bulldog1935

Late to the party, I just got back from the river with 2 high school aquatic science classrooms (hmm, Antonian HS brought 67 students - I think that's more than AS class...) - they were releasing trout fry into cold Guadalupe tailwater - they raised the fry from eggs - I head up the program for Texas with 32 schools. If you ever have the desire to swap spools around, some UL, some ML, and the ability to fish light braid on to 1 oz lures, you can't beat the 34-mm Zillion/Steez platform, which includes Silver Wolf ready to finesse from the box @Tennessee Boy. You can spend a little less with Air TW, the Alphas platform, but from here down, you lose the versatility. Showing examples of 2 spools, the 1000 Boost PE Special that comes with Silver Wolf, and a Roro aftermarket spool, which will send 1/16 oz into next week (seriously, 130'). I also agree with @KP Duty, you'll do better fitting aftermarket spool for Tatula over buying a cheap Express website package reel. Others may have different results, but from the go, Steez/Zillion and aftermarket spools (Ray's Studio, AMO) have been a boon for me, fishing 2- and 3-g lures. adding PS about the forgiving part - both Boost PE Special and Ray's Studio spools are SV, which is wide range and forgiving. Both AMO and Roro spools are fixed rotor (linear mag only), which is not wide range, and cast the lightest weights to the greatest distance, which also doesn't need to be as forgiving.

In my 20 years of shopping Japan, always considered it a worthwhile buy when the US$ was worth more than JY100. All of Japan is still on sale for 30% off.

I don't know about their bass line, but I've become a junkie for their JDM salt baitfinesse rods. From low-grade to higher-blank-quality and finish grade, they're light in hand, they fish their rated low end and full range with aplomb, and have backbone to turn big fish at the boat. First one I bought was their long 8'9" shore micro-jigging rod to match with Silver Wolf, because I was afraid to take my expensive Yamaga Blanks BCIII 82/B + Steez combo on my kayak. The Abu rod excelled in both shore-fishing and kayak-fishing niches. It's close, but won't quite cast its low end with Y/B, because it doesn't load so much long tip, but that's exactly what gives it fish-power to spare. Year-before fall Redfish Rodeo, it landed my trip fish and muscled it at the boat like a champ. (my buddy Josh teased me about the long rod on kayak) I liked this rod so much, I went back for another, and modified the reel seat to accept my 4500CT in its designed shore micro-jigging niche, so I have 2 of these I can rig with different shore lures. Next, I matched Silver Wolf with 7'3" Kurodai Baitfinesse Prototype for kayak niche, and it caught every fish that mattered in last year's Rodeo. This year, I snagged 4-pc 6'5'" Xrossfield ML, almost a give-away on closeout. I strongly recommend this rod for someone who wants a wide-range truck-stash bass finesse rod. 2 g is the sweet spot on this rod, and setting up a spool brake 2 days ago, it was casting 2-g jighead to 130'. Again, I liked this so much I went back to find the closeout on the 6'6" 2-piece - the 4-pc is going in my kayak back-up-rod dry-bag. Abu named this rod for "crossing all fields" - just as good in bass finesse as seabass. This or the 2-pc Xrossfield would make a great UL to 1/2-oz bottom contact rod. The Japanese also use these for jigging 2 oz.

SLPW '23 Millionare Air Stream Custom sold out in presale at $720 MSRP. The few that people are willing to part with, they're re-selling for over $1000. Daiwa is crushed by your editorial. Other round reels are bench-made today, and will always be worth their original purchase price or more in resale. (out of the box, these cast toe-to-toe with any LP reel) While you can't say the same about new Ambassadeur production, there are still limited bench editions that will retain their value, and it's pretty remarkable both how long- and strong-lived, as well as how strong in the market old Ambassadeur remains. Cal at TackleTour published a new Conquest MD review today - I suspect that has something to do with this thread OP.

If you follow my first post, you will solve this. btw I always tie the backing mono and braid together with Allbright knot before I load the reel. It's easy to spool 25 yds of mono onto the braid source spool after you tie them together. This way, I never lose the tension on the line when I'm filling the reel.

Yesterday, setting up a new spool brake, I cast 2 g (1/16 oz) to 130' on 6-1/2' rod, braid diameter 0.15 mm. Guide dig statement makes no sense, and spool-line-dig w/ 0.21-mm braid is only an issue on a poorly-loaded spool.

I began fishing braid with 20-lb 832 (0.23 mm), 120 yds stacked on top of 25 yds 20-lb mono backing. Tie the braid to mono backing using Allbright/Alberto knot to pass the line guide. This puppy sails and gives my BFS reels a 1/8-oz run for their money, even though it's in my 1/4+ oz niche. I did improve my spool bearings with KTF/IXA MBS, the equivalent of Hedgehog Air HD. You increased the loaded mass of your spool by filling it completely with fine braid, which stacks very efficiently with almost no air gaps in the spool stack. Your loaded spool was lighter before, could start easier, spin faster, and lower spinning mass also needs less brake force - adding up to distance. And if you didn't fill it all the way, the smaller loaded diameter means the spool has to spin faster to cast the same amount of line - also greatly reduces cast distance. The Very Thick mono arbor I describe above stacks so inefficiently in the spool bottom, it has a huge air volume, fills the spool more than halfway, and gives me perfect remaining shallow spool depth for my much thinner working braid. Selah. ps - easy to fix, get a 25-yd spool of Maxima Ultragreen 20-lb, (Amazon sells), spool up your braid on a receiver spool, and start over. Don't use fluoro backing, it's 30% denser (heavier) than mono.

@Bandersnatch That's SLPW-Zillion, which I matched with Ray's Studio spool: Not CT, but 34-mm spool. I made one change since the post just below, I found the gunmetal knob caps for my Studio Composite handle through west coast importer JDMFishing.com. I also replaced the 3-y-o Duel X-wire braid on that spool with PE#1 Varivas Si-X (white). It is shown with the right rod above, I'm matching it full time with Abu 7'3" Kurodai Baitfinesse Prototype - seabass finesse rod.

me too if I had had been schtupping w/ a backlash, wouldn't have cast to this jumping bait - 28" speckled trout visit your boat about 1/ 25 years.

if you don't backlash, you get lotsa free tries.

@Fishing_Rod after 45 years, evaluating what you do with your thumb is just hard as describing it, because the muscle memory has become a reflex. I get those nasty bumps all the time (try practicing skip casting under shrubs in your back yard). The result is always a full-thumb-clamp on the spool. I'm sure somewhere in the past, I got the backlash, too, but the automatic math is something like, "this isn't going to work, stop, start over will be a better result" [Start Over] > [Follow Through]

@Big Hands The solution is having 100% thumb in your pocket (more accurately, a mm from your spool). Even if you're not using thumb, keeping it so close you feel the "fuzzies" of incipient backlash and can react. If you're using your thumb right, it's always the final elevation on your cast distance, so it should already be there to adjust spool speed as needed. 40 years ago, I was casting this weightless (of course no end tension) and my forward centrifugal cast PO'd two different guides, because I consistently outdistanced their weightless spinning cast (while they were trying to correct my cast error). The physics of all of this has always been intuitive for me, but my thumb has been educated through experience. Whatever it is, I can cast it. If you want some serious thumb skill, play with an antique Meek or Talbot: Or you can do like @TnRiver46 and cast an old Ambassadeur with all the LW parts removed. If it takes 100% thumb and casts 1/8 oz into next week, it makes me giggle. If I take the same reel and modify it for BFS-threadline w/ mag brake and no thumb, bringing working weight below 2 g, so much the better. Honestly, I only remember 2 backlashes - of course I know there were more in 50 years - the first time I cast my neighbor's Ambassadeur and swore I would never backlash again. Second was April 2018 when I had a single line wrap on my rod tip (plus casting into wind). Plugged in my back-up reel and fished a great morning.

Yamaga Blanks.

Any time you're trying to cast an under-loaded rod - fishing too light weight below the rod's low-end capability - your cast windage will continue off in the direction of your rod swing. This is how you find the low-weight end of your rod. The rod sweet spot will be the lightest weight that doesn't do that, but goes where you aim it. You get really good at this when you're evaluating a baitfinesse rod to fish 2 and 3 g, or finding the base mag set on your BFS reel.

I take exception with pretty much all of the above that @Big Hands pulled out of post contexts. I built BFS-mod frogger and surf reel both fishing PE#2 in YGK WXP1, which has 45-lb breaking strength. Again, we lose context talking about braid test instead of braid diameter. I fish down to PE#1 in surf micro-jigging, which does count as a "normal BFS" niche, though an unusual BFS-CT reel. I filll all my shallow spools to max capacity, but I make sure the stacked line beneath is dig-proof. If you do this properly, you can't fish a line dig. If your system is working, it ain't broke. But if it's not working, you need to look for something different. I also didn't consider braid before 832, so 8-strand, round, coated braid is the only braid I've ever fished. The reason- I saw too many wind-knot catastrophies w/ my friends fishing yellow power pro on their Penn spinners. The only time I've ever experienced line dig was on 4200SS and SpiderWire copolymer - my daughter was catching giant sheepshead on the flats, which turn into UPS trucks trying to get back to deep water. The SpiderWire, in its first and last fishing trip, extruded to half its diameter and sucked deep inside the spinning spool, shutting down my daughter's day - that's ok, we brought home a meal of schoolie specs. That was 2010, btw. Also, backlash is so far from my memory, the only time I think about it is initially setting up a reel, finding the point of incipient backlash to start my brake set-up. But if backlash is something you think about, you probably shouldn't be fishing threadline braid on BFS reel.

Yes, this is very clearly a para-taper rod. Smith has one in Super Strike series (actually several, but this is the only one named Machine Gun): Here's the load curve for the Smith Machine Gun - fast tip, more flex in mid and butt: We've covered the difference between para taper and progressive taper before. In progressive taper, increasing cast weight loads a band moving progressively down the rod - this makes for a forgiving rod with wide lure-weight range. Also, generally a longer rod - short soft tip, long fast mid, powerful butt. Progressive is the best choice for casting light weights to distance, also for skip casting. In para taper, increasing cast weight loads more of the total rod length. A shorter para rod will cast to greater distance than a progressive rod, but has a narrow lure-weight range. Para taper also fits the classic glass short worm rods of the 70s and 80s. Para taper strikes quicker because of the fast tip. I marked on these load curves showing Para and Progressive The Japanese also call Para rods "sticky" (stick-like), and they call the soft tip of a progressive rod "berry" (as in berries at the end of a tree branch). All rod tapers are a blend of both, but it's accurate to say a rod taper is more-para or more-progressive.

@Big Hands - here's what doesn't sound right to me. You're getting line dig on 0.23-mm dia braid with a factory-BFS reel that should already have increased LW pitch for wide line lay. BTW, I did begin with 600-yd spools of 832 when I began using braid. I fish that diameter on deep-spool Super Duty using 20-lb mono backing for a built-up spool arbor. Maybe you're not properly tensioning your line when you load it. Here's how I always load my lines - reel secure on a rod in a clamp rod holder; line through the 2 guides closest to the reel; line through a phone book with an adjustable weight; source spool on an axle in a vise. I can walk away from this and come back to it, and the line still has proper tension. As far as line differences, Jun Sonada used to recommend never use a coated braid on a baitcaster, for the reason that soft coatings make the braid more susceptible to line dig - this put Power Pro at the top of his list. He also used to divide his PE Braid Spectra into two categories, Coated and Non-coated. He can't do that any more in Japan, because they only sell coated braids now. So he's adjusted to recommend hard-coated braids for use on BFS. One of the first coated braids Jun recommended was Yamatoyo Resin Sheller, which I found the coating didn't hold up, especially compared to most YGK braids, and Duel X-wire stood out as one of the first-best hard-coated braids - I just replaced a hard-fished 3-year-old X-wire spool with Varivas Si-X. I think Varivas wins across the board on braid coatings, though their hardest coating, Si-X, is still pretty expensive. However, every one of my salt reels that needs new line gets Si-X, and can find good deals if you're already shopping in Japan and can add it into a cart with other items you need. Where I'm stacking spools, I still have old pieces of larger-diameter 832 for backing. What you gain with braid - no stretch, huge breaking strength, less drag through the water, and of course, increased cast distance at light end. ... almost left out the most important thing, Totally Limp, NO MEMORY - this sent me to 100% braid, except on loaner tackle.

The croaker and drum family (scienidae) makes up about 80% of all inshore species around the world. Freshwater drum can be a hoot, also - I caught a 10-lb'er on fly rod fishing off a dock on Lake Livingston. I never ate redfish either, mostly because the slot fish are too big to pan cook well. I went out of my way to catch speckled trout (same family) for fish tacos. Next to flounder, this is pretty much the best food the coast offers. But when my buddy Josh showed me how to grill-blacken half-shell (skin-on) redfish fillets, this became my favorite seafood. You scoop it out of the skin, the vitamin A makes it sweet, and you pick the charred ribs like pork ribs.

Yes redfish, during our fall kayak Redfish Rodeo - wind and storms last October week limited us to 3 short days. There was no wind on that first day, but my limit took me off the flat at 10 am. My buddy kept up with his dad by text and we got off the water on the 2nd morning just as thie storm front advanced to us. We were loaded up and driving to Mexican food when the rain hit. But not before I got my best photo of the trip - this one was on PE#1.2 to 15-lb hard fluoro leader. Short days on the water also aren't a problem - we make up for that around the fire pit - this was Sat nite's shrimp boil.

I think you're going to have to evaluate the "slight rubbing noise" in perspective. My Shimano Twin Power C3000MHG does something that may sound similar, and different from all my other (worm-drive) Shimanos - the reel is such a beast, the sound doesn't bother me. The sound you're describing almost has to be light contact between the spool and the rotor. See if it only happens at the bottom of the spool oscillation. If I'm right here, adding the smallest spool shim will eliminate the noise. HOWEVER, spool shims have a very specific purpose - to adjust oscillation position to improve line lay, and not something you want to mess with until line lay needs adjusting. The one thing I can read about 24 Certate is Airdrive Rotor and Spool are both new designs. The drag-pay clicker was somehow removed from the spool. The rotor shape was changed to beef up deflection points under line load, and shed mass everywhere else.

@Robin I think I can explain that as a deep backlash loop in your spool. Biggest problem with tiny braid - you can't find these because they make 180-tight loops that disappear. Without backlash, you can take PE#0.8 to the bank. this morning, I was on fish sign, and when I found the right lure blend color, caught 7 in 12 casts This was all in a couple of days last fall, with 12-lb (max breaking strength) hard fluoro leader.

On that reel, you shouldn't go smaller than 0.15-mm dia. (PE#0.8) The smart thing to do is stack line, with thicker backing, and your thin working braid on top. Use the capacity calculator I linked https://www.pattayafishing.net/advanced-fishing-reel-line-capacity-estimator/

that's all I do. Please don't be offended, but 8- 10- and 15-lb braid don't mean anything. We're going to have to talk braid diameter (with the rest of the world). The smallest braid I use on deep spools is equivalent diameter to 20-lb 832 (0.235-mm dia). I build up an arbor using 20-25 yds, 20-25-lb mono, tie with an Allbright knot that will pass line guide, and top with my working braid. If you want to calculate stacking line capacities, use this capacity calculator from Pattaya The easiest way to keep up is talking diameter and, better, Japan silk thread diameter scale (PE#). You'll note braid strength on Japan X-braids is much higher than USM equivalent diameter. (All braid is not created equal - this chart is a standard from Japan Line Committee) For standard LW pitch on shallow spools, Jun Sonada recommends nothing smaller than PE#1 (0.165-mm dia) to avoid line dig. But I fish one smaller size, PE#0.8 on Zillion/Steez and big inshore fish with no line dig problems. That said, I much prefer PE#1 all around (equiv dia to 4-lb mono). To go to smaller braid (if you'd ever want to), you need a BFS reel, which come from the factory with increased LW pitch. This lays line wider on the spool to prevent line dig. Silver Wolf PE Special is rated to fish down to PE#0.4. The smallest I fish on this reel (with aftermarket spool lighter and shallower than Daiwa Boost 1000 PE spool) is PE#0.6. Even this small is kind of the limit of sanity, but it shows up in cast distance. General rule - don't mess with tiny braids until you're backlash-proof.

JDM Stradic is the no-brainer spinning reel. $140 in mid-frame 2500 size. Don't expect shipping before May 6 because of national holidays next week. $5 more gets 3000MHG, which is beefed-up mid-frame with braid spool and large-frame drag. @Awainer1 - I fixed my 3000MHG link just above.

JY hit 158 to US$ today - weakest Yen against the $ in 34 years - and should continue to drop during next week holidays. Go over everybody's JDM recommendations and buy from Japan. Sometimes difficult to grasp. JDM vendors may list US$ prices (assumed exchange rate), but they bill you in JY, and you will be charged the exchange rate by your credit card. On a rising JY, I've seen additional 5% I paid over US$ listed by vendor. On a falling JY, I've seen 10% less billed to my credit card than vendor's US$ list price.