Nice! I have an Abu ambassador but I blew it up on sturgeon
. Hahaha. I put alot of abuse in my gear. I fish alot, and sometimes I'm climbing down some serious places to fish. I'll take a pic one day when I'm climbing down the ropes and chains to get down into some lesser traveled areas of the river. We hang garden hoses down the parts that are too steep to walk and traverse the hills holding onto the hoses.... Not for the weak at heart! Haha been a baitcast guy most of my career. They call me baitcaster JJ. Using one is literally second nature to me. Lol truth be told I can barley cast a spinning rod properly. Just don't use em. The ones I do have are baitrunners primary use cats and carp. Bought the wife a pflueger president so she can fish salmon with me too. Sometimes I use it for walleye. My flagship reel (Shimano Calcutta conquest te DC 201 circa 2003) is FN old and beat right up. I've worn deep grooves into the line guide and it wears my braid now. I bet if I took every cast I made with it and put them together they'd go around the world a couple times. Needs alot of work done. Prob is parts are hard to find now....but I still use it everyday.
I'm going to buy the newer version but I have to order it from Japan and it's gona cost me about a grand.
I've fished a lot of hard places too chasing salmon in the upper Chilliwack River and Coquihalla Canyon just outside Hope, BC. Lot of close calls just to get to pools to catch a damn fish. Really developed reflexes to toss the rods before grasping at whatever there was to grasp and the old Abu sure shows it. But like an old Chevy you just replace parts and keep it well oiled and they'll run forever even if they do look ready for the scrap yard. I bent the plate inside mine when casting a heavy slinky weight hard then the release popped and locked the line mid-cast. That was $65 for the part. I've also added all the upgrades like ceramic pawl and bearing gears instead of the bushing type. I bought the new graphite drag disks but the original is still smooth so keeping them for backup. I have a couple of new line guides in the kit but still using the last replacement one. Mono doesn't seem to hurt them any but I recently got some braid. I put 10# on my spinning reel to replace the 6# mono I've used forever for fishing coho and trout tho it's landed fish up to 35# more than a few times but using in flat water out in my belly boat when targeting coho and a big old chum takes the spinner.
The 10# brain is 1thou thinner than the 6# mono and on my new 9'6" spin rod casts a 5/8oz croc like a bullet.
I'm thinking of replacing the 10# mono on the ABU with 15 or 20# braid but the mono is near new so don't want to waste it. How do you like the braid in comparison on a bait-caster?
The ABU with the fly rod grip I'm making for the new rod.
Rigged up a lathe to turn the grip now that the glued corks are set. I have them on a 1/4" ready rod with thumbscrews to clamp them together. I've just run it with a couple different files to get the corks all nice and even and can now work on shaping it. I have the drill trigger locked down and am using my variac to control the speed. Seems to work like a hot damn! This is before smoothing but they are smoothed in the upper pic.
Think I'm going to go with the half-wells grip like the one in front. The new one will be 1/2" longer than that older one but looks shorter in the pic. That rod is the one I'm replacing as it got broke tho with a new tiptop casts a 6wt line just fine.
Got a lot of cork to remove to get there yet.
