War44Eagle

Glad to hear it, as I said earlier Daiwa is a very good tackle company that stands behind their products so I'm not at all surprised they took good care of you. You'll be back out on the water with your reel in no time.

I'll admit this right off the top so as to add a "disclaimer" of sorts, I'm a Shimano man to the bone so take that into consideration. Now having said that I'll agree with the previous guys that suggested a Curado 300. I have a 301E that I've been using for the past year and a half to two years for the A-Rig and lately my small swimbait collection. Fantastic reel for these type techniques, I've "upgraded" mine with ceramic hybrid spool bearings and a Carbontex drag. Neither of which were necessary but I'm just one of those guys that loves tinkering with my gear. Of the two I'd say the drag upgrade was by far the best improvement to the reel's performance. The stock spool bearings (when properly cleaned/flushed and lightly oiled) provide very good performance and are much quiter than the ceramic hybrid bearings. If I had it to do over I'd just stick with the stock bearings and only upgrade the drag. Overall I've been 100% satisfied with my 301E and would definitely recommend one to anyone looking for a reel that's a little "heavier duty" than the normal low pros. I will admit though that the Calcutta D 301 looks very interesting and I love the silver color as well. I'll probably end up picking one of these up at some point. The Calcutta Conquest is in an entirely different league and from all accounts one of the absolute best round reels made. Good luck with your search.

Daiwa is a top notch company, I'm confident they'll take care of the problem. I'm an all Shimano guy these days but it's not because Daiwa doesn't make good gear, it was because I had trouble switching between the two braking systems some days while out on the water. I found Shimano's SVS easier to backlash on windier days when switching from Daiwa's Mag Force. So one day I decided I had to make a choice between the two, overall I enjoyed my Shimano's more so I chose them, simple as that. Daiwa makes fantastic gear as well. In my opinion they are so far out in front of everyone else that all the other manufacturers are always in continual "catch up" mode. I'm not sure they ever get there either. Don't get me wrong, Abu puts out quality tackle as well. I have a couple of C4's that I enjoy fishing with. I've actually heard nice things about Okuma as well.

If you have to replace most of the internals why not take that money and buy a more expensive reel with the right guts? That's my feelings as well! I'm fairly new to swimbaits but I have been throwing the A-Rig for a couple of years now and my CU 301E hasn't let me down yet. Fingers crossed.

Thanks again, as of right now I'm planning to order tomorrow. Well you know if you guys can't get them to go on it during the summer then I might as well just stay home but if by some miracle I do stumble onto something I'll certainly post it. About the only real chance I figure I'll have is to find a few key "slack water" pools close to the dam and wait for them to turn on the turbines. This certainly isn't anything new on our lakes as this is where the majority of the tournaments are won during the summer. Mostly by guys throwing the A-Rig. Also there are plenty of guys that like to fish for the Stripe and that's also where they can be found. My challenge will be finding just the right spots to fish the S-Waver because as you guys well know it isn't exactly the same as fishing an A-Rig or a heavily weighted paddle tail. Anyway thanks again fella's and I'll report back if I find out anything that I think might be relevant to this discussion.

Thank you so very much to all 3 of you. That helps tremendously. I don't have anything even resembling a Trout in the lakes I'm fishing, do you guys still think it's the color I should get? Most of the research I read said that the S-Waver was most effective during winter but it never said anything about it becoming practically useless in the summer. Oh well not to long to go until cooler temps again, the water here was in the high 80's last time I was out which was about a month ago so I'm sure it's reached 90 at least by now. I might pick up a Yellow Perch as well just to see how that might do just because I frog fish a lot and the Spro Bronzeye Shad in Wicked Perch (same color) does extremely well. Just to clarify I want Light Trout, not Rainbow Trout correct.

As everyone can see by my post count I'm not exactly an expert swimbait fisherman but I have been reading a lot here and picked up a few things here and there. I think I've pretty much read every thread on the S-Waver (168) I can find here and I've even attempted a few of the mods I've learned about. That's not my question today though. I would like you guys to enlighten me on all things S-Waver 200 if you don't mind. I want to catch fish on this bait so bad, I'm not exactly sure why I just do. It's my only "real" swimbait so far so I suppose maybe this is the reason I'm wanting to have good success with it. So far zero. I'm fishing central AL, Lay Lake (where the Classic was held this past Feb), Lake Mitchell (small 13 mile lake connecting Lay and Jordan), and Lake Jordan. All 3 lakes are very good lakes that are filled with Coosa River spotted bass. Lay has it's fair share of nice size 10 to 12 pound largemouths as well. So far I can't seem to get them excited about the 200, I know it's me and not the lure. I'm looking for any tips, help, advice, whatever you guys can give me that pertains to this bait. Are there any mods I should make? Do you have a certain retrieve that seems to work for you more often than others? I know there isn't a perfect retrieve for every situation I'm simply looking for anything I can use to help me gain some confidence in this lure. The only things I've done to it are change the split rings to Owners in the same size as stock and switched out the trebles for ST-56's also same size as the originals. Oh and the color I have is Warden. The spots down here love chartreuse so I chose this color because of it's light chartreuse lateral line and all chartreuse tail. Lastly I've been fishing it on 20# CXX. Thanks in advance for anything you can give me guys, and remember, take it easy on me I'm new at this.

The X-Ship feature (double bearing supported pinion gear) helps to increase the cranking power slightly. Helps to hold everything in alignment better and that translates to a small increase in gear efficiency.

I'm not certain about the Record series but I did just recently pick up a set of bearings from Smooth Drag for my C4 5601. They are 4x10x4 and they seem to be pretty good bearings. I've yet to fish the reel with them installed as I'm still waiting on a few other parts to arrive. I'm adding a dual bearing cog wheel and dual bearing levelwind kit with ceramic pawl to see just how much performance I can get out of a Garcia round reel. This was my very first baitcast reel and I'd since moved on to Shimano reels and never fished my old Abu anymore but after doing a few upgrades to my Shimano's and realizing the difference they made in performance and at the same time knowing about all the upgrade possibilities there are for Abu round reels I just had to give it a shot and see how it would go. So far so good. I've also had very good luck with Boca bearings. Boca has super customer service and they stand behind their bearings should you ever have a problem. I'm sure you could find the exact bearings you're looking for on their site but if you can't you can give them a call and I know they'll get you set up with just what you need.

Shimano did make a 201E5. I have 4 Citica 201E's and considered very strongly doing a gear change on one of them to the lower ratio for use with deep cranks. Decided against that though because the 6 ratio that came in the Citica has no problem with them. That's also something to keep in mind if you already have a 201E7, the 6 ration gears from the Citica (and now the CH E series) will fit right in there. Very easy to do and the best I remember it was only about $30 worth in parts needed.

I think they swapped sometime in the middle of production. I had two brand new 300E's that had "MALAYSIA" stamped on the reel seat But i do remember my 200e7 had a Japan stamp. could be wrong, but i remember mine being malaysia models. Geoff At the time I posted, I didn't even have them anymore and bought two 300DSV's. The Malaysia was a sticker, and not embossed like the others. Could have been a weird coincidence. All the ones I've serviced have been Japan made. Geoff Thanks for taking the time to clear that up for me. Like I said earlier I wasn't trying to ruffle any feathers with my question, I was just curious.

hookedup, thank you for your reply. I'm under the exact impression as you so that's why I found it very interesting that flyforfish21 said he purchased 2 that were made in Malaysia.

I know this is a really old topic but I'm new and going through all the info and came across this. This is the first I've heard of the 300 Curado's being made anywhere but Japan. I just purchased my 301E early this year and it's made in Japan. I really, really don't want this to come across wrong, especially since I'm new but are you sure you weren't mistaken? It isn't a big deal at all, the only reason I'm even interested in this is because as I said this is the first I'd heard about them not being made in Japan. Thanks for the great site guys, just starting to get into the bigger baits.