Author Topic: Best and worse brands of fishing equipment  (Read 1451 times)

Offline Mrpike1973

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Best and worse brands of fishing equipment
« on: Dec 14, 2018, 05:45 PM »
Just wondering what your thoughts are.

For me:

Best
 Clam plate, 13 tackle for rods and reels, K Drill, Otter cabin pop up house really impressed with this, Vexilars,

Worst
Clam anything except the Clam plate, HT Rod combo's, Eskimo Pistol bit I think there other stuff is pretty good though.
Strikemaster power augers.

Just wondering what you all have/do not have faith in.

I'm a little concerned with Pure Fishing being sold how there quality and customer service will be, for me pretty good in the past but now?

Offline maddogg

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Re: Best and worse brands of fishing equipment
« Reply #1 on: Dec 14, 2018, 06:17 PM »
Good
13 fishing stuff and excellent customer service


Poor
Anything Celsius

Offline gorf37

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Re: Best and worse brands of fishing equipment
« Reply #2 on: Dec 14, 2018, 07:49 PM »
My best fishing buddy has a theory that big fish can sense crappy gear.  He loves rocking off-brand walmart rods.  I've seen a couple of 20lb fish he fought where the rod or reel had to be discarded after the fish was landed.  One time he ended up with a fair amount of fibreglass in his hand, but he was still happy.  It's his go-to counter when I get on him for not changing his leaders, cutting knots out of his line, etc.

I don't think there's one brand that is reliable across the board.  Every brand seems to have some worthwhile stuff and some junk.

Currently in-favour with me:
- Fenwick rods
- Ugly Stick rods except the cheapest of the cheap
- Shimano spinning reels - again, not all are worthwhile.  Get the drag freezing cold, then check its effectiveness.  If it's not smooth, take the reel back.
- Spoons: Williams - haven't had a bad one, but they sure make you pay for it, Mepps Cyclops
- Spinners: Mepps Black Fury and Aglia
- Jigs: Big Nasty Tackle, Northland Whistlers

Offline slipperybob

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Re: Best and worse brands of fishing equipment
« Reply #3 on: Dec 14, 2018, 09:50 PM »
Hard to say, because there used to be brands that only produce cheap stuff and brands that only produce expensive stuff.  Nowadays it's sort of spread across from cheap to expensive models from the same manufacture.  Although it is noted that some manufactures will have high production in either lower end stuff or higher end stuff based on what they sell most of to consumer.  Many times the best and worst will come from the same manufacture.  They will produce one brand that's awesome, then botch up on the other ones riding on that one success.

Back in the old days, Pflueger was the top brand among fishermen for spinning reels and it was the premium stuff for us.  None of us own that and when one relative had a Pflueger spinning reel...everyone was salivating over it.  Well that's because the rest of us were using Zebco spincast reels.  Classic 33 or one of the other ones.  As far as rods goes, Fenwick was what everyone drools over.  My old man had a Fenwick something two piece of which I borrowed and lost the top piece when the rod slipped out of it's ferrule.  All of that was like 40 yrs ago or so.

Growing up and buying stuff for myself...I found Shakespeare reels to look identical to Pflueger and costs a fraction of that.  Entered the Ugly Stick and plus we only knew WallyMart store at that time for stuff we teenagers could afford.

So as a young buck who eventually got his own set of wheels, I was able to go to the local in town tackle shop.  This one is called Joe's Sporting Goods.  It's a Minnesota store...fishing, hunting, ski, camping type of outdoor store.  It was this store, that I started to upgrade my tackle stuff up and away from Wallymart.  It was where buying a Wallymart replacement reel of every other year or annually it seems amongst the group of fishing buddies, going to where I figure it adds up to why not try something better.
Starting at $50 and I bought the clearance or sale reel for that price.  The two reels I bought were Shimano Sahara and Diawa Regal Z reels.  Out of the box, the Diawa was a winner, better than anything I've used so far.  Five years down the road, the Diawa was crapping and the Shimano was holding up well.  It was time to get new replacements anyways.  Only this time I went overboard and saw the Shiman Stradic in the clearance bin.  Two of them...easy sell with them marked down to under $100.  Nah really I was a terrible fisherman and my buddies were outdoing me, so I needed better equipment to compete...that's my story and I'm sticking to it.  ;)

In the end, I became a Shimano fanboy...but I wouldn't buy their cheap stuff cuz that's another story and I haven't even talked about rods yet.

Everything Shakespeare from Wallymart world was cheap and awesome...nuff said.  We were all live bait and bobber fishermen.  Then there were times where artificials produced while our live bait rigs were barely touched by the fish.  Monkey see monkey do...or doodoo copy cat.  Our cheap rods were subpar for the Floating Rapala F5 and F7.  We all know how terrible the casting distance you get.  It was pure chance that I decided upon a St Croix Premier rod while passing up on the more expensive Fenwick HMG rod at that time.  Again that red sale tag was the driving factor at Joe's Sporting Goods.  Long story short...I became a St. Croix fanboy...

Now as for ice fishing...almost same repeat of that story...well except we started with build your own ice rods or rather fishing cans or bottles.
For more information read my MN nice journal

Offline eyeflyer

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Re: Best and worse brands of fishing equipment
« Reply #4 on: Dec 15, 2018, 01:37 AM »
I worked in the retail fishing business for many years so ended up with quite a few different manufacture products. Each year we would have a "staff" order straight from 4-5 manufacturer, got to upgrade all my fishing gear at a very reasonable price.
Favorite
Rods
St. Croix Tournament and Elite are favorites although I have a couple of Shimano Crucial rods and Quantum Superlites and they are very nice to. The Shimano and Quantum rods I have I believe are both discontinued now. I have an older Berkley Series One (2001) rod that has been a great rod for over 15 years.  I have 2-3 Rapala rods not really a fan of them.

Reels
Spinning and Baitcast reels are Shimano although I have a couple of very smooth Quantum baitcast reels as well.

I like the Plano tackle boxes and soft side Cabelas

Line favorite is Fire-line and Power Pro

Crankbaits   Rapala, Storm and Salmo
Jigs             Slowpoke and Northlands
Terminal Tackle  Gamakatsu and Mustad

I have quite a few spoons but don't use them much except for ones I use for ice fishing. Northlands, Custom Jig, Wolfram, Len Thompson, Hali, PK

Fly rods....St. Croix, Redington and Temple fork.      Fly Reels.... Ross, Okuma, Redington.   Flyline..... Rio and Scientific Angler

Sonar......Humminbird, Marcum (just ordered Eyoyo camera)   Trolling Motor........Minn-Kota...I-Pilot

Ice auger.......Ion and Jiffy but don't use the Jiffy any more

Lowest quality I have seen/used in fishing equipment is Southbend, Danielson and Shakespeare.

Offline Mr.Seaguar

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Re: Best and worse brands of fishing equipment
« Reply #5 on: Dec 15, 2018, 05:11 AM »
I have a Rapala rod that is my favorite open water rod. It was a $20 rod. I have caught thousands of walleyes with it. The action is perfect.  I have looked for more of them with no success. Oh well.
Every plastics manufacturer claims plastics outfish livebait. So now I use livebait just for the increased challenge.

Chute82

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Re: Best and worse brands of fishing equipment
« Reply #6 on: Dec 15, 2018, 06:08 AM »


Worst... nature vision jigging tip up....got them cheap at a garage sale new in package and after a hr of fishing with them threw em in the dumpster... absolutely the biggest piece of crap I ever seen. 

Offline lefty2053

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Re: Best and worse brands of fishing equipment
« Reply #7 on: Dec 15, 2018, 06:47 AM »
Last 2 times out I was using a South Bend Kastmaster look alike. Got it tangled up in my wool glove and ended up breaking one of the hooks off the treble. That was right off before I started fishing. I kept it on and it caught 17 fish the first day and yesterday it caught 24. So it goes to show not all South Bend products are bad just most of them. By the way these are $1.99 at Walmart and Kastmasters are $3.56. I used the One that looks like the Kastmaster Metallic Perch in a 1/8 Oz.
I like all Eskimo Products(can't beat the Anchors), Some Clam(PLATE) Shappell Tents, I own the 6500 Wide House,S3000 and Wind break.I like Ugly Stiks new and old, I love the Shimono Sienna Reels(Cast a country Mile) I have the big Frabill Scoop and like it. Quantum Rods have been good to me.

I hate Frabill Reels, I had nothing but trouble with one yesterday with new line on it.
Dislike Most Celsius/SouthBend products.
Shappell Anchors are crap.
Can't think of anything else right now and it is too cold and too dark out to go look.

<===Lefty===

Offline mboss13

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Re: Best and worse brands of fishing equipment
« Reply #8 on: Dec 15, 2018, 07:07 AM »
I did try the Celsius gloves, and promptly returned them to the shelf.

Offline xiaolu

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Re: Best and worse brands of fishing equipment
« Reply #9 on: Dec 15, 2018, 07:27 AM »
I say just about any and all manufacturers have had something good, excellent, bad or even worst. By manufacturer I mean the company which owns the product/brand in question (all after nowadays almost everything is Manufactured/Made in China:-)

I'd feel it might be unfair to say a particular manufacturer is the worst:-) So instead I'd just list a few that are my favorite (I might be a bit biased, of course):

Milwaukee M18 Power Tools (and M18 batteries!)
Mr Heater (Little Buddy, Buddy, Big Buddy) (Hands down!)
Buffin Boots ("Proudly Canadian":-)
Garmin (Did I mention GPS?)
Lowrance Fishfinders
CLAM Ice Auger Converter/Adapter Plate
JACK LINK'S Beef Jerky (when I feel hungry on ice:-)
Pflueger President-series Reels
Badd Boyz Jigging Lures
XZone Swammer (Swimbait)
Williams Half & Half Spoon
...
Mostly ice fishing Lake Simcoe in southern Ontario, Canada, for lake trout (lakers), lake whitefish (whities), and jumbo yellow perch:-)

Offline Hugh-Boone

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Re: Best and worse brands of fishing equipment
« Reply #10 on: Dec 15, 2018, 07:41 PM »
My definition of worse would include companies that make things that fill a spot that other companies across the board do a better job at and for less, so that would leave only one branding that comes to my mind. 

Dick Sporting Goods house brand Jawbone. 

For the best companies, I would have to go with specialty shops that only really focus on one kind of bait or tackle. The larger companies just cannot have all winners across the board and try and hit all the price points they want to all while maintaining perfect quality control.

Though I'm pretty much going to pull my phone out and start looking things up no matter what the item is, so I generally don't get burned to bad.

Offline IceFever74

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Re: Best and worse brands of fishing equipment
« Reply #11 on: Dec 15, 2018, 08:55 PM »
I did try the Celsius gloves, and promptly returned them to the shelf.

Same here. Never had good luck with any neoprene gloves. Think they squeeze the warm blood out of my fingers.

Offline Ihawkangler

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Re: Best and worse brands of fishing equipment
« Reply #12 on: Dec 15, 2018, 09:48 PM »
Won't go into everything just jigs.

Best:  Widow Maker Jigs
Worst:  Custom Jigs and Spin-- Had multiple hooks break on slender spoons on dinky gills.  Emailed them and they told me to pound sand.  I live 15 minutes from their warehouse and have stopped in there often to buy jigs and merchandise but won't buy anything else from them.

Offline eyeflyer

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Re: Best and worse brands of fishing equipment
« Reply #13 on: Dec 16, 2018, 12:24 AM »
Won't go into everything just jigs.

Best:  Widow Maker Jigs
Worst:  Custom Jigs and Spin-- Had multiple hooks break on slender spoons on dinky gills.  Emailed them and they told me to pound sand.  I live 15 minutes from their warehouse and have stopped in there often to buy jigs and merchandise but won't buy anything else from them.

Thats odd I have been using their slender spoons for years and have caught walleye and trout up to 5 lbs and have never so much as bent one. Thinking you may have just got a couple of  bad hooks.

 



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