abu daiwa quantum or shimano.

[88evinrude]

so i was talking to some of my fishing buddies and we got onto the discussion of our preferred rod/reel brand. they seem to prefer abu and shimano. no one really mentioned quantum or daiwa. this said ive had all four and my preference is shimano. this has got me to thinking what do you folks prefer.

 

[LarryMc]

Pflueger & Quantum spinning reels. Abu Garcia baitcasters.

 

[Wyatt]

Pflueger spinning and Abu Garcia baitcasters. All my LM and M rods are Diawa and my MH and H are Berkley.

 

[jackieblue]

Day in and day out the working hard needing less cleaning and parts replaced I find my Abu 5000-5500-6000-6500 give me the best service. This is in fishing with customers 150+ days a year. Now If I was loaded and only fished myself it would be Shimano, but I'm not. The Shimano have the smoothest drag I've ever experienced but at $3-400 a copy you deserve it. I've never picked up a Daiwa but imagine they are very good.
I have some Abu that are nearing 30 years old and still kicking, not kicking real high but still kicking. Have been rebuilt a few times and all have clickers (bait out alarms) or they have been added.

 

[kmfw160]

I have a Quantum and four BPS extremes that are pushing 20 yrs old...my sons are using them these days with no complaints.

 

[-CN-]

Pflueger spinning reels and Abu baitcasters. I just finished purging my abundance via craigslist. Sold 5 non-Pflueger/non-Abu reels and bunch of rods. The reels were Shimano, Diawa, and St croix. Didn't like any of them compared to my Pfluegers and Abus.

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[WALI4VR]

For me Shimano spinning and bait caster as well as my big Abu bait casters.

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[nowgrn4]

Always been a Penn guy since the '70's with a bunch of Shimanos and Abu's too but the last three spinners I bought are Okuma's. Been draggin' some hog's out of the lake trolling big shiners with a Okuma cd80a baitrunner and 30lb braid. Thing is a absolute beast. 33lbs drag pressure. Only $78 at WM. Best bang for the buck going. Easily the match of the Diawa, Shimano and Penn 7/0-8/0 baitrunners at half the price. It's my new favorite over the Penn 750 I was using before. Their dual drag is the bomb. Smoooooth.

Okuma trivia, they made the precision gears for Shimano reels for many years.

 

[Butthead]

What I use:

Bass
Shimano Chronarch E, Curado G
Abu Revo MGX, Revo Premier
Pflueger Patriarch XT
Pflueger spinning reels

Catfish
Abu 6500 and 5500 C3
Very straightforward reels to service. Parts and upgrades are readily available.

I own/owned Quantums and Daiwas and I wasn't ever that impressed with them. They were always just okay. I didn't like the design of the Quantum Burner 570 pt/pts and I had multiple parts wear out too quickly. I sold the Accurist, left the Energy at my inlaws to use when I visit, and the Tour MG works well but only gets used when I'm flipping or pitching into heavy cover since it has the handy switch. The older saltwater Daiwa was smooth, but too easily got a sticky thumb bar and I got tired of cleaning it so often. The new Smoke inshore baitcaster is a definite improvement over their older reels, but it's still not the best reel available for the price, IMHO.

In my experience, once you get into the $200+ reel segment, the only reel differences are weight, looks, and ergonomics. They all perform well in trained hands.

For rods, I think the Bass Pro Carbonlites are arguably the best rods on the market for the money. I own/owned expensive rods, i.e. St. Croix Avid, G.Loomis IMX and mossyback, and the Carbonlites have worked fantastically. In addition to those I regularly use Okuma Helios and C3X (lifetime warranties), 13 Fishing Envy, and a Cabelas Platinum ZX for bass. You can get great rods for around $100. If you put the time into finding the deals, you can get quality gear at very affordable prices, but it takes time and some luck.

 

[LDUBS]

Up to now I’ve pretty much stuck with major name brands but only on the budget end of their line-ups. The info in this thread, and others like it, is useful if I decide to put out some additional $$ for an upgrade. I’m actually kind of surprised there aren’t more posts about gear.

 

[skipper123]

I think Ive fished every brand out there and always seem to come back to ABU. Everybody makes a lower end reels and most make higher end reels. Spinning or bait casters. Once I moved up the $$$$ chain a little things really changed everybody seems to make good quality reels. I just sold off every brand I had at the local flee market and kept the ABU Orra S spinning reels and ABU old style round bait casters, yep always come back to ABU. After 40 years of cussing and fussing about reels I think Im gonna just stick to what works for me. ABU reels and rods as well as a few lighting rods.

 

[onthewater102]

At least as of the end of 2016 Abu, Penn & Pflueger were owned by the same parent company Pure Fishing which in turn is owned by Newell Corporation though not all the brands held by Pure Fishing Inc. are listed on Newell's site.

I've owned Abu Revo & Quantum Energy baitcasters along with BPS Pro Qualifiers. There are a lot of similarities between the BPS Pro Q's and Abu's and I've never had issues with either of them. The original bearings in my Quantum were very noisy and rough, only when I replaced them with Boca Bearings was I finally happy with that reel. A fishing buddy of mine had three Quantum Smokes in the high capacity spool both in 7:1 and 6.3:1 and they all had that same bearing noise as my energy when they casted.

There is a lot of cross manufacturing in the low profile baitcasting reel industry Dawon Engineering Co. LTD builds a lot of these reels for different brands (Abu, Lews, Browning, BPS to name a few), as you will see by their generic unbranded offerings. Not sure about Daiwa, I haven't really looked into too many of their reels. Shimano is its own company with its own manufacturing operations. Start comparing parts schematics between reels and you'll see quickly which are the same. I buy BPS Pro Qualifiers these days - perhaps one day I'll upgrade the bearings but in the last 6 years that I've been using them I've yet to have an issue with a single reel. There is a difference in my casting distance between my Revos and the BPS ones which I wholly attribute to the bearings, but a BPS Pro Q purchased on sale + a set of ABEC 7 bearings will still be much less expensive than an Abu Revo.

FWIW I disassemble, clean, lubricate and reassemble all my baitcasting reels at least once a year.

 

[onthewater102]

glitch - deleted

 

[onthewater102]

glitch - deleted

 

[gnappi]

Fish don't care how much a reel costs, a $50 reel will catch as many fish as an $800 (and up) reel.

Sure my pants shrink when I see a Shimano Stella, but they don't catch more fish than my $50 Shimano Sienna.