I fished for years on the Texas Gulf Coast for Redfish, flounder, speckled trout and such and always used 14 lb test mono on a 7' popping rod with an ABU 6000/6500 and only got spooled one time by what I suspect might have been a tarpon. I prefer having more line than heavier line so the big fish could run without me running low on line. I took a friend fishing a couple of times and on both ocassions I limited out and then had to loan him my rod. His was spooled with something like 90 lb test and the fish just weren't having it. The one good thing though was that he got hung up and when he pulled it in he had caught a huge nest of line and stuff with about 20 dollars worth of weights, leaders and lures that other fishermen had lost.

I have to have a building just to store the fishing tackle. I have an addiction but look at it as "collecting" rather than just having unneeded stuff.

I have a Kastking 60 that I use for catfish and like it a lot. I have 6 ABU 6500s but wanted to try a CastKing. Your first impression with it will be how silky smooth it is compared to ABUs I have an ABU Catfish special that I bought about the same time and it isn't as slick. The KastKing uses ball bearings on every moving point and it makes a difference. I suspect that the biggest thing is that the grips on the handle have bearings.

Now for the rest of the story. It casts great but probably is a little more tricky to cast. To me, it has not been a problem but if you are new to casting reels there might be a little more to learning. I have it on an 8' Rippinlips and it has great reach. The drag has been good. Some people say that the drag isn't as good as the ABUs but I usually have my drags set a little light and then add more with my thumb as needed so it's been great so far. I pulled in a 5-foot gator gar with no issues and he made several strong runs.

Probably this reel won't last as well as the ABUs. I have three that are over 50 years old that are still great reels and I fish a lot. You can keep them running forever in part because parts are easy to find and that may not be true of cheaper reels from China.

I like it a lot FOR THE PRICE. I fish a lot and if it lasts me a few years I will be happy. If you have the money and fish a lot the ABUs are a lifetime reel and that is worth the difference. If on the other hand you only fish a few times a year the Kastking will serve you well for about a third of the cost of a C3 ABU reel.

I've fished in saltwater for decades and caught all sorts of big redfish and such with 6000 and 6500 series ABU reels. One 6000 is now 50 years old, got it for my 16th birthday, and is still working fine. With all that said, if you hook a big tarpon or a bull redfish they are probably going to spool you. I've caught several big bull reds but I was in a bass boat and could follow them as they ran. Tarpon are so fast that they can empty a 6500 in an amazingly short time. It is an INTENCE and a very memorable experience. What I always did was rince my reels after every trip and clean and lubricate them internally if they got soaked. I liked to wade fish for specks and sometimes the reel gets soaked. For the bigger fish that like to make long runs I used a lighter line. More line was more important then heavier line.

I really like Reel Magic and spray it on my lines before I go fishing and note that it relaxes the line especially on spinning reels.

I know that look well. I got it the day before yesterday when a new Rippin Lips 7'6" spinning rod showed up on our porch from Amazon. I brought it in and happily pulled it out of the box while she rolled her eyes and said, "Really?" I assured her that it was a mystery but since it needs a good home that we needed to keep it. I'll have to come up with a better story when the new baitrunner spinning reel that will go on it comes in. I'll probably just tell her that the rod looked lonely and needed a friend bad! You can't just have a rod running around NAKED!!

Rods and reels are like rabbits and just keep multiplying!!!

I learned to fly fish from a boat when I was a kid. My Dad would sit in the bow of our little Jon boat with a sculling paddle and ease us along the bayou and I would set a bug down beside every Cyprus knee as we eased along. I still have that old 9' split bamboo rod in an aluminum rod holder tube. When the fish basket was full it was time to go home and clean fish and we would have them for supper that night. Good times and good memories. I guess that isn't the artistic type of flyfishing but it is fun and productive.

I have 15 in the rod boxes of my boat. when I go fishing I will fish for every sort of fish that might be out there. My rods cover it all, Baitcasters big and small, spinning reels medium and ultra-light, Zebcos, a Fly rod, and a telescoping pole for perch in the treetops. I generally like to have something for all of the available types of fish.

I have a few hundred in my shop. It's an addiction.

The casting reel is what we used to call knuckle busters. It is probably pre WW2 or from about that time. When you hooked a big fish you back reeled or turned loose of the handle altogether and then let it spin while you wore the fish down with your thumb drag. On some of the bigger saltwater reels, there was a leather pad on the backside that you could flip up onto the line for a better and less painful drag system for hard long-running fish. Some of the higher end reels had jeweled pivot bearings that the ends of the spool axel pivoted on and they were very smooth casting reels. They sort of were replaced by the more current star drag systems in the 50s.

Zebco didn't come into existence until after WW2 when the Zero Hour Bomb Company was struggling to survive the end of the war. They switched their production from electrically timed bombs used for oil drilling to fishing reels. Your Zebco reel was made between 1953 and 1956. Zebco and Johnson reels brough bait casting to the masses.

In general, the distinction between freshwater tackle and saltwater tackle has to do with line capacity and line weight used more than anything else. The same rods and reels that I used for fishing redfish in the flats are equally at home for catfishing in the many big lakes in East Texas.

If you want to fish for bigger fish you need tackle that can handle them and reels with enough line capasity that if you hook a monster that you can play him out without getting spooled. (all your line ripped off and losing the fish)

If on the other hand you plan on fishing for panfish in both the fresh and saltwater a lighter set up is the best. I have landed some pretty big fish with a 7' medium action rods and 4000 sized spinning reels. If you plan on mostly bait fishing I highly recommend a baitrunner in the spinning reel. If you are leaning towards bass fishing this same rod and reel will work well for you in most circumstances.

One possibility if you like the spincast is to stay with it. The new Zebco 33 is a good reel for fish 4 lbs or less of any species in fresh or saltwater. They also make bigger reels that will work well for catfish and in saltwater for bigger fish up into the 15 to 20 pound range.

A 5500 sized baitcaster is a pretty universal reel if you put it on a good medium to medium-heavy rod once again both in fresh or saltwater.

I will offer this advice. You are going to catch a lot more smaller fish than you are the bigger ones. If you go heavier they are not as much fun to catch and the big ones are a total blast to fight on lighter setups even if you lose some of them. I often have intentionally gone almost ultralight for big fish just for the fun of it. I lost some but probably caught more than I lost and the thrill of those more than made up for the loses.

Start with what you want to fish for in both fresh and water and then that will point you to the right rod and reel.

In the Far East, they fish with LOOOOONG poles that have no reel. This is a type of technique that in the south was called doodlesocking. You can either use those poles like a cane pole with a long piece of line tied to it or with a short piece of line with a lure on the end. You can stick that lure up under a bush or tree that is hanging out over the water and swish it around on the top of the water with the lure about 10" to a foot behind it. We always put a big silver tip with an eye on the end and would swish it in the top of the water. I think it looks like a little fish chasing a bug on the surface and big bass will just smash it.

https://www.wish.com/search/fishing%20pole/product/5bc20ab2b46b0579ac505ac4?&source=search

The bowfin and gar both have a mouth just full of teeth. You can't miss this in a gar but if you have never seen a bowfin they don't initially look so intimidating. They are a prehistoric sort of fish that look a little like a cross between a catfish with scales or a rather roundish bass of some kind. They are great fighters and a lot of fun to fish for and catch but I have seen more than one person stick their thumb in their mouth and it was not good. They are sort of America's version of a snakehead. Unfortunately, most people don't consider them eatable so they are considered a trash fish.

When you suddenly feel a drag on your bait that continues for several seconds that is grass. When you feel a drag and after a second it goes away that was very possibly a bass that inhaled your lure checked it out and spit it out and you missed the strike. When you feel anything you don't have several seconds to decide what it is. set the HOOK!

I love my Ugly Stick Gx2 rod. Min 7' medium action casting rod and in the year that I have had it, I have worked it fairly hard. I am mostly a catfisherman but will fish for nearly anything. Yesterday the gar were giving us a fit stealing our bait off of circle hooks. The catfish bite was slow so I changed out the circle hook on my Uglystick rood with an ABU 6500 catfish special reel to a treble hook. Just a few minutes later I got a hit that was so hard that I had a hard time getting my rod out of the rod holder. For the next fifteen minutes, I tussled with the fish. It stayed deep so I wasn't positive that it was a gar. Every time I would work it close to the boat it would take off and run back to the middle of the Trinity river again. The rod was doubled over at times almost circular when I was trying to keep it from going under the boat and get tangled on the lower unit of the outboard motor. Finally, it tired and came up. It was a big alligator gar that was 4 to 5 feet long and as big around as my thigh. I'm a big boy over six foot and over two hundred pounds and don't have skinny legs LOL so he was heavy. I carefully released him to fight another day. This is not the first time that I have put that rod though a hard fight but even big cats don't run like that gar. If the rod was going to fail it would have done it when I thumbed down on the reel to stop and turn the gar when it was trying to go under the boat. Great rods, they are tough and dependable even when they are somewhat undersized for the action.

As mentioned above line twist can be a problem with spincast reels. The same is true of Spinning reels but you can see the problem on them before it becomes a total mess.

The reason for most of the problem with line twist is basically operator error. Spincast reels don't usually have as heavy of a drag as more expensive reels. When you get a good fish on and it starts making the drag slip you HAVE to stop cranking that handle as fast as you can. When the line isn't coming in the reel is twisting your line several twists per turn of the handle. What you need to do instead of just cranking is to stop winching and start pumping your rod. As you lower your rod you reel in and then you don't reel as you lift the rod tip back up. This is actually a more effective way of fighting a strong fish anyway and will greatly reduce the line twist.

I think that the distaste that so many have for spincast reels has to do with the fact that they started with them as kids and without proper instruction kids just crank as fast as they can constantly. I have relined reels and had kids turn them into unusable bird nests of twists in a half-day of fishing. Even when they get hung up they will pull and crank. If you have kids teach them how to use their equipment in the best way so they don't have to deal with disappointment. I also generally used a less expensive line on them and bought the bulk spools. this allowed me to just change the line after every few trips. When you are only using 100 yards of the line instead of 200 it isn't a big deal at all to do this.

Another reason for the dislike of spincasters probably has to do with the fact that most people buy the cheapest little rod and reel sets possible for the kids to start with. I just LOATHE those cute little short Disney rods and reels. The reels are usually mostly plastic inside and out and are line twisting little monsters. This isn't the way to start your kiddo's with fishing. Spend just a little bit more and get them a better reel and a longer rod.

I'm not a spincast fanatic. I have an embarrassment of reels of all kinds and use them all. I started fishing before spincast reels were common with a direct drive baitcaster and a cane pole. I actually like them all about equally each in their place. I just try to get people to understand that for a lot of people the simplicity of a spincast reel is the best choice. If you are someone that just likes to go fishing you don't need several hundred dollars of rods and reels to do it and do it well. When you just go fishing that means usually that you want to just catch some fish. Those fish can be anything from a Bluegill through to bass, catfish, crappie or any other fish that swims by. Most of those fish are not going to be lunkers and a spincast is a good compromise setup for them all.

If you are going to specialize in a species then you will probably want to use different reels for different conditions and species. There are a lot of genuine advantages in using a baitcaster for throwing most lures. The slightly larger baitcasters are great when you might be fighting bigger fish that might run and lake a lot of lines. Spinning reels shine with lighter lines lighter lures and finesse techniques. BUT if you just want to go and catch a few fish occasionally it is hard to beat a good spincast reel.