The Kitchen Sink: Cycles and Recycles

[slipperybob]

Jogging through the memory lane of the how, why, when, where, and cycle them and recycle them methods.  From fishing lines, to rods and reels, and finally to lures.

First thing is fishing lines.  I remember using something like 20# mono on that dowel rod and the ever useful steel drink can.  I was still young so a drink can was much smaller in diameter over that of the soup can.  The days of watching the bobber and hand lining was something.  Somewhere along the time there a switch to lighter lines gotten more bites.  It was 10# mono but seemed to made quite a difference.  By then my big dream was owning a Swish rod.  But that never did happen as I started to buy spinning reels.  At that time, it was the typical Walmart or Kmart stuff of the $20 variety and typically it was a Shakespeare product.  Around that time, it was Dave Genz and St. Croix ice fishing products where all the hype.  It was also around that time frame did I ever ventured into 4# mono lines.  The biggest problem for myself back then, was my equipment was terrible.  Mainly attributed to the lousy fishing reels and their lack of reliable performance.  I was experiencing my good share of line break offs.  Mostly in the most used portion of the line end, because back then I was not diligent enough to check the line and strip some off as necessary.  The other part was just the reel where line lay gets lousy and sometimes those loose loops become problematic.  That combined with big fish and underlying line compression makes for a future weak point in operation. 

My first upgrade really was the reels to address the line issues.  Strong monolines have large diameter and lots of memory coils.  Smaller reels with smaller spool arbors makes much tighter line memory coils.  Trilene XL was soft and most prone to line breakage.  Trilene XT was stiff and just stiff.  Trilene Cold Weather and Microice was just in between.  From experience from fishing in early spring and late fall in freezing temps, both Cold Weather and Microice does a much better job at ice resistance build up.  Those were the lines for ice fishing.  The more I ice fish, the more I realize that there was a lot of nothing happening in between the hot bites.  Just why is that?

The flasher was the game changer and now that changes the game from the old just watching the bobber or waiting for the rod flex trigger.  Didn't realize that the line you use had so much effect on the hook up ratio.  Coiled line memories does two things in particular that screws me up.  One the coil drag resistance makes the lure spin.  Two the line coil memory creates a delayed spring effect.  So the search for a better line performer came about and it was more or less just trying out different lines to see which ones would be a better performer over my benchmark Trilene Microice.  Really I already had some line choices to try from normal open water set ups.  Silverthread Xcalibur, Yo-Zuri Hybrid, and Gamma High Performance, monolines were the choices at 4# box listed.  In terms of hole hopping, Trilene Microice stills seems to be a more reliable performer.  If sitting inside the warmed up shack, Silverthread Xcaliber was a much better choice.

Even then with the flasher, there was a need to finesse even more.  I had to dive into some 2# lines to try.  Back then 3# ice line was very rare.  Around that time too I started to experiment with a baitcasting reel.  Just happen to stumble upon a Shimano Chronarch 50mg.  Around similar time frame or just before I also started to invest in better rods.  I was still a St. Croix fanboy, but I realize that steel rings just simply freeze up faster over that of ceramic rings.  Some Thorne bros. rods was given the product test.  Still I never like the industry line guide system.  It just looked awful to the eye and from a geometric/physics observation, custom was the only way to address it.  Had my first custom Thorne bros. rods with a requested 6 guides plus tip.  Turned out that it worked very well with a bait casting reel paired up.  2# test line was another matter to address it in itself.  The thin line diameter meant that so much line wounding took hold.  In addition underlying line join knot was starting to catch.  Finally the problem with 2# test line was it always seems to find itself wrapped into the shaft of the spool somehow or even on the rod tip.  I had to learn to pay extra attention.  The two worst thing that comes along with 2# test was line breakage from just stripping ice beads off or the lure somehow knots itself on the line.  Whether it's the lure or the fish did it, not sure, but I normally only see it after hooking a fish.  Somewhere I settled on 3# line as the best compromise for extreme finesse.

By now this is where box list 3# doesn't really mean that much, but moreso for me is paying attention to the box listed diameter.  Pline Floroice 3# is listed .15 mm,. ASSO Micron3 4# is listed .153 mm.  Berkley Microice 3# is listed .18 mm.  Gamma ESP ice 4# is listed .15 mm.  In then end, the ASSO Micron3 became my favorite for how it performed. 

Braid/Super lines was still in it's infancy to me.  At that time there was still no 8 strands braid overall for small diameter ice fishing application.  Fireline and Power Pro were still the main players.  Thermally fused Fireline was still pretty much a 4 strand line.  Power Pro ice in the smaller 3 and 4# box listed was actually just 3 strands.  Stren Microfuse was another great contender for ice fishing braid/super lines.  Sufix Ice braid came out shortly thereafter but I learned that was really a lousy ice braid.  Overall Fireline was the better performer.  Notably the smoke version was great on sunny days as it absorbed sunlight and reduced your ice bead build up.  Most noticeable benefit with superlines was when the temps were much colder, it was much easier to pull off ice beads from the line.  The main problem was that it seemed to start forming ice beads much faster than monolines. All of this like over ten years maybe fifteen years or so.

The 8 strands braid lines was another pivotal point for braid lines.  Smoother, rounder, better line management on the reel spool were some of the improve benefits.  Sufix 832 quickly became one of my favorites.  Even the ice version of 832 was respectable.  Still I suspected that the line was just thicker than box listed as my fingers would hint to me so.  I explored more into 8 strand braids and picked up some Diawa J-braid x8.  For sure it was better than 832 in overall performance and feel.  J-braid was much more uniformly made.  832 with that one Gore fiber was more stiff and sometimes one can feel the ridge of it.  Finally Fireline was updated into an 8 strands carrier.  By now there were a lot of good choices in braid lines of 8 strands available.  Even single strand Nanofil was taking a slice of the pie.

In recent years, when it seemed that there wasn't much more anyone can do to a line except give it an additional coating of another material or soak the line in another chemical treatment.  YGK surprised me.  YGK G-Soul Upgrade X-8 somehow created a line that is so uniformly round, that it almost fools me into thinking it's a mono line.  Fresh from the spool, it's almost line a monoline.  By just picking up the end of the line, it almost felt line a monoline that I had to just double check the box packaging.  Even after spooling the line up, same thing, I had to double check to make sure I was grabbing the line from the right reel being spooled on.  Outdoor field test pretty much reveals it's braid characteristic with ice beads forming much faster than your nylon monoline.  It is also one of the first few lines that I did not notice bubble trail on the flasher on the initial drop.  I still recall that effect with the first Fireline I used for ice fishing.  The one line that surprised me the most was YGK G-Soul SS112 Sinking Braid.  It is made of 4 strands of Ester lines and 4 strands of PE lines.  It is thicker in comparison to 8 strands PE braid lines.  The G-Soul also has a more rough 4 strands line feel to the touch and verified while in use with the line noise from the line guides and reel line guide while in operation.  At first I was not expecting any merits to it, but perhaps some sinking assistance with very light lures much in the same was with ASSO Sinking braid.  There is just something about this line that while in use, has a lot of performance merits.  Most notably is the line management onto the spool.  It doesn't get those little loose loop of line bur, well at least for how I fish.  As well as the troublesome rod tip line wrap while jigging . 

So after all of this, the one cycle event that I find myself with lines is going from larger diameter lines to small diameter lines, to starting to go back to larger diameter lines.  Honestly can't remember the last time I used 2# test lines.  I'm starting to go up one line size and seems like my fishing results are pretty much the same.  It may also have something to do with better equipment rig. 

tbc...

[slipperybob]

Rods, dowel sticks, and steel drink cans.

Fishing, before ice fishing, my dad would chop down a stick and tie some fishing line to it and let me fish with it.  I thought I did pretty good with that catching those tiny sunfish and bullheads.  Some times afterwards I saw someone with a soup can with line and hand tossing a bobber.  I like that and copied it.  However with my child hands, I had to settle for a steel drink can rather than a soup can.  There's a convenience about a can is that I can put the bobber inside it. Always have some rubber band to secure the line at the end.  During one fishing trip on the return home, I saw a trashed fishing rod in the garbage.  Just the upper tip portion of about two feet or so, but it was enough.  That actually sort of became my hand made fishing rod as I attached that onto a dowel.  Best of all the finished project worked even better with the drink can.  It was kind of an odd ball combo and steel drink can with line and a fishing stick with a screw eye and upper broken piece of a rod put together. 

Anyways forward some years and some ice fishing to be done.  So sometimes a hammer and an hand axe, to reopen some old ice fishing holes.  The old steel drink can with line and bobber was still king back then.  The old setting the lure all the way to the bottom, pull up like two feet and attaching the clip on bobber.  Sometimes later, I did get a pegged fishing dowel.  That was sort of short lived, or I must have forgotten how long ago that was.  However I remember using the  telescoping fishing rod and used those for ice fishing.  Somewhere I started using open face spinning reels.  Back then I was still dreaming of a Swish rod, but never gotten around to getting one.  I somehow found myself with an Ugly Stick for ice fishing.  Shortly thereafter realizing how finicky the fish bite could be, I found myself a few St. Croix Premiere Ice rods and bought them for the bargain price of $10 each.  I had picked out one 28" Ultra-Light power and one Medium Light power rod.  Not sure why St. Croix had weird power ratings, but that didn't matter so much as they were lighter in feel compared to the Ugly Stick ice rods.  Here is with the problem with Tennessee handles, I had to tape the reel onto.  It didn't matter that much, but I there was just always something off about it to me.  Without a locking reel seat, there's the inconsistency of the tape.  As the tape job, even when almost duplicated, would still sometimes be just slightly different to the touch.  Regardless for the most part it worked and worked pretty good.  Now there was one thing that always had me wondering is the flex or looseness that comes with the Tennessee set up.  Whenever I get a big fish or respectable size, there was always that flex looseness.  It was a combination of both tape and cork that flexes under tension.  Put a lot of tape on to reduce that, and the tape bulk feels off.  Not that the reel ever moved or became unbuttoned, but it always felt a little off to me.

After fishing with those rods and some outdoor outings, man do ice beads become a problem.  Well another thing was how the ice beads and slush would form and at times plug up the rod tips.  Usually only a problem when one hooked up with fish and is reeling them in.  At which point a lot of water gets drawn up through the line and is collected onto the rod tip first.  I start to notice that situation when I'm just reelin up fast to retrieve rig.  I watched the icicle dam from on my rod tip.  It's pretty neat actually to watch the water turn into an icicle in that moment and how it grows.  Just a little more and when it gets broken and up into the rod tip and poof, frozen tip.  At this time, all my line guides were of stainless steel and with steel insert rings.  Metal just has a faster thermal conductivity over that of most other materials.  For fishing line guides, that other option is ceramic inserts, so that should be the next ideal ice rod.  One that uses ceramic inserts rather than just steel rings.

Off to some rod shopping again.  By now rod the average rod prices had begun to go up.  I remember the bulk of the hyped up rods to get were the Frabill Ice Hunter Series.  Most of them retailed for about $35.  That was also about the same ball park price of the St. Croix Legend Ice rod.  The St. Croix Avid Ice rods were really what I was looking for, but the availability of them was very scarce to nonexistent.  The Frabill Ice Hunters had ceramic ring inserts on many of their rods, but those were big bulky line guides.  It was almost by chance that at the St. Paul Ice fishing show, I stumbled upon Thorne Bros. Custom rods.  To me they were a bit overpriced, but customed and show discount of 20% off.  Well it wouldn't hurt.  By then I was also looking for a slightly longer rod and those things almost didn't exist, except for in the customs.  Even the majority of rods from Thorne Bros. were of 28" and 24" makes.  There was just a few rods of 32" and 36" in lengths.  I picked out a Panfish Sweetheart and Perch Sweetheart both in Tennesse handles.  To me, the best things was the ceramic line guides.  As that was really what I was looking for and they weren't bulky.  The other thing that really looked weird to me at that time was that these Thorne Bros. rods didn't really have tip guides, it was just a standard line guide threaded at the end there. 

I fished the Thorne Bros. Custom ice rods with skepticism.  However after the first outing with them, it totally opened up my mind and eyes.  There were many merits to the Thorne Bros. Custom ice rods.  For sure when hooked up with a fish, the feedback on them were very pronounced.  That allowed for better response to impart rod control.  Unilaterally that also meant better fish control.  It took a few more uses with the rods, now I'm getting better with jigging.  My active jig control just leveled up.  Again something about these rods that allowed me to do so.  Hooked up ratio also went up.  Rarely ever did a fish get unbuttoned at the top of the hole.  Somewhere just after the millennium, I've finally decided that I needed a real custom rod.  I simply just prefer to have a reel seat over that of the Tennessee handle.  On top of that, I wanted more line guides over the few that's on those short ice rods.  I simply prefer to see a better line curve.  It just makes more sense to me, to see the visual geometry of the line flow.  So I put in my request for my first custom rod from Thorne Bros.  It just so happened to be six line guides plus tip. 

Somewhere there after I decided that I wanted to use a bait casting reel.  That was actually after the usage of a few fly reels.  Again that was going back to my childhood dream of owning a Swish rod set up.  For the part of fly reels, there were almost no small fly reels and the majority of them were much larger than I had wanted.  I think most fly reels are typically about 4 inches in diameter.  I did find an Okuma Vashon fly reel, a size 2 wt that had a diameter of 2.75".  Was great little fly reel and all aluminum.  Again metal with it's high thermal conductivity was almost always very cold to the hand.  Aside from that, it also makes great for a dead stick set up.  Set the drag just light enough and let the clicker zing.  The fly reel worked wonderful but took a lot of attention.  Attention to lots of details like, backlining the reel and doing it in different line weights to smooth it out.  Yeah having nearly 400 yards of 4# line on the fly reel was a waste of line, when I only needed to fish within 30 feet so about 50 feet of line would have been plenty.  The loose line wraps on the fly reel was also a lot of learning experience.  Having your loose line wraps suddenly getting into the spool shaft was terrible with a fish on.  The fish fight and slow retrieval of fish was not as efficient when the hot bite was on.  It was just slow and often meant missing out on potential roaming fish.  The merits of the fly reel set up was really in finesse, super finesse and more so for weed line fishing in about 10-12 feet of water. 

Now this is where the baitcasting reel really came into the line up.  Baitcasting rods was pretty much nonexistent, except for heavy fishing application.  If anyone remembers the Dave Genz Gold rods back then for about $100.  It was probably the only retail option.  Well there was always the HT Ice Blue Trout rod.  It was a billy stick sort of.  It had like two line guides plus tip.  Nothing that I wanted for catching crappies with.  Well just so happened to picked up a Shimano Chronarch 50mg and decided to do the mismatch combo on my first Thorne Bros. custom ice rod.  Well actually it somehow coincidentally worked out so well.  I had to go the bait casting set up rig.  I looked all around for an ice fishing bait casting rod for pan fishing.  No such thing existed.  I did paired a cheap bait casting reel with one of my Ugly Stick and it worked ugly in a way.  So I spent some time asking around to see if any custom builder would build such a rod and no one would do so.  Even went back to Thorne Bros. and the response was, no you don't want that.  Okay so I settled for a compromise and got Thorne Bros. to build me two Walleye Sweethearts in bait casting form.  32" in length seemed to be the sweet spot for me.  Transport to and back was good.  Second best thing was just happened to find a turkey arrow hard case and those rods fits in it perfectly.  Perfect fit with a bait casting reel and all. 

There is just something special about the Thorne Bros. Sweetheart rods.  At first I thought it was maybe an unforeseen shortcoming.  However there was really some merits to it.  The Sweetheart rods have a peculiar pre-load phenomena on the rod tip.  As soon as you get a little fish nibble, especially on an up bite the rod tip would twitch on the lure weight going weightless.  It's much as watching for the line bend at the end of the rod tip at the 90 degree angle just giving up a degree of line unload.  The phenomena worked so well that often times, it was far better to just simply set the rod down, preferably a flat surface like the bottom of an upside down bucket.  Now just watch for that small minute rod tip change.  It worked better than just line watching or even the tight lining method.  Who would've thought about using walleye type rods for smelt fishing?  I didn't expect that, but it worked very very well.  The Walleye Sweetheart rods did better on an 1/8th oz. weight.  While the Perch and Panfish Sweetheart rods performed that phenomena to 1/32nd oz. weights.

A few years after getting my custom bait casting rods, St. Croix came out with their version of a bait casting ice rods in the Premiere line up.  I was curious, so I had to pick up a set of them and they were only available in a MH and H configuration at 34" length.  Now for some odd reason, the line guide spacing and count on the St. Croix ice rods were exactly the same as my Thorne Bros. custom rods from the tips down.  It's uncanny as if someone had passed on that info and measurements.  Unfortunately the St. Croix Premiere Ice rods still comes in that stainless steel ring insert, so again the frozen tip icicle dam was more bothersome.  A few years after that both Fenwick and Abu Garcia introduced some bait casting rods too and available in a M power setting.  However they came up short in only just a 27" length and lousy line guide spacing.  I had some string in my pocket for checking out rod flex in the store and I wasn't impressed.

At this time, only a few small ice rod builders were really pioneering the ice fishing rod industries.  Well still Dave Genz had a lot of influence with his rod line up from those short sight rods to lake trout rod set ups.  The term power noodle rods was hitting the market.  I meant that Thorne Bros. reps told me about that so long ago, but I was still a bit new into getting better rods for ice fishing.  They also were just introducing their Quiver Stick, but I was still pretty much the live bait ice fisherman.  Well somewhere in there I decided to give the Jason Mitchell meatstick rod a try.  Well those tiny line guides, so tiny they remind me of like a Jontuu Palm rod.  Honestly after fishing it, I found out it was kind of lousy with a spinning reel set up.  Oh the terrible line wrap on the rod tip.  Second the finesse jigging, well wasn't there.  The soft noodle tip kind of absorbed that and made your jigging into no more than lifting and lowering.  It really didn't work so well until I put my fly reel to the rod.  It worked okay for me.  Still the hype and how the retail market took it by the storm.  Power noodles and quick tips from all sorts of retail companies came out with their own versions.  Also this was about the time that 13 Fishing came out or just before with some super expensive retail ice rods.  It was simply the wrong marketing strategy.  They really thought that people would buy a mediocre ice rod for over $100.  That really was White Noise.  Then No. 8 CGI, a sister company of 13 Fishing hit the retail with low budget rods, just above the HT marketing niche.  It was weird to say that 13 Fishing or No. 8 was copying who, but little did I realize that they were really partners.  That was only afterwards finding out that the No. 8 Snitch become a 13 Snitch rod.

This power noodle rod had always got me wondering, but at the same time, I was totally content with my Thorne Bros. custom rods.  However if I didn't explore and embrace change, I probably would never had even tried a Thorne Bros. custom rod.  So more exploring into the power noodle hype.  Two slightly different take were the Beaver Dam Custom noodle rod and the K n E Whip'R rod.  I wasn't really into the short rods so the Snitch was never one to be tried with.  After a season or two with these rods, I had figured that the power noodle is not in favor of my 1st string pick.  For one thing it's much harder to gauge a fish in size or fish fighting control.  The noodle absorbs a lot of that feedback.  The Whip'R rod really was a cut from a full sized rod.  I had both a 36" and 48" version.  The 36" rod always felt like it was going to break at the handle because that really was still the upper portion of the rod.  The 48" version felt much better, but not for in the shelter use.

Finally St. Croix brought back reel seats to their ice rods in the Premiere line up.  Well the Legend Ice rods always had the reel seat but their lousy few inchs short of a rod due to them including the spring bobber in length always threw me off.  St. Croix Premiere Ice rod had a 36" Light power rod.  I'd figure this would be better for my style.  In a sense it seems so, but again after fishing with a season or two with it, it had that same feeling of the power noodle rods where a lot of feedback is absorbed by the soft rod.  Well in part it was also because of the extra length of the rod.  A St. Croix in a 28" length had more feedback feeling.  There seems to be a threshold at right at that 36" length that feedback response begins to diminish in my hands.  After all these years that the accumulated experience has finally culminated to what I do want in a custom rod.  Yeah back to Thorne Bros. maybe.

It was 2020 that I had finally decided that I will settle on a custom made Panfish and Perch Sweetheart rods and 32" in length.  Well actually I asked around again for a custom rod builder to build me two such rods in bait casting set up and no one would.  I still remember how Thorne Bros. told me that they wouldn't.  Well after asking around and I decided that the mismatch set up was working so well on my prototype rod that it may as well be with a spinning reel seat.  For one thing, it would be lighter in feel and the complexity is greatly reduced.  Second thing, I had my prototype rod and all I had to do was show that rod and have them imitate it as well.  Of course I didn't say I want a bait casting set up.  I merely said, I want a pair of rods built to these specs.

Here I went on what seemed like a full cycle of rods just to come back to something I had custom built nearly twenty years ago.  So I got the call to pick up my finished rods from Thorne Bros.  I brought those rods home and went to set up my rigs.  Well they gotten it right but it they shorted my line guide count.  It wasn't working as well for my intended bait casting set up.  It will however work very well for a spinning reel set up.  Went back and it had to be a remake and not a repair, so waited for that but turn around time washed rushed and I got a call about a week later.  Just to find out, what a screw up, they build the rods with the wrong line guides on the wrong rods between the Perch and Panfish models.  The Perch should've had the slightly larger line guides.  Had to get another order in, again.  Another week or so goes by and they've made it again.  Again rush job.  Cuz when I put my bait casting reels on, it alignment is off by a few degrees.  For a spinning reel one probably would never notice it, since it would be on the down side.  For a mismatch bait casting reel, it was noticeable to the eye because it's on the reversed upside.  A few degrees didn't really affect the performance of the rod.  Besides I was already going into the middle of the ice season of 2020 for me.  I really wanted my bait casting rig for 2020.

As of for now, I am wondering why didn't I just get this done like nearly twenty years ago or even fifteen years ago or even ten year ago.  Likewise I probably still wouldn't have figured it out through experiencing all other things to pinpoint what I really wanted.  In a way it was good timing as it was just before Covid 19 took the world.   The custom rod prices was still not as expensive and supply wasn't on the nonexistent short supply.  I still can't believe how I went full circle through so many rods on the retail side just to go back to have a remake of my old original custom rod from Thorne Bros.

tbc...

[slipperybob]

Really Reels for Reals or Unreal

Gonna keep this ice fishing related as much as possible as it all goes back to the beginning of when a kid was fishing with pretty much just some line spooled onto a cylinder object.  Well I may have to also consider doweled line just looped around pegs too.  However that was so short lived when considering whether to just give it a 12" pegged measurement or randomly further for faster line pick up and less repetitive line deformity.

Aside from a few childish garaged innovation of using some of my mom's old sewing spools and attaching them onto a stick.  No clue as to when my parents tossed them into the garbage, but I remember it did involved quite of bit of nuts and screws and a lot of plastic sleeves for the handles.  Never really got around to using them for ice fishing and probably would've just experience a lot of frozen in technical difficulties.  Cuz the steel drink can with line spooled on still works very efficiently for a kid.

Time jump to a time when I exclusively was buying the Walmart products and that name was Shakespeare.  Well by this time, I felt I had graduated from the Zebco spincast reel.  Moreover there just wasn't any spincast rod for ice fishing.  I remember those old spring steel rods though, but they're out of production for who knows how many years it's been.  Anyway one of my first purchase of a spinning reel that I was going to use for ice fishing was Shakespeare Intrepid 30 sized reel.  It was smaller than the 35 and 45 sized ones I was accustomed to using.  Well I remember on one of my first outing how sluggish the reel operated after we got settled down to finally ice fish.  It usually takes about an hour or so in the warmed up portable shack to get the reel to perform to an operable tolerance.  I can't remember which reel came into my possession first but the Stradic 4000 reel when compared to the reel weight of about 14 oz. on the Intrepid 30 was about the same weight of that Stradic 4000.  That 4000 Stradic reel would still perform much better so the Intrepid 30 was pretty much benched forever.  Especially when the Stradic 1000FG came into my possession, wow did the performance merits set a totally new standard to me.  That reel came in a weight of about 9 oz. and a long stroke spool and long handle of 50mm.

The way how I like the performance merits of the Stradic 1000FG so much, I did purchase the next successor the Stradic 1000FH with a reel weight of 7.7 oz.  Again there were a lot of improvements in design that also contributed to weight saving.  The reduced reel rotor size and bail assembly was noticeable.  Even the reel body was shaved down in physical size as well.  Handle assembly showed physical reduction on material as well.  About this time the older Stradic 1000FG's were showing a lot signs of wear and tear from years of use and usage all year round now.  The replacement successor was like godsend.  With the reduction in reel weights as the hype, I had stepped down in performance to a Shimano Sahara 750B reel that weighed about  6.8 oz.  At the time of production of these reels, it was known that the 750 sized reels were no more than a smaller spool built onto the equivalent 1000 sized reels.  In fact it was a really sneaky trick.  The spool was actually built on the same 1000 spool size stock of 40mm.  The spool lip was CNC shaved down to 36mm while the typical 1000 sized spool lip was 38mm.  In effect that makes the spool hold less line and also reduce weight.  These newer 750 sized reels became my go to ice fishing reels. 

Price point at the equivalent of $50 and competition came from Pflueger President reels.  The President 6725 reel came in at 7.9 oz. weight and the smallest ultralight 6720 reel weighed in at 5.9 oz.  On paper specs. the President reels do sound superior in many ways.  The 6725 reel sport titanium nitride spool lip and bail wire.  The 6720 reel had an even smaller spool with the stock base of 36mm and spool lip of 35mm.  In real world use of these reels for ice fishing, they were rather dull.  The line memory coils from these reels were pig tails especially for the 6720 reel size.  Fished these Pflueger along side the Shimano for years and finally decided to examine the core parts to see why so much difference in performance merits.  Most notable for the Pflueger 6720 reel spool was the small spool arbor of 20mm.  That was pretty much unique to that reel size as the 6725 reel measured in a 24mm spool arbor that which was about the same as the Shimano 750 and 1000 sized reels spool arbor that had a 25mm arbor diameter.  Towards the end of two or three years of use the wear and tear on both these reels became evident.  Well mostly due to sluggishness of parts wear.  Most noticeable in handle looseness and over all resistance on fish tug.  It's not fair in price pint comparison to a Stradic at over $100.  However the older Stradic 1000's was still going strong and also have more years over these reels.

So about now, I've gone from cheap low tier spinning reels of $20-$30 reel to over $100 and back down to mid tier level reels around $50.  After using spinning reels from the various price point tier, I've come to accept the merits of each in their performance category.  I've also come to accept that respectively the wear and tear usage life can also be attributed respectively to what I've originally paid for.  I have pretty much decided that at the Stradic reels level are what I find the most enjoyment in usage. 

Speaking of enjoyment, the performance merits are attributed to certain unique features found at the Stradic reels.   For one thing that I really like about the Stradic reel was how the line management system operates on this reel differs from what I found that on most of the cheaper reels that I've used so far.  There was always some lopsided line wrap on the reel spool.  I mean the line is just simply wound around the spool but for some reason the mechanics of it, always seems to overlap in a certain way that becomes lopsided.  Furthermore it varies from reel to reel and amongst the same reel model it can vary in results too.  Some reels have a definitive bulges in the middle of the spool, while others have a saddle/valley in the middle.  Some reels are stacked towards one end and that is more or less has something to do with line diameter size.  Even if the reel was designed to stack the line in a conical line lay, the merits are only useful in the right situation.  Uniquely for the Stradic reel, it seems to have a solution to what I have been dealing with for a long time and have just accepted it as a normal result of using spinning reels.  The Stradic reel uses a different spool oscillation drive that uses a worm gear.  It's that same worm gear that's used to drive the levelwind guide on bait casting reels.  What it does is that it provides a consistent line wrap around the spool and a consistent cross wrap pattern.  Compare to what many of the Okuma reels uses an elliptical gear for the spool oscillation gear.  The Shakespeare reels uses a round gear plus a track slide to operate as the spool oscillation system.  The lower tier Shimano reels just uses a round gear to drive the spool oscillation. 

There's a lot of other factors that contribute to good line management on the spool as well.  The line roller shape has some influence in the line position on the spool.  I notice that on the Stradic there is a line groove on that line roller.  Upon inspection, with the line on with snug pressure, the line tracks perfectly Even when pulling line to engage the drag release of the spool, the line stayed perfectly straight on the groove track.  Close to the line roller there is a little fin that reduces the amount of open space from the bail assembly arm to the line roller.  The benefit is that helps to prevent the loose line from falling away from the line roller.  As it happens when one isn't paying as much attention and then you have a loose loop of line that sometimes finds it's way under the spool and onto the spool shaft under.  This is just one of the learning curve that using a spinning reel that one needs to deal with.  The Stradic helps to reduce that.

The more I use the Stradic, the more I become appreciative of it's performance value.  It keeps performing year after year after year.  Most of the other lower tier spinning reels that I have used before as my primary reel, shows a lot of wear and tear after one season of use.  Usually by year two, there's a typical looseness to some part or some binding of the reel in operation.  That if the usual parts that breaks are in the handle assembly and typically the knob or the bail assembly in where the bail wire attaches to the bail arms.  Or the typical mechanical failure of either drag or anti-reverse failure from usage. 

The Stradic has somehow became the standard bar for measurement for me.  However this isn't even a top tier reel.  There other reels that costs more.  Yet for the purpose of ice fishing, was there even a reason to.  I could not fathom what more would I need.  Until a breakthrough in reel performance was unveiled...

...TBC...