Plat has the schematics and there are a ton of upgrade alphas/sol spools. Search this site I did a huge thread on them.

I use the rc stx when i am up north and leave my duo and lucky craft in the box... They work good when i dont want to hand out premium baits to the pike kids left and right likes its Halloween.

Dr Ian Shields. I've got shimano, daiwa, megabass jdm reels. Prior to hitting the water, Dr Shields gives them a complete physical. His super tuning skills are magical. Read some of the board reviews. Rumor has it he's penning a book: "Zen and the Art of Super Tuning". This would be a geat deal if ...

I could only pick one but i enjoy the combat of pitching and punching the most. Reel drag buttoned down and into the thick stuff with heavy braid. Its a real work out and a battle of wills. Its also fun to clear the weeds off and find out what size of fish you caught.

no never had that issue at all. I mostly fished cranks so they did not take them all the way down. The dropshot and wacky rigs got a lot and never had issues there either. Big steelies would be different.

I use the duo small shad baits. Got trout from 9" to 5 lbs on them and the kvd squarebill in 1.0.... These got it done for me, but now i live in the south so i share this info.

I caught a lot of trout while fishing in WA on regular Berkeley XL in 6lbs. I also used sniper and a few others. The water is very clear in most of the ponds and streams up there and to be honest i got just as many on the nylon as i did on the way more expensive flouro. I did not use it as a leader ...

The cardnial and the st croix worked for a bit but he uses all my spinning rods now. He does best with my drop shot setups as they are a little shorter and easier to manage. I cast my good setups and trawl with my 5 year old girl and she just reels them in when they jump on the crank bait. I do worr...

I have an original zillion HLC and it has the brass bearing cage. Only thing is its harder to oil the bearing, otherwise its great!

I use a piece of glass because it is as flat as i can find easily.

I feel that any of the listed companies zipi HH or boca are good. Get abec 5 or above and your good. IMO zipi are the "best" but boca is the easiest to get have a helpful website and I like there oil a lot.

IMO there are two major factors, line size and the speed at which the reel worm drive travels across the spool. There are a few reels out there that try to directly address this in a PE model like the zillion. Lighter braids have dug in more for me and i dont seem to have that issue above 30lb on a ...

I was thinking that they also had assembly drivers so they could slam them together and not worry about removing paint or killing the heads. I use the husky driver from home depot. Its a jewelers screw driver with the bits stored in the handle and they are hallow ground to fit tight.

I just ordered a shad. I hope these work as good as they look.

Hate to put this back on track but can we get the chats in a little program that let's us compare the rods you have tested. If we could directly compare rods from different tsets that would be sweet!!!