed if necessary. The anchor trolley lets you take somebody else's bow line, tie it off and run it to your stern in deep water, so that you can tow him. This is my buddy Blake towing in two seasick kayakers from an offshore armada that he ramrodded. But there are other reasons that can incapacitate you, boats can get outclassed in big wind, paddles can get lost, etc.

I'm very happy with spring-scale set to 1/4 of weakest link - rod max line rating, line or leader test. The rod capacity too often gets overlooked with big braid test. If I need more short-term drag for a little authority to stop a fish or set hook, can thumb either bait or spinning spool.

Bottom bouncing a Teeny T-130 sinking fly line has been my thing for 40 years, so I'm going to have to agree with the OP that I feel more response and definition from vibration transmitted by the larger diameter line. This line is thin as fly lines go, has the advantage of a weighted spliced shooting head, but comparable to heavy coated braid.

You might check both SDScustom and HPRbearings on ebay - search Daiwa Pixy spool bearings - both offer a range in bearings from shielded to Air BFS. If HPR has what you want, he can get them to you sooner from Florida than SDS can post from Ukraine. Both good vendors. If you're not casting heavy weights, go for the lightest bearings they have. Lowering the spool inertia with lighter total mass, lighter and more efficient bearings, improves both cast distance and backlash control. Lower inertia = easier to start, less start-up overshoot, and easier to stop. I looked up the Pixy spool, and @Delaware Valley Tackle is correct about using the right pin tool - I'm guessing it needs the Daiwa tool - also a good idea to use a magnifier, because if the pin is tapered, it only goes in and out one way.

Zebco service is first rate. They usually won't charge you, and more often than not, send you a new reel. They also send out just about any part gratis. Most Zebco reels were built to be disposable - they know it, but their service is over the top to promote customer loyalty. My buddy fishes a Zebco Bullet inshore on a Lami MTC casting rod and loves it - bought it for his wife, but she prefers their XUL rockfish spinning rod now.

More tinkering to show, this on my monster surf spinning reel, and has been a long-term project to collect the pieces. First, UK vendors have finally opened shop after shutting down for a year, and I was able to replace the sloppy 85-mm-pitch factory handle with this well-engineered, solid, folding 70-mm-pitch handle from Weston in UK. Both Tica and Daiwa (made by Tica) use a giant 6-mm handle hex shaft with 3.5 mm handle screw. We don't see many of these reels in the US, but the UK is big on them, with nice aftermarket improvements. But the real project was adding this "reel stand" The purpose of the reel stand on an 11' rod is to have a place to keep a big circle hook. The small rotating loop also keeps lure trebles perfectly out of the way. What made this so tough was the hex shaft and 3.5 mm handle screw. However, this is also the thread Shimano used on their old square-handle-shaft reels. Found this dirt-cheap Ali Express reel stand with swapping handle screw threads, 3 mm or 3.5 mm. The M5-0.5 30-mm-long socket screw (also from Ali) matches the thread of the anodized reel stand into the handle screw base. All I really wanted was the handle screw base. Cut one of the M5-0.5 screws into an all-thread stud - it ended up with red-loctite into the handle screw base. Drilled and tapped matching thread into the Tsubaki reel stand. Fit the stand-off I needed with an IDeR Design reel stand base, and shimmed the whole assembly with M5 spacer and (#10) rubber washer from Bolt Depot. ps - here's how the Weston handle folds, and lets the big reel fit in a padded case.