If you want a little more power and not as fast of a tip use a HM SJ 842 or 843 and cut it down.
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Lots of good advice here, definitely dump the heavy sleeve I have had best results with 1.25 light carbon. But the carbon fiber sleeve grips will simply never be good for making a tight radius, the secret is to optimize your handle design to take advantage of what it does do well. The best thing you can do with carbon grips that you can’t do with conventional cork or EVA grips is you can make t
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At a tournament when you see a guy with only one rod on the deck that is when you become very afraid. That means that he has his pattern really locked in and will be tough to beat. Back to the co-angler question even if you practice and have a dialed in pattern you still need to be flexible in case your boater is doing something that makes you have to adapt. The best example I have is what I h
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Where’s the popcorn icon………………..
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While the microwave system will work quite well for what you are doing, it is overbuilt for such a light application. It is designed to be sturdy enough for use on a pretty beefy inshore saltwater rod. For your application starting with about a size 16 high frame match style guide would give you excellent performance and be a lot lighter, that is how I build my light spinning rods.
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I use both of those blanks often. It is true that the LP is a lot faster action, but it doesn’t have the wet noodle tip like some dropshot rods. Use lightweight guides and it will be as crisp of a rod as you will ever feel. The LSJ is a god bit lighter and still a great blank, for river smallmouth it would be excellent since you may not need the extra backbone to get fish out of heavy cover, it
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Co-angling is one thing I know plenty about. 4 rigs is pretty limiting, I normally take more like 7 with me. An ultralight rig would be useless in tournament bass fishing, you need something you can get unhung easily and something you can get the fish in the boat once you get them hooked. For a spinning rod you can get some super fast action rods, something like a Lamiglas XMG LP series, they hav
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The hot water or steam will work, and is pretty safe. You can get the same results with a heat gun, but you have to be more careful since it can get hot enough to scorch the EVA in a hurry.
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I am in no way saying it is a bad product, but 1.45oz is still way to light to balance an 8 foot flipping stick, that takes more like 4oz.
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The only problem is that I think it maxes out at 3/8oz which is not enough to balance really long and powerful rods like flipping sticks.
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I have stripped down lots of factory rods and every one of them used big thread. For them it is an issue of time is money and the big thread uses fewer turns and is more forgiving of bad guide prep. I think you would be fine using size D thread, just keep your wraps short, a short wrap of size D thread will weigh less than a wrap that extends a half inch beyond the guide foot using size A thread.
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I felt them at the show and they were too soft for my taste. But most of my own rods have foam core carbon skinned grips, so maybe I am not the best judge.
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Most Fuji products are great, but at this point I avoid Fuji trip tops like the plague. I have had way too many rings pop out of Fuji tips, Kigans are way superior for ring retention.
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Here is a shot of the next frontier, 1mm nanoguides. It is hard to explain just how small the 1mm guides are, in the picture that is 1/8 tape holding the guides down it covers the entire foot of the 1mm guide. At the show I dropped one of them on the carpet we didn’t even bother looking for it.
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5mm rings will pass you’re knot no problems at all. You may want to consider an Albright knot, it tightens down much smaller than the uni-uni. I was having a problem getting Albright knots to hold with Berkley Nanofil line, it is so thin and slick the knots pulled loose or cut the fluorocarbon. I solved it by doubling up the braid, it still ends up being way smaller than a uni-uni knot and hold
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I have seen these guides, Bill had prototypes at the show 2 years ago. The problem I have with them is holding up to rough handling, the first guide on all the casting rods I have is the one that takes the most abuse from things like putting rods in or out of rod lockers, or when you have them piled up in the co-angler rod area. I have had to replace several first guides and the idea of one that
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This question gets asked every couple of months around here, once you get down to the motivation for the question it always comes down to 2 things, they either prefer shorter rods, or they prefer the classic look with big guides, full grips, and foregrips.
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Kind of apples to oranges comparing an S-glass to a graphite rod, that Seeker RF765 actually has a pretty fast action, much faster than most 8 foot popping or crankbait blanks.
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Everyone has pretty much hit the important points, anything you do to make a rod more efficient will not only increase the casting distance but will also increase the accuracy. If you are talking about watching the 2012 classic, sure it was held in a 2ft deep muddy stump field, not a lot of long distance casting required. But go back and read comments by Alton Jones from the classic, he was ab
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It is one of the best shaky head blanks available.
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For maximum distance a more moderate blank is better, I would look at an 8 foot popping blank. For what you are trying to do you may be a good candidate for the MicroWave guide system.
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Maybe I have just gotten used to it, but I find metallic thread easier to wrap with, it is all I ever use. Last weekend I tried using some sliver thread I bought by mistake for trim bands, now that is difficult to work with.
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Like everyone else has said the MicroWave guide is way too big and heavy for an ultralight rod. I designed the production microwave guide and I made it really beefy so it could be used on inshore saltwater rods. M series guides either Minima or ceramic ring are you’re best choice.
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I just started 2 crankbait rods that are going to be basically the opposite, foam core carbon skin front grip and an EVA belly buster rear grip.
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Kigan has a micro tip with up to a 7 tube, maybe you can scrape the paint off and use it, worked on my A-rig rods.
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For now the forecast has Friday a wash out, with thunderstorms. I will try to get a “special” reel built up for the show. I will also try to get my matched pair of spinning rods with conventional or MicroWave guides for people to compare, I ended up giving both rods away but I can borrow them back for the show.
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Very true, and even if they did how much would we want to trust them, fortunately now a rodbuilder can buy a very accurate digital scale for very little money, I think last year at the show you could get one for $10. I always carry my scale with me to the show, I call it the no @#$%& device.
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You can get a pretty good idea of the relative speed, or response and recovery time with one simple number, the stiffness to weight ratio. So if you know the weight required for the standard deflection, divide that by the weight of the blank and that gives you a pretty good idea of how responsive the blank will be. It is not perfect, there are still other design related things that effect the bla
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I don’t need another T1 right now, but I do plan on getting in on some of that bare S-glass action for sure. I am probably looking at 2 8 footers and 2 765’s at the minimum.
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I didn’t do a before and after weight, but I doubt it was a whole lot, finished rod was 7.5oz with #3 Kigans. These blanks are not the best candidate for stripping, since they have lots of fiberglass in alternating layers with the graphite and there are places where the glass shows through on the top end. A non painted blank is a bit of a thing for me, but another reason I stripped it is becaus
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