Ed.

Ok, first I must admit I have never used one of these reels before so take my info for what it is worth, but anyway, I will start from scratch. Starting first, put your selected lure on the end of the line and out of gear, adjust the spool tension knob in until the lure doesn't drop, then adjust the spool knob till it just starts to drop down with it's own weight towards the floor. That sets the tension for that particular lure/weight. Open up the case as in the above picture and click all the pins out towards the outer edge, that reel should be now at the maximum braking, give it a cast, if it stops way too short a distance then open the side cover and click 2 of the white pins toward the center. Do in pairs and opposite pins only, close up and do another cast. If still too short a distance, repeat and do another pair till all the pins are closest to the axle. If the casting distance is still too short then you are close to running out of options. Back off the spool tension knob just a little bit and the lure should freely fall to the ground when out off gear. You have now removed all the braking on that reel so also be prepared for a birdsnest, just do a very light cast only, and see if it gets you more than your previous 2m distance. If yes then do a slightly stronger cast. If you are starting to get birdsnests then adjust the spool tension cap a smidge tighter. If you still can't get the distance required after all that, then there are a couple of possibilities: A) You will have to use heavier lures/weights. B) Change to a lighter oil in the bearings. C) There may be a problem with your reel. Be aware that small lures/weights even on small bait casters can have issues, in that the tiny weight of the lure is not enough to offset the inertia reguired for the spool to spin freely and let off line when casting. 1/8oz jig is quite a light weight even when the weight of the grub is added.

What weights/lures are you trying to cast with and have you adjusted the brakes as well as the side tension spool button?

Are you familiar with bait casting reels or is this the first one you have used?

So is the main issue you have with it, is that the rod is too stiff for your intended line/fishing style or are you worried about the lack of spool line capacity if you go to a heavier braid?

What bait casting reel do you have?

That 10 Cents a bottle refund was was supposed to stop that sort of crap going on! At least that was what the politician responsible for this fiasco said when I rang him up and gave him heaps about that stupid legislation. I told him it would not work and it only inconvenienced the rest of the population. Pigs will be pigs and no amount of refund money is going to get these morons to stop dumping their cans and bottles. My wife and I recycle our bottles and whenever we go for a drive somewhere she spots the cans on the sides of the roads and says 10 cents, 20 cents, 30 cents etc. etc. By the time we finish going for a short drive anywhere we are probably up to several dollars! Only upside is that it gives a few people who need extra cash an opportunity to get some and they help to clean up the mess a bit. Maybe they should introduce a a largish fine for littering and actively police it , say a $200-500 per can or rubbish item, even then, it still won't stop some pigs as they know that the police aren't around when they do it. You can't legislate against people being pigs.

Then all's good, enjoy your new rod!

Did you also do the bend test to see if the rod flicked into the right position?

Speaking of quality control or lack thereof to be more precise, I went to Anaconda today and that rod I mentioned at the start was no longer there so maybe someone noticed it and pulled it from the racks, anyway I went there to buy a pair of 10" pair of bent nose pliers made from Stainless steel and Nickle plated with fishing hook eye opening cones, cutter and crimping slots, and had to sort through about 8 of them before I found one that was acceptable. It seems that nearly all of them had an issue in that that the handle which fits over the the central swivel pin was drilled about 1mm out of the correct position so end result, none of the hook eye opening cones as well as the crimping slots lined up properly , which meant that you could not close the pliers 100%, the cones and the crimping slots also prevented from making a perfect match as they didn't line up. So another product to be aware of and check before purchasing.

I was at his factory last year in Brendale and at that time I saw them still making rods there, but it has been a while since then so not sure about if they are still doing that. From an economic point of view you can't blame him for going offshore and building them there as there is a as huge cost in rod building as it is very labour intensive.

The Veritas is a 922H so a longish one and 2 piece, I wanted it for lifting fish up from a break wall or rocks, where you usually can't get too close to the water when you try to land a fish and that is frequently where I get it snagged in the rocks, so this will give me a bit of extra length to reach out and over them and seeing as it is a 6-10kg one, it will be strong enough to lift a reasonable bream up out of the water. Yep I also like my Ugly's, I have 9 of them. I will probably go to the shop tomorrow and will see if it is still there, and if so, I might show it to the store manager. Ed.

And that is what I thought as well! Especially seeing as when you build a rod you have to check it countless times to make sure everything is lined up, so impossible not to notice something like that, but then the person doing it obviously didn't care care and continued, and then no further checks made by anyone else. It is a pity that I didn't take a photo of it. Might pop in the next day or so and see if it is still there. What would that make it ...a "collectors item"?

I noticed that about the "Big Angry Fish" show but that was due to changing sponsers to Shimano from Daiwa, maybe Shimano made them an offer too good to refuse?, so not necessarily better gear just better dollars in their hands.

Definitely worn out, but they are not all like that when dragged up the beach, some still have a lot of energy left. Anyway nice beach, I showed this to my missus and was trying to persuade her go on a little road trip up there with the boat in tow. I know she would really like the beach and there is no ulterior motive on my part, honestly, really,..... but I may just have to bring a few rods up with me!

Here is a link of a couple fishing and catching a nice sized bull shark, possibly up at Frazer. Nice beach but you may think twice about going for a swim there! It starts off a bit slow but gets better towards the end.

So as I said before, and after watching these rods being made, and seeing they are all hand made, so how does a worker not realize that 4 of the guides are 180 degrees out and continues finishing the rod, and then no one else checks their work. So end result is very poor quality control. The ones I saw should never have made it out of the factory let alone to a retail store.

I also try to build my own for the same reason where ever possible but sometimes it is not viable to do so due to time and cost, however in a labour intensive process such as thread binding the guides, there must be at least one person that has to physically do it or check it and that is where their QC falls down as these problem rods should not pass, I may be wrong but I don't think that it is all done by machine and you would think that large companies such as Shimano, Abu and Shakespeare etc., would ensure that someone checks the rods before shipment. The biggest problem with building your own is the component costs and even access to the blanks, and if you are just building a rod here and there, the blanks are expensive to buy and transport assuming that you can even find a suitable blank in the first place. Half of my rods are custom builds and sometimes I buy a built one and redo the guides to suit if I particularly like the blank and there isn't much else wrong with it. But these issues shouldn't happen in the first place and all it does is gives the company a bad name. Shimano in my opinion is the worst offender from what I have seen regarding quality control and I generally try to avoid their products in general.

BCF had a special on Abu Veritas 3.0 spinning rods a few days ago, reduced from $170 down to $99.99, since everyone else has been selling them for about the $130-135 discounted price I figured it was a good enough, so went down to have a look, not that I needed another rod but I had been eyeing up that rod for over 12 months so just about to put it on layby when I decided to check for guide backbone alignment first, just as well I did as the guides were out by 90 degrees. The next one was fine, (picked it up today so don't know why I just didn't pick it up on the same day). Anyway I went to Anaconda today as I had about an hour to kill whilst waiting to pick up the missus from the gym and as I was passing a rack of Shimano spinning rods one caught my eye as being odd, that one had the top 4 guides out by 180 degrees, in other words the top 4 guides were bound on top and the rest under the blank where they should be. Now I know that it wasn't supposed to be like that as the rest of the rods of that model in the rack were bound correctly. It looks like quality control seems to have gone out the window and the manufacturers don't care any more. Ugly Stik is another brand that also has issues sometimes as they seem to occasionally have two different spines on them so harder to align but the lack of attention to detail is spreading to other brands now. Does anyone else check the backbone/guide alignment before buying a rod? It is one of my pet gripes when buying a rod, the other one is missing patches of epoxy on the guide threads.

Cuttlefish grow to quite a large size, when I was young I speared one down in Victoria off the Mt.Martha rocks and the body was about 60 cm without the tentacles, it lit up like a neon Chrismas tree when I shot it, flashing neon blues and green patterns on it's skin, when I grabbed the spear it was try trying to get to me and I had to squeeze the spear against the gun and pin it to stop it from getting to me. They can be nasty buggers when attacked.

Yep, those little buggers are nasty, we get a few of them up in the Passage up Bribie Island way. I never handle them, just cut them off the hook, seems that their mouth can stretch over most smallish hooks.

I don't know about that, aren't politicians the same sort of critters and always looking to devour something? and there seems to heaps of them in the A.C.T!

I have one of those, it is my largest sized Penn Fathom, it is still a compact but a powerful reel, it holds less line than the the TLD-25 but has 50% more drag, an extra bearing and has an all metal frame vs graphite of the TLD, plus it has a thrust bearing and 2 speed which your TLD doesn't. The next size up the FTH40NLD2 is physically larger again probably getting closer to the size of the TLD-25 but a bit smaller and the drag is 3kg bigger than the 30 version but almost twice as much as the TLD-25 (18.1 vs 10Kg). Having said that, in my opinion the FTH30LD2 will probably cope with anything that swims in Morton Bay barring a 3-4mt shark. If you wanted to go for larger fish such as a large Marlin off shore then I would suggest going to the MAK-30II but that would set you back more than 2.5 times the price of this one. But that reel is physically more than twice the size, weight, line capacity and price and not suited for just generally fishing in the bay. It is just too big whereas the FTH30LD2 I have fished all day with it trolling, bottom bashing etc., so a good all round large reel capable of tackling pretty much everything that you hook up on it without being overly big, heavy or expensive. Pity you aren't in my part of town as you could have a look at my rods and reels to compare them against each other. If you do want to come up my way and have a look at them, PM me and I will give you my details. It is important to have a feel of these reels to see if you like the feel of them, as I said before, what I like in a reel may not be the same as your likes. Ed.

Well Drop Bear back to reality and back to Whiting and Bream! Won't be quite the same will it? . So have you already booked your next trip yet? You know you have been ruined now, every time you go fishing here you will be thinking about that trip.

The Mak-20II is virtually the same reel as the 30II so just the spool is narrower and the Mak-15II is about half the size again. So the Mak-20II is closer to the TLD25 but holds more line than the TLD25, with 2.5 times the drag and just slightly less than twice the weight and 2 speed. Confused yet? Cheers Ed.