WesMoran

Additional Update: Looked for additional knob donor options last night. Noticed that Lew’s Custom Shop cork and EVA knobs have screw in caps as well. After inspecting some today, they are too large as well. Found that Academy carries carbon replacement handles branded under h2ox that seem to have similar caps, but upon inspecting those, it appears maybe those caps are glued in place. So those are also not suitable donors.

Quick update for anyone looking… I picked up WCZ Flat Knobs and Mk-1 wheel caps, thinking I’d be able to find 13 knobs as donors for the sleeves. As of 2/2024, they’re relatively unavailable. What you will find is a bit high priced at $35 for a pair of knobs, or $40 for a complete handle. Mike had said in one of his older videos that if you find the Mk-1 caps available through certain outlets (other than DRT-USA or WCZ), and feel like it’s a good deal, then be cautious as they’re often listing one cap. I unfortunately didn’t catch this until my first order shipped from Japan Tackle. So, I’m basically $80 into caps after paying their $26 in flat rate shipping on ordering a second cap. At the time it was one of the only locations I could find them, and I did have other Daiwa knobs in my first order. On another note; I had a Ardent handle floating around with very similar knobs. While they do have a threaded cap similar to the 13 knobs, and the thread pitch looks identical, the ID of the threaded portion of the sleeve is about 0.5-1mm larger. So I’d be apprehensive about ordering any similar, generic, Chinese cork/eva knobs on ebay, as I’m sure they’re all produced in the same factory and are similar. Picture below to illustrate what they look like.

Just my own personal 2¢, without having read through the rest of the opinions, but I won’t be using CXX any longer... I finally managed to buy my first pack of Citizen 6” off the site, and 11 cast in on 17lb CXX I cast off. It failed almost 20ft from the knot, no backlash occurred, and I couldn’t find any abrasions in the 20 or so feet after the snap point. I’ll only be casting fluro to braid or straight braid from now on. I was using lighter 12lb CX on shakey heads with great experience. Really like dragging a shakey head on the bottom, and pulling the light tight and giving a few pops at the tip when I’m fishing slow slow, really made it easy to feel when a fish picked it up. Was most recently throwing flukes on 10lb CX, but when feeling the line stretch working the bait, it started worrying me again. So I just switched that rod to 12lb Invizx. Still don’t know if I’ll run a straight fluro setup on my big softbaits, but I’m thinking not. Did pickup 25lb Abrazx though in case I make that decision.