Your Favorite Rod and Reel Brands

[Topwaterdude]

Daiwa Tatula's and Fuego's paired with Dobyns fury rods.

[volzfan59]

Working at BPS had it's privileges, as in a great employee discount.

Casting; 5 BPS Platinum rods and reels for everything except cranking. I have 6 BPS Crankin' Sticks with Pro Qualifier reels (all 5.3:1 with one 4.7:1).

 

Spinning; 4 BPS Patriot rods, 6 BPS Carbonlite rods. The Carbonlite rods have Carbonlite reels. The Patriots have Pflueger President reels

 

I do own one St. Croix Panfish Series rod with a Shimano Sahara reel.

[soflabasser]

Shimano and Penn are my favorite reel brands.

[fishon2]

For Bass & Bay Fishing

Rods: Falcon & St. Croix

Reels: Bait Casters. Shimano 200 E Series Curados & Chronarchs, Spinning various Shimano.

 

Recently considering Diawa Spinners, the Fuego LT has me intrigued! 

[Shaners]

Spinning Reels- Diawa, Pflueger.

Baitcaster Reels- Shimano, Daiwa.

Rods- St.Croix, Diawa.

[shovelmouth83]

fav reel is Lews. rods are falcon, diawa, ugly stick, and penn.

[Cgolf]

1 hour ago, shovelmouth83 said:

fav reel is Lews. rods are falcon, diawa, ugly stick, and penn.

I do use a couple of ugly sticks too. They are great for shore fishing on the river and it lives in my truck all summer. 

[tander]

All of my casting reels are Lews with Falcon rods. My spinning rods are Lews with Pflueger reels.

[TBAG]

Spinning reels: Shimano Stradic, with some older Sedonas.

Baitcasting reels: 95% Shimano Curado K's with a couple older BPS Pro Qualifiers and a Daiwa Fuego CT

Rods: St. Croix with a couple Loomis and one Dobyns Fury

[bigfruits]

BC: Shimano, Daiwa

Spinning: Shimano

Rods: Megabass, Loomis, St. Croix

[Bankbeater]

Rods:

Daiwa, Berkley, BPS, and St. Croix.

 

Reels:

Shimano, Daiwa, Abu Garcia, and Pflueger.

[fishon2]

On 10/13/2018 at 11:53 AM, fishon2 said:

For Bass & Bay Fishing

Rods: Falcon & St. Croix

Reels: Bait Casters. Shimano 200 E Series Curados & Chronarchs, Spinning various Shimano.

 

Recently considering Diawa Spinners, the Fuego LT has me intrigued! 

Bought a Diawa Fuego LT 3000 spinner yesterday time will tell how much I like it...

[LOTR88]

I have been pretty happy with Lews, I use them for all my casting rods and reels, I don't use a lot of spinning gear any more but I do have a few Ugly Sticks with Penn Fierce 2 reels that work well when needed.

[deadadrift89]

Curado 70 with (older version)GLX BCR803 great t-rig setup

[onthewater102]

I became disenchanted with name brands delivering no-name quality internals 10 years ago or so and started looking into the materials the internal components were constructed of and found out about the Pure Fishing group slapping brand labels on imported products, many of which were at different price points in the market and yet contained inter-changeable internal component parts.

 

Bass Pro Shops Pro-Qualifier

 

Rather than pay for the overhead of operating all those name brands I searched out one of the store brands Pure Fishing was attributed to distributing and was very happy with the Bass Pro Shops Pro-Qualifier line of baitcasting reels, which had a dual braking system only available on brand name reels costing roughly 2x the amount at the time I bought them. With their one-piece aluminum main frame and plastic side plates, brass gears and stainless bearings I had those reels for between 7 and 9 years (I bought several over time) and sold the last them (all still working as well as they did on day one) last month for $50 each. I tore them apart during the off season, cleaned and re-lubricated each one and they lasted.

 

Piscifun Phantom

 

Recently I was intrigued enough by the lightweight of the Piscifun Phantom and dropped down my $60 to get a test subject. It uses a carbon composite frame to get the weight down to 5.6oz, which didn't turn me off to it since it does achieve an extremely light weight (normally I stick to reels built on an aluminum one-piece frame). Internally they spare no expense - it uses high tolerance stainless shielded bearings throughout, 7075 alloy aerospace grade aluminum for the internal crankshaft and main drive gear, along with metal for the thumb-bar, its linkages and other internal components and a machined 1 piece 6061 aluminum spool (ported so that it weighs in at 14 grams with the bearing!) The only plastic internals are the sprockets to drive the line-guide worm gear and the yoke, all of which are plastic even on $400 top of the line Shimanos so these aren't strikes against it. Judging by the quality mechanical components inside it this is an excellent reel. Clearly it makes use a composite frame to save huge amounts of weight not as a cost-cutting measure.

 

After getting my hands on one and pulling it apart side by side with a Gen 3 Revo SX I turned around and ordered two more - the Abu was FULL of plastic components!!!. 

[blckshirt98]

I have a Frankenstein's mix of rods and reels that I picked up at various sales and closeouts, but if everything went down in a fire and I could only pick one brand of rods and one brand of reels to replace everything, it would be -

 

Reels - Shimano

Rods - Phenix (though St. Croix would be a very close runner up)

[Westcoast]

I like buying gear so far for rods my favourite is gloomis, I have everything from e6x to nrx. Then I have a few others such as sage gear, Abu, Kistler, St. Croix, and one Edge. Reels I have a bit of everything abus, Shimanos, and Daiwa(I think Daiwa has the lead though). 

Fly gear is mostly some of everything from sage, Winston, Loomis, echo, Lamson, Ross, nautilus, Abel, and hardy. My favourites being the sage/Loomis/Abel combos. 

 

 

 

 

[burrows]

Duckett

powell

stcroix

abugarcia

shimano

gloomis

denali

I would probably have more favorites but these are the only brands I’ve personally owned I’m not brand specific.

reels- diawa and shimano 

 

[Further North]

My preference is...a little of everything, but nothing cheap.

 

I find that, like folks who are breed-blind WRT hunting dogs, folks who cling blindly to one make of anything (cars, trucks, boats, motors, fishing gear fish species to chase...anything) miss out on a lot of great stuff.

[crypt]

bait casters,abu's- spinning,penn. rods mixed bag,Daiwa,Loomis,Abu,Dobyns.lately been building my own so my blanks are MHX,Rainshadow.

[onthewater102]

On 10/26/2018 at 11:08 AM, BaitFinesse said:

 

...If you wear your brake blocks down you will need to buy another spool because the centrifugal brake holder cannot be disassembled without destroying it in the process...

I don't know where I'd order parts for it besides replacing the entire spool, but the centrifugal brake holder can be disassembled without a problem, I took mine apart already once just playing around with it and put it back together without an issue.

 

On 10/26/2018 at 11:08 AM, BaitFinesse said:

 

...Also aluminum gears are not as durable as brass...

The aluminum alloy used in the gears in this is 7075 T6 - a fact I confirmed with Piscifun directly while writing an article on this reel for a different forum. It has over 3 times the shear strength of brass. This is not a typical alloy to be used by reel manufacturers (typically they use 2024 T3) which is probably where you've seen aluminum gears end up weaker than their brass counterparts.

 

I just sent a pair of Quantum Smokes back to the factory for warranty repair because they used that cheaper alloy among a long list of other inferior components.

 

On 10/26/2018 at 3:49 PM, crypt said:

...lately been building my own so my blanks are MHX,Rainshadow.

I've been building rods for a few years now, those MHX rods continue to impress me - especially at their price point.  You can shop around the different lines and find some exceptionally lightweight blanks.

 

Speaking of which, I put one of the Phantoms on a 6'9" Med Power Fast Action (one of my hand built rods using an MHX blank) and weighed it fully spooled with line...9.4 oz for the rod, reel & line:

 

 

By comparison, an empty Gen 2 Abu Revo SX weighs 9.0oz by itself:

 

[onthewater102]

The combo match was purely by accident - I made this rod and several others on the same color scheme over the last two years and found the phantom only a few months ago.

 

I can't vouch for their assertion that it's made of 7075 aluminum, but unless they're straight up lying it is an unusual alloy selection for sure.

[ww2farmer]

My current favorites are:

 

Reels- Daiwa both spinning and casting

Rods- Dobyns, and custom built.

 

In the past I have enjoyed a few Lew's (casting only), Abu (casting only), Pflueger (spinning only), Cabela's badged Daiwa's and Shimano reels, as well as select Shimano, Daiwa, St Croix, Fenwick, Berkley, Falcon, Abu, Cabela's, Gander Mtn, and Halo rods.

 

Was never a fan of any Quantum (both rods and reels), BPS products (both rods and reels) Pflueger casting, Abu spinning, Lew's spinning, or any of the Kistler, Wright & McGill, Lew's and TFO rods I have also had.

 

But not every product from brands I have liked has been a winner.

 

For example with rods: I did not care for ANY Abu Veritas rods (any generation) or Gen 1 Abu Vendetta's....I did like the Gen 1&2 Vengeance, the Gen 2+3 Vendetta's. I love Daiwa Aird X rods, the Fuego's not so much. I enjoyed Shimano Convergance, and Compre's, but the various iterations of the Clarus and Sellus  I had were dud-ish to me.

 

I am not blindly brand loyal...but after years and year of just buying and trying tons of stuff I can honestly say I have almost NEVER been let down by a Daiwa or Shimano reel at any price point....and in hindsight I regret selling off a couple of my favorites out of boredom and wanting to try "something else". I wish I still had ALL my E series Curado's and Citica's back, as well as my old red/silver Team Daiwa Fuego reels...aka the poor mans Team Daiwa Z.

 

I have had a similar journey with rods...I'm not sure there is a $50-$200 rod that I have not tried. Not finding exactly what I wanted led me to the custom rod route...and those select few custom built rods are the ONLY rods that survive my rod purges when I am searching for the next "one". It's early in the game with my new found love of Dobyn's Rods, but the hype is real...these may just be the ones for me going forward. A few years back St Croix was about as close as I came to falling in love for life with one brand of rods...but they change stuff too often and started using components I don't care for (like when the went to Fuji SKT reel seats on the LTB rods) and everything else from them was "almost" what I wanted, but just not quite "it".

[Cgolf]

On 11/10/2018 at 11:25 AM, ww2farmer said:

My current favorites are:

 

Reels- Daiwa both spinning and casting

Rods- Dobyns, and custom built.

 

In the past I have enjoyed a few Lew's (casting only), Abu (casting only), Pflueger (spinning only), Cabela's badged Daiwa's and Shimano reels, as well as select Shimano, Daiwa, St Croix, Fenwick, Berkley, Falcon, Abu, Cabela's, Gander Mtn, and Halo rods.

 

Was never a fan of any Quantum (both rods and reels), BPS products (both rods and reels) Pflueger casting, Abu spinning, Lew's spinning, or any of the Kistler, Wright & McGill, Lew's and TFO rods I have also had.

 

But not every product from brands I have liked has been a winner.

 

For example with rods: I did not care for ANY Abu Veritas rods (any generation) or Gen 1 Abu Vendetta's....I did like the Gen 1&2 Vengeance, the Gen 2+3 Vendetta's. I love Daiwa Aird X rods, the Fuego's not so much. I enjoyed Shimano Convergance, and Compre's, but the various iterations of the Clarus and Sellus  I had were dud-ish to me.

 

I am not blindly brand loyal...but after years and year of just buying and trying tons of stuff I can honestly say I have almost NEVER been let down by a Daiwa or Shimano reel at any price point....and in hindsight I regret selling off a couple of my favorites out of boredom and wanting to try "something else". I wish I still had ALL my E series Curado's and Citica's back, as well as my old red/silver Team Daiwa Fuego reels...aka the poor mans Team Daiwa Z.

 

I have had a similar journey with rods...I'm not sure there is a $50-$200 rod that I have not tried. Not finding exactly what I wanted led me to the custom rod route...and those select few custom built rods are the ONLY rods that survive my rod purges when I am searching for the next "one". It's early in the game with my new found love of Dobyn's Rods, but the hype is real...these may just be the ones for me going forward. A few years back St Croix was about as close as I came to falling in love for life with one brand of rods...but they change stuff too often and started using components I don't care for (like when the went to Fuji SKT reel seats on the LTB rods) and everything else from them was "almost" what I wanted, but just not quite "it".

My struggle to upgrade baitcasting rods forced me to give up, because I use braid on all my baitcasters and like a more moderate action. I really feel this allows me to keep fish locked on even with lipless baits. 

 

What I found is the majority of rods 150 and up were fast action sticks that while more sensitive, won’t have the forgiveness I need with braid. 

 

Starting to to wonder if it is more difficult to get a moderate action out of the graphite used to craft the higher end rods.