bulldog1935

Of course I mostly fish salt, and TackleDirect is my favorite US vendor. I've bought seven 1-pc rods from TD, two their house-brand offshore, and one of their house-brand 3-pc for my inshore spinning back-up. Their house brand rods are a great buy. Their house-version of plano boxes are also a very good buy. You could probably drive a UPS truck over their packing tubes - every rod has been well-wrapped and included a tip protector for conveyor impacts. They will acquire stock from other vendors to fill your order. They have a good relationship with St. Croix, and my Legend Glass was drop-shipped from the St. Croix factory - not quite wrapped as well as TD. I've bought many bricks of .22 from Midway.

Here's a new Twin Power that required a shim from the box today. Had to wind about 30 yards to see it, reduced the drag, backed the line onto the source spool, shimmed the spool and started over. A lot of people may complain about the result, but I've fished these reels enough to know that the line flush with the bottom of the line-keeper groove as felt by your fingernail is perfection. The C3000MHG also came with a perfect braid spool - that's just under 200 yds 20-lb X-braid, same diameter as 8-lb Sufix 832. The Japanese just don't send the good braid spools to USM. This reel also has better drag than my large-frame Stradic. It shares the Stradic forged aluminum body, and adds forged aluminum rotor.

I've been sold on Japan X-braid since I first tried 6-lb 832 on Salt XUL, and decided to upgrade. 832 is great for deep-spool reels, especially a baitcaster. But for shallow-spool reels, the latest generation of X-braids more than double the breaking strength at the same diameter. I've posted this before. The column on the left is PE#, which is silk thread size. the PE breaking strength on the right column is also conservative, though it matches the numbers Varivas uses. Most X-braids are listing 22-lb for PE#1, and 35-lb for PE#1.5. In the finest sizes, YGK, Duel and Varivas are listing 10-lb for 0.10 mm. The way these braids are made, they use finer strands, tighter wrap, fuse the strands when they apply the high-tech coatings. Most of the strength is in the center strand, with tougher abrasion-resistant strands on the outside.

@Mbirdsley What I like best is the hook keeper function - keeps your rod staged in kayak and your line is never twisted on the rod guides

The best way to shim is start from scratch - using the shallow surf braid spool as example. You shim and start over until 5 or 10 wraps gives you even distribution on the spool length - not crowding top or bottom of the spool. This is 300 yds of 35-lb X-braid (PE#1.5) Every time I load a new Shimano spool, I have to shim the reel - the Shimano shim washers compress pretty quickly. Tica and Daiwa both use larger diameter shims, which compress slower.

I like this match - 2.5" slim swim Z; 1/15 oz Texas eye finesse jighead. good hook-up with big fish eating small bait

This ebay search found a long list - see if any part numbers match your reel schematic parts list. This is the shim washer stack on a big Tica surf reel (who also make many Daiwa reels)

Smooth = good balance and absence of geary feel. A lot of us associate low inertia or low winding resistance with smooth, and probably wouldn't consider a fully sealed reel like a Van Staal to be smooth. A lot of stout reels such as Tica will make my smooth list and others might disagree. I always like to use the low-grade Shimano Nasci in Tackleadvisors $100 spinning reel shoot-out for an example (if you can sit through an hour of it) - "smooth for awhile" He describes it as the smoothest reel on the table, then goes into why it won't last with hard use. That's a very different reel from higher grade Shimano, but demonstrates that smooth is always a target for Shimano.

that was a great score of so many limited-run reels. Curious which ones were delivered this way, vs. those you dressed-up with aftermarket parts.

My boat-rich buddy also has Hobies, but his kayaks go back to Aquaterra Kahuna. We fish many places too skinny for pedal drives. After one such trip, using the Hobie back-up paddle that comes with the boat, he instead began taking his nice wood paddle for back-up, and for all its paddling qualities. Don't confuse a good wood paddle with a cheap one- they are extremely light. He has two that he bought on close-out.

If you don't have the right screwdriver, it's time to get one, anyway. What could be easier. He said he has the part wants to install it, and asked for step-by-step instructions. The real conundrum is when you have to tighten the screws on your glasses... gratuitous decoration photo

there may be 1 or 2 screws holding the thumb barr in place. You have to remove the palm plate and the spool, shown here for a metanium You have to reach the screwdriver through the LW to get to the thumb bar screw(s). They recommend applying grease on the contact points before installing the new part new part goes on the same way - the thumb bar has a mix of pins and threaded bosses that match the holes in the clutch post. Easy. I haven't done a Shimano, but it was essentially the same putting a custom Revo part on my Lew's ($23 Momo alloy part from AMO store) Daiwa is the one that is complicated and requires opening the drive cover and major disassembly to get to the screw that holds the thumb bar - the screw goes into the side of the thumb bar. The plastic thumb bar is definitely a weak point. I checked AMO store, they don't show a cost-effective alloy part for your reel, and the Japan KDW alloy part at the top is $90. My ZPI Alcance came with alloy thumb bar.

do you want braid or mono? (this is a C2000 wearing the F6 mono spool) https://www.jpfishingtacklenews.com/shimano-vanquish-2019/ C3000XG is a great mono spool @SproDD79 C3000MHG is a bad-ass braid spool. C3000SDH-HG is even better for small braid and comes with double handle. Oops - Asian Portal is OOS on both of these. They had them both last month when my buddy chose a Twin Power C3000MHG. He accidentally bought two, and I'm buying the second from him when we catch up. .

answering the ancient addlement If the OP cranked down the brake cap as far as he described, he brinnelled (permanently indented) the bronze bearing pads on the ends of the spindle. They'll never again tighten the spindle until they get replaced. If he's talking about the mag brake adjustment, he twisted it past the bump-stop. It's a booger to get that internal cam and the mag knob back in phase, but possible.

No question a cost-effective back-up paddle is what you want. Note that wood, glass or carbon shaft flexes less than aluminum, so more of your energy goes into moving the boat. If paddling distance is your goal, paddle = Werner. No paddle blades enter and leave the water more efficiently. Werner's glass blade paddles are the best buy out there. Bent shaft is nice because it indexes your hand position for maximum efficiency - but it adds weight. I have one of these in touring blade shape (Camano), and used that position to index grips on my straight-carbon-shaft high-power Werner Coryveckan. Note that full-carbon bent shaft and straight shaft + glass-blade Werner weigh exactly the same.

Here's one - ok three - for you - I put the fore-grip on my 14' surf rod starting with inexpensive (beaver) cork tape, then covering with X-shrink tube Indexed-position grips on my kayak paddle by rolling on thin closed-cell foam using 3M 77 spray glue, then X-shrink I rescued the splitting foam grip on my stake-out pole with X-shrink The quickest way to apply this stuff is using a tea kettle over the sink. Pour boiling water starting at the center and work toward each end.

I fished Seaguar from bulk spools for more than a decade. Red then Abrazx was my bread and butter. Biggest complaint is coiling line memory. Can't go wrong with Invizx and Tatsu. Seaguar makes knot strength their top priority. I've gone mostly to finer braids on shallow spools, and don't buy bulk fluoro anymore. Two deep 1016 and 1012-size spools, I filled one with Tatsu, and the other with R-18 I loaded in a Japan shopping cart. These lines are stiffer, which gives them lower memory and less coiling. 10-lb casts really well, and you should enjoy casting 8-lb.

My Christmas rod arrived today. Been carrying my ZPI Alcance as a back-up reel for 6 months, and pondering the right rod for it. The right rod stands down my heavy IM6 Crowder for MM niche, and really wanted to push out that MH end for big winter mullet imitations to 7/8 oz. Also wanted something lighter-in-hand than the IM6 Crowder for a long day in the saddle. I was considering a Waterloo custom, but already glad I made this choice for $150 less. I have the Valleyhill all-range BFS bass rod that I adore, and this year, they came out with a solid-tip boat "hard rockfish" that exactly meets my specs - lure weight 1/4 to 1 oz, and my favorite PE#1.2 braid. It's 7'5" 2-pc, 140 g, but Ti-frame SiC microguides make the tip a feather - a removable balance weight on the butt is going to stay there - it works. The solid tip both adds light lure end and ought to give that moderate dog-walking action that matches my twitch. After casting 1/4-oz unweighted TSL Grasswalker to 140', took a few photos. I didn't get light to show the pretty dark emerald band in the blank, but threw in some milk-jug light to get the reel seat. ok, here I got the light to show the emerald green band on the rod

For my touch, I always present dog-walking lures best on moderate action rods. One of my favorites is St. Croix Legend Glass. Also IM6, and I just bought a new Valleyhill MHF with solid tip - much lighter in hand than IM6 - that I expect the solid tip to provide my moderate touch.

Daiwa.Au ran this custom color project https://daiwafishing.com.au/collections/daiwa-custom-project I found a shop in NZ with DHL shipping and closeout prices - https://www.marine-deals.co.nz There's a chance if Daiwa. Au imports that Certate LT 3000S-CH-DH, you could order the handle you want through marine-deals cheaper, but you'd need to know the Daiwa part number (see if it's on the Plat schematic). Unfortunately, was never able to find a color double in stock anywhere, but a friend and I bought up most of the last orange Daiwa handles for our Tica Libra SX reels, which are already trimmed in orange anodize. We were buying these Daiwa handles half-price for NZ$40, which is only US$27. Even the DHL NZ charge was a good deal compared to shipping from Japan. (we bought the stock down, then they raised the price of the remaining stock back to retail) Between us, we replaced the folding handles on 8 Tica reels. He wanted to dress up the reels for fishing with his grandkids. On the right, his Libra SX3000 got a very nice wood knob that was closing out at JapanTackle. I also used the tiny Daiwa 72-mm double on my XUL Tica Cetus SS500 - looks like it was made for it. It was a good buy at Asian Portal, when we were loading up carts to pimp these reels. I replaced the Zaion knobs with my favorite Avail acrylic knobs.

you can order the part from Plat, who will source it from Daiwa. https://www.plat.co.jp/shop/catalog/partsorder.php?products_id=3053 It's part no. 105 on the schematic, $120 plus Plat's part charge and shipping. USM does not import that Certate model with the double handle, so you can't get the part through Daiwa.US US Market is 3000-XH. (6.2 gears, deep spool) https://daiwa.us/products/certate-lt It's this model, only JDM (5.7 gears, shallow spool) https://fishing.asian-portal.shop/category/select/pid/272146

Daiwa sells the RCS knobs both ways. They even cost the same. You can see a seam in the coating if it's there, plus the coated knob is more rounded.

While adding spigot ferrules to glass fly rod blanks is a fairly common choice, they're not XXH musky rods. I would go the external rod holder route - suction mounts on the outside of your vehicle. https://www.flyrodcarrier.com/rodmounts-fly-fishing-rod-racks/

Luddite is not the answer to everything. I think it's fair to assume he wants to add tackle and is looking for ideas that will benefit his fishing - even the fun.

all Shimano A and Daiwa S knobs swap (Shimano B and Daiwa L are 5 mm knob spindle and fit 10,000 size reels) There's a bearing-size shoulder at the base of Shimano knob spindle that Daiwa doesn't have. .............Shimano.....................................................................Daiwa If you use a Shimano knob on a Daiwa handle, there's also a bearing-size plastic bushing that takes up that extra length of spindle, you slide on before the inner BB. I have reels mixed and matched with Shimano, Daiwa handles, and Livre, Avail knob. The knobs all come with the spacer bushing and a set of shim washers (0.5- and 0.2-mm thick) you fit on either side of the inner BB - you stack the shim washers to adjust out end-play, through a couple of iterations of assembly and tightening. IOS factory even makes the adapter that lets you use a Daiwa handle on a Shimano reel, here, for offshore cranking. IOS also makes the hex-shaft adapter that lets me use Daiwa handles on Tica reels (to replace folding handles).