John E Powell

Not all Fuji OEM seats are designed to provide the same duty levels. Fuji has no control what a Mfg does with their seats. For instance, if a company buys their light duty OEM seat appropriate for walleye rods and installs them on rod needing a med/heavy duty like a salmon trolling rod, then the company is guilty of using a cheap seat, even if it has the Fuji name on it. In my response, I was replying to your experience. As a consumer you shouldn't feel good about you're experience, but for some reason you do seem to feel this is acceptable. Shimano could spend about a dollar more per seat at their OEM pricing and give you something that would hold up better, but they don't. There's also the consideration of how well the seat is installed. Light duty seats can be pressed to serve medium duty applications if the underlying materials, adhesives, preparation are well done. On the other hand, even the best seats won't hold up well over time if corners are cut during the install. A poor install will allow a seat to flex and eventually lead to one of a variety of failures (like the splits you mentioned) or a seat that comes loose and spins around the rod part or all the way.

Patriot as per your edited post, you might just want to try your reel on one of these to see if you're happy with the fit instead of relying on the subjective differing opinions of others. I don't think you'll get any consensus on this. Ask around and see if you can find someone with some taloras that have a few years of use. Checking on a used rod will give you a better idea than a new rod.

"If the rods are new wind them down tight they will seat. The plastic like material inside the ring will conform to the foot on the reel." A good reel seat fits the reel's foot snugly without deforming. If you have to tighten it so much that it "conforms" to the foot just to hold the reel tightly, it's junk. "If the rods are well used you may have to shim the reel foot with a turn or two of tape ." There's no need to do this with a good seat. However, I can see why one would need to do this if a junky seat was damaged by over tightening. "The Shimano Talora seats are tough and not junk" We can agree to disagree. To me, a good seat will hold a reel just as snugly after 20-30 years as when it was new. That's how long some of my rods have been in service on my boat. "They carry a 600 copper reel no problem and that's heavy." Until you need to wrap the reel feet with tape...

The problem you described is not a problem with Daiwa reels. The problem is Shimano using a cheap reel seat instead of a good reel seat and then doing a mediocre job of installing the cheap seat. Reel feet are pretty well standardized across the industry among similar sized frames. A quality reel seat, like the Fuji DPSSD20 graphite seat or TDPSSD20 trigger seat, holds Daiwa (and other brand reels) just fine.

Some tips in changing a tip. Apply indirect heat from a flame. Work quickly. The goal is to heat the metal very quickly, without cooking the rod blank inside the tip. The epoxy used to bind the fibers of the blank can be softened by heat that is allowed to soak from the metal guide into the rod blank. Be Ready with a pair of needle nose pliers. Grab the metal with the pliers, apply the heat and slide it off without twisting or rotating the tip. Some manufacturers use 5-minute epoxy instead of rod tip cement to adhere the tip. These are challenging to get off without damaging the blank. Here's an important tip. If you don't get it off with the first heating, don't reheat it and try again. You should dip the metal tip in a glass of ice water to cool the rod blank inside the metal tip. Once cooled try this procedure again. repeat the entire heating/cooling as many times as needed to get the tip off. Installing a new tip. There are lots of adhesives out there. Most will work. Some better than others. The problem is, unless you know it has a very similar melting point to rod tip cement, you just kicking a potential problem down the road if you have to replace the replacement tip some day. Get yourself a stick of Flex Coat brand rod tip cement. It will last a lifetime of tip changes and the cost is only a few bucks. Here's something that clearly shows the best practice at installing a new tip:

For my 2 and 4lb test noodle rods, no. That's clearing other lines and doing a little boat maneuvering when necessary.

Radio: This has a built in GPS module so there's no complicated set-ups. It's gotten pretty good reviews and has been on the market for more than a year now: http://www.standardhorizon.com/indexVS.cfm?cmd=DisplayProducts&ProdCatID=83&encProdID=8E6B84CBCC75E5A9C52CA71AA33BA6F5&DivisionID=3&isArchived=0 Antenna: Here's a link to a previous post I made. The links should still be active. It pretty well cuts through all the arm-chair theory and advertising hype. I highly recommend you read it before buying a new antenna. http://www.lakeontariounited.com/fishing-hunting/topic/37723-need-new-vhs-radio-what-to-buy/?hl=continuouswave.com#entry266048

Years ago I had Joe Ognibene of the Outdoor Scene fishing show out for a light line film shoot. We boxed a July 34lb on IGFA Ande 4lb line. He had to edit out a lot of the fight, it was a 30 minute show with about 20 minutes airtime available for actual fishing time. The entire fight took 65 minutes from hook-up to net. Marlowe Beis fought the fish, I was on the net. Joe told me a few years later that it was his most requested show to replay. I've also fished with 2lb (non IGFA) and landed a 28lb king. A friend of mine has landed a 31 on 2. Marlowe was also aboard and on the rod for my only 40+, it was officially weighed in 6 hours later at 41lb 2oz. It hit the rod rigged right outside that same 4lb IGFA noodle rod. Now that would have been something... All you need is a good rod with great guides, butter smooth drag, fresh line, good knots, good teamwork and a bit of luck. It certainly can be done.

That the main reason why so many guys complain about not enjoying landing fish on copper rods? You have all the extra weight and drag of the copper line, possibly an inline planer board, a fish, and a trolled boat all working in concert to twist the guides (and the rod and reel) to the underside and you have huge reels loaded with very heavy line. Everything is working against your left wrist and hand grip and you must overcome all that twisting force for the entire fight.

Yesx2

Patriot, Spiral wrapping. Once again the short answer is yes spiral wrapped rods provide advantages vs a conventional build, but just as before there is a long answer and I’ll try to cover the more significant points here. First of all, what is a Spiral Wrapper rod? A spiral wrapped rod is designed to be used with reels where the reel is held above the blank in the fishing position, but the line coming from the reel transitions from above the blank to below the blank. This is achieved by mounting the guides to the blank so they steer the line from above the blank, to the side of the blank, and then finally under the blank. Here’s what a spiral wrapped downrigger rod looks like: http://www.ifish.net/board/showthread.php?t=144781 Next, it’s helpful to expand our understanding of guides just a bit. Most of us have a pretty good grasp of what guides are intended to do. Guides direct (or guide) our line along a path that generally follows the rod blank. But guides also serve another important purpose that is often overlooked. As we load a rod while fighting a fish, towing a diver or inline planer, or through bending the rod over while attached to a downrigger, guides serve the purpose of transmitting the rod’s “loaded†energy to the fishing line. Are you with me so far? Now for the next important consideration I want you to leave the trolling world for a minute and think back to a simpler time in your youth when you fished with a spinning rod and reel held in your hand. Think about how naturally the weight of the reel just hung under the rod, gravity at work. Now I bet at some time or another either you may have tried, or witnessed someone else trying, to use a spinning reel with the reel held above the rod. Do you have that image in mind? What was happening? Most likely, you or the other person were struggling to hold the front grip in an attempt to keep the reel upright as you turned the handle. With each handle turn, the rod grip would twist a bit in your hand and you would need to exert a significant amount of energy to prevent this from happening. Question: How are our trolling rods and the upside-down-held spinning rod mentioned above similar to each other? I bet a light just switched on for many of you. When a rod is held with the reel and guides in an upwards orientation it is more difficult to control, and less enjoyable to fish with. Right about now, I bet some of you are thinking “why don't they build trolling rods and reels that are designed to be used with the reel hanging below the rod and the guides facing down? Actually, they do – few people use them. There’s a class of reels called mooching reels that people can use for trolling that are essentially pretty similar to large fly reels. They are not widely accepted because they are direct drive and have a pretty slow retrieval rate. Being direct drive, when a fish makes a run the handles turn earning the name “knuckle bustersâ€. Mooching reels don’t have levelwinds either so line management by the angler is a requirement. For these reasons and others, most people would say they don't serve our needs well on the Great Lakes. Here's an example of a mooching reel in action: http://i750.photobucket.com/albums/xx146/Twitchs_Tackle/Tofino%20British%20Columbia/Luckylager.jpg I’ve talked at length with reel engineers from Shimano, Daiwa, Penn, Abu, Okuma and others at various fishing shows over the years and asked each why they don’t market a conventional levelwind reel with the various controls and handle positioned to operate with the reel under the rod instead of above the rod? Basically they all said the same thing – not enough people would buy them because a) people are hesitant to try radically new concepts when they think what they have works just fine – there’s too much of an educational curve for the majority of people to quickly adopt, and b) in west coast saltwater markets that have adopted mooching reels, they’d likely shy away from reels with levelwinds due to maintenance and corrosion concerns. This doesn’t leave a viable market for such a reel design as there are no scales of economy to make such a reel marketable. There have been a few one-off custom underslung levelwinds made over the years – I remember seeing a beautiful example of just such a reel that came out of Harrison Radiator years ago. The best solution to this dilemma so far are spiral wrapped rods which use a traditional levelwind reel but have guides that transition the line to the underside of the rod. How does transitioning the line to the underside of a rod equate to a more enjoyable fishing experience? To illustrate why this is true, spend a moment or two to study the following photo: http://i163.photobucket.com/albums/t288/Otterods/Reference/Spiral.jpg What you’re looking at here are two rods each mounted in a device with ball bearings that allow each rod to rotate on the rod's central longitudinal axis with very little friction. The rod on the left is a traditional rod with all guides aligned to the same surface axis, the top or 0 degree axis of the rod. The rod on the right is a spiral wrapped rod with guides mounted to transition the fishing line from the top 0 degree axis to the bottom 180 degree axis. Each rod has a plate and eye inserted in the reel seat. To each eye there is line attached which is strung through the guides on each rod. At the end of the line is a modest weight which simulates the pull of a fish against a reel’s drag system. Notice that on both rods gravity is causing the load to apply a force through the line to each rod's guides and this force has caused each rod to rotate to their respective state of equilibrium. This happens because the guides act in concert as tiny levers which twist the rod. If we recall our Science, Technology Ed, Industrial Arts, or Physics classes, we will remember that levers are one of our simple machines. There are a variety of different kinds of levers (referred to as order of levers) but the general idea is that a lever is a device that multiplies the force applied to it. In this case, because the bearings allow both rods to rotate along their central longitudinal axis the guides act as levers in a circular motion about that axis. What’s happening is each guide is acting like a tiny wrench used to rotate a small bolt, except that in this case there is no bolt, the rod blank has rotated. If you made it this far, great, you’re about to have the Ah Ha moment that answers the question “what will spiral wrapped rods do for me?†Look closely at the orientation of the reel seat on each rod; on each rod, the direction the eye bolt stands away from the reel seat shows where the reel needs to be oriented during fishing to achieve a state of equilibrium in the rod. On the conventional rod, the reel is underneath, not where we need it to be. On the spiral wrapped rod, the reel is in the upright position where we expect and desire it to be. f you think about it, we've all experienced this phenomenon in the past – what direction do your rods and reels rest when placed loosely in your rod holders? They rotate to rest upside down. This is the rods natural state. We as anglers using the rod must expend energy through our forearm, wrist, and hand to keep the reel in an upright position. Expending unnecessary energy to keep the rod upright makes the rod more difficult and less enjoyable to use. Now, the more keen observers among you might wonder “well, won't gravity’s effect on the reel be greater than the leverage applied by the guides?†If so, won't that mean that if you attach a reel to both rods, the weight of the reels will cause both rods to rest with the reel down? That’s actually a mute question, and I’ll explain why in a minute, but I’ll answer it anyway. The answer is it depends, here’s why. The mass of the reel is fixed, this means it applies a fixed force to the rod (assuming no line is added or removed). However, the pull of the line is a varying force and depending on the reel’s drag setting where it begins to allow line to slip from the spool, the lever arm effect can overcome the weight of the reel. There are just too many factors to have a hard and fast rule on this, for instance two reels of the same mass with different centers of gravity will apply different force to a rod. By the way, did any of you just catch what I referred to? The mass of the reel is actually acting as a lever itself to rotate the rod. Cool huh? I know what you’re thinking; JP’s a nerd/geek. Okay, before I stated that the question “well, won't gravity’s effect on the reel be greater than the leverage applied by the guides?†is a mute question, here’s why: What’s important to consider here is how the guide’s combined lever arm effect interacts with the reel’s lever arm effect. On a conventional rod, the combined lever arm effect of the guides is complimentary to the reel’s lever arm effect, and on a spiral wrapped rod the combined lever arm effect of the guides opposes the reel’s lever arm effect. Okay, now I know some of you are scratching your head on that one, so let me try to illustrate with some simple numbers what I’m talking about. Let’s assume that the total guide twisting energy of both rods is the same. I’ll give this force a value of 2. It doesn’t matter what the units are, it’s just a number for illustration. Now, let’s further assume that the reel’s twisting energy has a value of 5. On a conventional rod, both forces act in concert to turn the rod and reel upside down, the forces are complimentary to each other. This means we can add the forces together (5 + 2) and we have a total force of 7 turning the rod and reel upside down in our hands. However, on our spiral wrapped rod, the force of the guides try to twist the rod upright which directly opposes the force of the reel which is trying to twist the rod so the reel is down. Because the forces are in opposition to each other we subtract the lesser force from the greater force (5-2) thus resulting in a net force of 3 that wants to twist the rod and reel downward in our hand. The numbers 7 and 3 are fairly proportional to how the two rod's overall stability feels in your hand while fighting and landing a large salmon. The numbers also pretty accurately represents the amount of force we must apply to overcome the rod's tendency to turn upside down in our hands. Conventional rods require more effort from the angler (7) to keep the reel upright than spiral wrapped rods (3). This means spiral wrapped rods are more enjoyable to fish with. Spiral wrapped rods give an angler experience closer to a spinning or mooching rod than traditional rods are capable of. We can see this effect more easily when a child, a woman, or an elderly person lands a fish. It’s difficult for them to apply sufficient force for lengthy periods of time and the rod wobbles around in their hands. Triangular shaped front grips on trolling rods are an attempt to accomplish the same goal; they are just not as effective as a spiral wrapped rod at achieving this goal. They don't actually reduce the force needed in your grip, they just reduce the tendency for the grip material to slip in your hand. In fact, for someone with marginal strength, a triangular grip will concentrate stresses to smaller areas of their hands and may actually be more uncomfortable to hold than round grips. This usually isn't the case though for most men possessing abundant grip strength. Okay so why don’t we see factory rods spiral wrapped? The answer is pretty simple. It’s been tried before by a number of manufacturers, but to most anglers’ eyes they are just too radical looking so they don’t catch on in a significant enough way to make them mass marketable. That’s why they are only available through custom builders, or you can build them yourself. Now if you’re intrigued by all this and are wondering if this might be something you want to try, here’s something you might be able to do. Look over your old two-piece trolling rods. Try to find one that has two guides mounted on the rear half or possibly a rod that has its second guide close to the ferrule on the front section. Put the rod together with the front half upside down. You just created 90% of a spiral wrapped rod! All you need to do from here is re-tie the second guide half way between the first and third guide, or possibly the second and third at 60 and 120 degrees so that the first is at 0 and the fourth at 180 degrees. This won’t be an elegant solution as the guides won’t likely be in their ideal locations (for to aft) to provide proper stress distribution, but what the heck, it’s just collecting dust. All you need is a single spool of rodbuilding thread and some slow cure epoxy. Don’t use your wife’s sewing thread, it won’t hold up. You don’t really need rodbuilding finish either as this is just an unused rod you’re going to experiment with. If you don’t know how to wrap a guide on, it’s really easy; there are hundreds of YouTube videos you can watch that’ll show you how to do it. The better ones are from Flex Coat and Mudhole both suppliers to the rodbuilding industry. Okay, any more questions you want me to answer, or have you had enough yet? LOL

I'll just toss this in there about broken rods and warranties for what it's worth since there were a few posts above about broken rods. When you take the obvious falling on a rock and snapping a rod in two or closing it in a car door kind of scenarios where the rod breaks instantly from a known sever impact, about 99% of the rest of the rod failures which occur during normal use are due to lesser impacts that previously occurred to the rod that were not severe enough to cause the rod to immediately fail. What happens to a blank that suffers an intermediate level impact like falling over and hitting the inside edge of your gunwale (while you try to subdue that thrashing king sliming up your decks) is that a small percentage, but not all, of the fibers fail. This is the beginning of a rod failure that will occur at some point down the road. it usually doesn't happen right away, in fact often it could be weeks or even months down the road when you no longer recall the rod taking that hit. It's understandable that you, the customer, will dismiss that impact because after all the rod didn't break when it hit the gunwale and you went on fishing just fine with no apparent problem at all. Over time, the good fibers adjacent to the broken fibers begin to fail as they attempt to carry the load. The more the rod is loaded, the more it is flexed, the quicker this spreading weakening will occur. Eventually, weeks or even months down the road, the rod won't be able to sustain a normal load and it fails from the customer's prior misuse/abuse during normal use when they weren't abusing it. Now it's clear from the manufacturer's point of view that you let the rod fall over which was the impetus of the failure, but you're thinking "I wasn't doing anything unusual, it just fell apart, it must be a manufacturing or material defect." Now, the manufacturers do all kinds of testing. They simulate design flaws, they bend undamaged rods until they break, and then simulate those gunwale hits and rods that get stepped on and then they cycle them in simulators to determine durability and inevitable failure rates. They study the breaks, under microscopes. Breaks resulting from impacts (where the user is at fault) look completely different to the naked eye than breaks caused by manufacturing or material deficiencies. Believe me; you don't need a microscope to tell the difference between the two types of failures. So what happens? After all, you're paying their bills. They want to keep you as a customer. The solution to the rod manufacturer is to offer you an insurance policy (which sounds bad cause when you need insurance it's usually for something you did wrong) but they call it a warranty (which is much more friendly sounding and builds goodwill among a loyal customer base - which, of course, is good for business). The reality is, like all insurance policies, you pay for your insurance policy. The manufacturer knows historically that at a given price point say 18% of their rods will be broken by customers misuse/abuse. So they do a run of 2000 rods and pull 18% of them to set aside to give to you when you make your insurance claim for a replacement rod. Well what if you’re a careful fisherman and never break a rod? It's just like your car insurance policy. We all pay for the people who use the insurance whether we use it or not. The cost you initially pay for your rod includes a share of the cost to replace someone else's misused and/or abused rods. Now not to draw upon stereotypes, but who is more likely to break their rods, the guy who spends $30 a piece on his 12 rods, the guys who spends $65 a piece on his 12 rods, or the guy who spends $100 a piece on his 12 rods? The reality is that cheap rods are more likely to get misused and/or abused so they have higher insurance rates which means more of the cost you pay for that cheap rod goes to insurance and less of the cost you pay actually goes into the quality of the components or quality control of the assembly of the rod. You are getting a lot less than what you pay for with cheap rods. Guys who buy expensive rods will be more cautious and take better care of their significant investment thus making fewer insurance claims and lowering the rate of insurance on those expensive rods. This means more of the cost you pay in that insurance pool goes into the quality of the components and more care and attention to detail can be put into the build quality giving you a lot more of what you paid for. That's the reality folks... That's one reason why an ugly stik is a great value in a trolling rod. The Howland process used to build the blanks makes for a very durable impact resistant rod blank (at a significant loss to sensitivity - for rods fished held in the hand, an ugly stik is about as deft, or sensitive, as fishing with a limp noodle). But for a trolling rod, they experience almost no failures. This means componentry used to build them can be decent or better than other rods of similar price, and the attention to detail in assembly and quality control can also be a little better. Because Ugly Stik are very durable, the insurance rate is pretty low, and you get more for the money than similar priced rods with higher failure rates. Want to see a nice factory rod, check out a St. Croix Wild River series rigger rod. That rod is hand made in the US and approaches the component quality and build attention to detail of a custom rod.

Rich, the quick answer is yes, but there's always a slow answer. First, with some manufacturers trimming a blank voids their warranty. With that out of the way, trimming a blank also changes the action, power, or both depending on where the cut is made. Let me try to simplify this a bit. Imagine a moderate action blank that starts to bend under 3oz of load exactly 50% between the tip and butt. The tip section will be heavily bent, the butt section will be lightly bent and that 50% distance will be the transition between the two distinctly different bends. So holding the blank in your hands you feel it might better suit your needs if it was a bit stiffer. You slide the weight attachment point an inch or so back from the tip on the blank and working the rod a bit you think this feel better. So you continue repeating this process until you feel it's too stiff so you work back to the previous location, say 3.5" back from the tip and you decide that this feels just right. Now, what most people don't notice is that the bend point of the blank has also crept rearward towards the handle and is no longer at the 50% distance between the tip and butt because when you remove the supportive effort of the 3.5" of the tip from the equation, the remaining front section has to pick up the slack so it transitions it's heavier load rearward. On some blanks this might be a slight insignificant shift, but on other blanks this could be problematic. Now I'm going to oversimplify here, but let's imagine this is a composite blank with the rear 50% being mostly graphite construction (light, stiff, but comparatively lower durability) and the front 50% being mostly fiberglass (heavier, more flexible, and comparatively greater durability). The MFG designed this fiber transition interweave area a couple inches to each side of the original 50% transition area to gradiently blend the fiber content from fiberglass to graphite to minimize possible shearing stresses caused by more rapidly transitioning between two dissimilar materials with differing properties. Realize this is pretty high tech stuff happening here, we're talking about CNC laser fiber cutters that are cutting interweaving fibers to thousands of an inch accuracy, and we come along and shift the transition point 1.25" away from where the transition is engineered to occur. Worse yet, remember were shifting rearward in this scenario into the graphite fibers which is less durable. So, we built a rod that feels right to us in the hand, but it's now less capable to recover from an overload situation and on the boat this could manifest into a scenario where you experience a failure just as a customer high sticks that derby winning slob you're trying to bring to net. Cutting from the tip pushes the bend point rearward thus slowing the action. Cutting from the butt moves your handle forward, and your handle establishes the various points of the fulcrum (or lever). The new fulcrum points created by trimming from the butt end of the blank results in a more forward pressure being applied to the underside of the rear section of the blank. This shifts the bend point rearward again thus also slowing the action. Now that doesn't seem right, you might be thinking how can both cuts slow the action of the rod, shouldn't one of the cuts make the action faster? The answer is no because you have to remember to bend a rod you must load it with mass, and a shorter length, whether cut from the tip or butt, must bear a greater proportion of the total mass than an uncut longer blanks does. This means a greater proportionality of the blank flexes and lengthier flexing equates to slower action. As a side note, some blanks are engineered with reinforcing fibers in the handle area and when you cut from the butt a significant enough amount you will move your front grip into an unreinforced area which again throws the engineering that went into the blank right out the window. So the real answer to your question about trimming a blank is, in most cases you can to some degree, but at some point, which is different for each and every blank design, you begin to alter the characteristics of the blank significantly enough that you begin to incur risk of failure. This is why sometimes I tell people you know, I can put a new tip on that rod to repair the 6" that broke off and you lost, but that rod is just going to break in two someday down the road. That's when I usually get this quizzical Different Strokes kind of response: I could go on for hours about this, lol.. sorry I know it's a lot to digest.

Rich, For the custom builder the Mudhole MHX blank is an excellent value at a pretty decent quality as custom blanks go (far better than factory rod blanks) I have handled, but haven't built on, the 1086 yet. But on the 845 and 1024 I've been pretty happy overall. It's one of my recommended blank lines especially to price conscious customers. Of the 4 blanks in that line, the 845 is my favorite as it can be tailored to serve many duties on a trolling boat. I had a 845 on display at the LOTSA show the past two years. Most people that handled it liked it. It's a really great blank to build on. Cheap, strong, nice action. You can tweak it to do just about anything on a rigger or planer as long as the length is appropriate to your needs. You can trim the tip on the 845 a few inches to up it's power, then add to the butt to get the length back and it will make a nice copper in-line planer board rod. As it is, unmodified, the tip is light enough for brown duty and it progressively loads really well when you want to put the steam to a salmon. Tony Childs over on Lake Michigan did a lot of development on this blank with Todd Vivian from Mudhole, it was designed to be a tournament boat rod - a rod to land fish fast so it can be reset quickly. Tony helped design this blank for Team Verdict. It's the blank most of their rods are built on. Here's a link to their page: http://www.teamverdict.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogcategory&id=17&Itemid=29 Tony's not really actively building rods anymore, I think he's cut back his rodbuilding time to friends and family now (though I know he just finished 4 new diver rods for them). The 1024 is an older design that has been around for years. This is good in the sense that it's built on a proven mandrel, but bad in the sense that the design really hasn't been tweaked in a while (though it has been updated with more modern materials). But overall, it can't be pressed into as many roles as the 845 can serve. However, it does offer the length some people need based on the configuration of their boat's stern working area, downrigger positioning and preferred rod holder location and angles. If you need a longer rod, the 1024 may be a better choice than the 1086. If I was going to build a dedicated mid July - September salmon rod then I'd consider the 1086 if I needed a blank that long, but long rods like that just aren't the ideal leverage ratio for our fishery. You should really only consider the 1086 if you feel you must have a rod that long. The 1266 is mislabeled as a downrigger/side planer blank, it's much closer to a diver rod. I would not choose this blank to be a longer rod in a pair of diver rods as the moderate action will cause the rod to interfere with a shorter, faster action inside diver rod, but for someone who only fishes one diver per side it makes a decent rod. Personally speaking, it's a little long for my taste, I prefer an 8' inside rod and a 9-9'6" outside diver both with a faster action but compliant tips. Some people though just love the 10'6" diver rods. If you want to tire out your charter customers and make them feel like they're getting their money's worth, here's the blank for you. I should add that I just got back from the ICRBE (International Custom Rod Builders Expo) down in Winston Salem, NC and had a chance to handle literally hundreds of blanks. Unfortunately, the market segment for Great Lakes trolling blanks is small so it's not well represented. For example, Mudhole didn't have any of the four blanks for sale there. On the bright side, I did have an opportunity to chat with the blank designer from St. Croix. I attended a blank design seminar and then went to their booth which was just across the aisle from Rodgeeks. (Rodgeeks are custom painted St. Croix blanks from their Mexico plant at a lower price point built on newer tooling using the same designs as their US plant. St. Croix blanks are their US made brand of blanks). I've been monitoring the development of a series of completely new composite blanks that Billy Vivona has been working on with St. Croix. St. Croix has been building the prototypes, which will eventually be sold under the Rodgeeks brand. The first blank is almost finalized and I had a chance to handle it and it's absolutely incredible. It will finess a brown yet survive a high stick on a slob salmon being netted just behind the boat. You can just about bend the tip back and touch the blank with the tip. Yet, it is light, sensitive, and responsive unlike any composite rod out there. It almost feels like a full graphite blank in the hand. I'm going to be getting in 4 of them from the first run once that happens. I'm going to build them up as inline planer copper rods, two for long lines, two for mid-length lines. There's no official naming for these yet as they are pre-production at this point, but the first blank is #2 in a series of 5 with #1 being the lightest and #5 the heaviest. Blank #4 is scheduled to be completed next, eventually the remaining three blanks will be built. Among the series, I think blanks #1, #2, and #3 will be ideal for us. Unfortunately production models #1 and #3 are planned for release dates down the road a bit. One of the really cool aspects of the Rodgeeks blanks is that you can have them custom pre-painted in currently about 20 colors including metalfakes, pearl coatings, and even neon colors. You can even get multi-color painted blanks if you want. From a distance, they'll easily stand out from all other factory rods. For some people, that can be an important factor to help establish, or increase your business' brand. Something you might want to consider.

As a custom builder I have the opportunity to do a fair number of repairs on factory rods. Overall quality control on the handle and reel seat assembly of Shimano trolling rods is hit or miss. Shimano is so big and produces rods so quickly that they honestly seem to have very little to no quality control, they just trust in the skill of their employees and handle warranty replacement for shoddy workmanship through the profit scale of economy affords them. A friend of mine, that I fish with often, has a complete set of Shimano rods on his boat from light 7' rigger rods to the long roller-guide diver rods, and about 20-30 percent of them have needed some form of corrective attention after just a few years use. Without knowing total production of each model rod among all the various manufacturer's it's honestly difficult to offer an accurate assessment as to the build quality of handle assemblies because unless you tear a rod down for a rebuild, you can't see how the grips are attached, how they shimmed, prepped, and glued the reel seat, or attached butt caps. It's easier to judge things you can see like the thread wraps which hold guides in place, finish quality, durability, application, and film thickness. You can also inspect ferrules for uneven wear on two piece rods. Guide wear used to be another indicator, but not so much anymore as all the guides on moderately priced rods nowadays are pretty much up to the task. I've been building rods since '79 and have seen some really good factory rods and a lot of just plain junk. If I was going to buy and fish a moderately priced factory rods, here's my choices. Light to medium rigger, spring/mono inline planers, large boards - light 7' and 8'3" 1101 ugly stick heavier rigger, lead core inline planers (except copper) - medium 7' ugly stick copper - classic pro GLT copper rod Divers are a very subjective rod. People have a lot of preferences as to power, reach, and action. Some rods might work well for smaller dipsies or slide divers, but be totally inadequate for magnum dipsies dredged deep on wire. Every boat is different, layouts of riggers and rod holders differ just like personal preferences. The kind of line is a factor, mono, braid, or wire? Because of all these overriding factors, I'm just not comfortable making a specific recommendation except one: If it has adequate reach to clear your outdown, the shorter Shimano roller wire line rods make a good inside wire dipsy rod with larger sized divers. There are certainly better factory rods from better companies at higher price points, but I see very few of the models I mentioned in for repairs. That, of course, doesn't mean you will get a Monday morning or Friday afternoon rod... none are perfect at any price.

Yes, give us a follow up report some time down the road.

I have no experience running these but intuition tells me that since they do not rely so much on gravity that they would be more influenced by currents than weight. Maybe the effect would be trivial in the real world, but I suspect running them at different depths, say above and below a current shear line, is a recipe for tangled lines. I think at much higher saltwater trolling speeds this effect would be a lot less, but at the slower trolling speeds the effect would be more. Wouldn't these react to currents in a similar way that divers react? We all know a slow troll in heavy cross currents will pin a diver behind and around rigger lines. But speeding up, without changing trolling angle, to some extent pulls the diver straighter back behind the boat. I suspect our comparatively slow trolling speeds would prevent this style planer from working in the manner in which it was designed to work.

Garmin has a new autopilot that looks like it's targeted to compete directly with the Raytheon's Evolution autopilots introduced last year. Garmin is calling the new autopilot the Reactor. https://buy.garmin.com/en-US/US/on-the-water/autopilots/cOnTheWater-cAutopilots2-p1.html https://buy.garmin.com/en-US/US/on-the-water/autopilots/ghp-reactor-hydraulic-corepack-with-smartpump-/prod501328.html With the brushless SmartPump, Shadow Drive, 9-axis sensor, and my Garmin network's ability to perform component software/firmware updates over the network, it looks like I may have finally found my autopilot. It can be remotely controlled by a either handheld or wearable devices. https://buy.garmin.com/en-US/US/on-the-water/handhelds-wrist-worn/cOnTheWater-cHandhelds-p1.html That's pretty cool

I'd make sure to check over the posts at the Carolina classis owner's forum. They have a pretty significant history of severe problems with Volvo and Mercruiser power. Crusader powered boats do not seem to have the problems. They ingest water back into the cylinders hydro locking them. If you search for them as a group, you will notice a very unusually high rate of rebuilds and repowers compared to other boats.

Ii scored about 30 of Joe's original hand hammered 44s at last year's lotsa show, and 20-30 others the year before that. Gotta love it when you can make a silk purse out of someone else's pigs ear. All that black tarnish just wiped away with some silver polish.

The reekers will work right in with more contemporary spoons when fish are looking for a smaller meal. Evil eyes have a slightly slower trolling speed range and work very well when fish are looking for a slower presentation. Back in the day, evil eyes were a great spring spoon when the water was cold, and we'd mix them with some of the broader suttons which ran at the same slower trolling speeds. i agree with Sk8man that there's room for some of the better patterns of each in a modern trollers tackle box.

Oh didn't catch that, someone resurrected an old thread...

Center console boats are great in warmer weather, but not the best choice if you plan to fish spring and later in the fall as they just don't provide enough protection from the elements for most people. You also wrote that you don't want a cuddy. This basically leaves you with two choices in a trailerable boat. If you are going to pick your days on Lake Ontario, a high sided dual console open bow boat is probably the best bet as it will allow someone to fish up front and work an electric trolling motor on the inland lakes, but still give you a reasonable offshore capability when you head up to Lake Ontario. Look for a boat that has a separate baitwell, not just a livewell. Also look for a larger sized dashboard with room to mount the extra electronics most people use when trolling. Here's a great all around open bow boat that has some offshore capability and can be configured with just about anything you could want in a boat of this style: http://www.lundboats.com/boats/aluminum/pro-v-boats/1975-pro-v If, on the other hand, if you feel you might favor fishing big water more frequently down the road, I'd recommend foregoing the open bow and bow mount trolling motor in favor of a closed bow boat with a full windshield. Another feature to look for is a full height transom where the engine mounts to a bracket outside the boat. Boats with closed bows, full windshields, and full height transoms are a lot safer trolling in big water as they can shed water that can otherwise swamp more open boats. You'll lose the flexibility an open bow offers on smaller inland lakes, but the safety factor this style boat offers on big water is pretty significant. You do not want to get caught 10+ miles offshore in an open bow boat when a big storm front rolls in on you with no warning and you suddenly find yourself plodding your way back to port with 6 foot waves breaking over the bow. If you fish big water it will eventually happen. Here's a really nice closed bow, full windshield, full transom height boat of similar size that would make a great offshore trolling boat for Lake Ontario. It could still be easily trailered and fished reasonably well on the inland lakes: http://www.hewescraft.com/mid-size-ocean-boats/sea-runner

A little bigger and a few years older, but one of the nicer trolling platforms out there that's in your price range. http://boats.iboats.com/1987-rampage-24-kewaunee-wi/1540538.html