thediscochef

Didn't the water in California rise by 20+ feet in most of their big bass lakes? I'd think that would have at least *some* effect on the density of populations everywhere just from a geometry perspective. 

I do sometimes wish I had been born in time for the heyday of this activity, the stories about castaic/casitas and fork in the 70s/80s/90s are things I will never experience. Texas does a good job of managing the bass genetics here but we have issues imo - it's not any one single issue that kills giant potential in texas, but rather a team of problems that all pretty much stem from ignorance or a lack of research

the only piece I really get annoyed with is the totally clown-shoes, jokerman-font nonexistent levels of bag limit enforcement down here. When there are enough people, they are part of the habitat

I digress

I'm gonna say it's the rise in water + poor quality runoff + what sounds like a total lack of management causing the disappearance of big bass at casitas/castaic. But I'm also just some guy who is up way too late

I have one of these and I had the same experience. I found that the spool tension is the primary culprit - I'm not sure if they're using a particularly slick material on the spool spindle ends or a really slow thread pattern or something, but I had to tighten the spool tension noticeably more than my other lews reels to get the other brakes to work like normal. Usually I only tighten the tension enough to barely keep the spool from moving side to side - with this reel, it took that plus 5-7 clicks. A lot of other reels seem to lean more on the mag brake+centrifugal brakes than the spool tension comparatively, this one is much more a balance of all three braking features. It does still require more thumb than most people are used to. Had to cut my way out of 3 or 4 day-ending backlashes to get the hang of it, but it's a favorite reel now that it's locked in to good settings...if I pair it with the right rod, I can cast the full spool of 12# mono with a 1/2oz red eye shad. I still backlash on gusty days or when I'm in the vortex but a click or two of spool tension or mag brake takes care of that right away. Other thing with newer Lew's spool tension knobs - if it doesn't click, it's not threaded properly