I fished the entire year using mainly a Penn International 975. This is a good reel for big rubber, slow rolling double 10's and top water. I thought this was going to be a better reel for getting cowgirls to move a little laster, but its not. It works great at night when you are bringing the big blades back to the boat nice and slow, but in the heat of the summer when I wanted to burn some 10's it just didn't get going fast enough. It took a lot of work to burn the big blades and I could easily tell that it wasnt meant to reel that fast.

Later in the year, I picked up a Diawa Saltist 20 for 170 bucks. I had heard a few different thoughts on these, but picked one up anyway. I used it quite a bit in August and the beginning of September and I really like it for the double 10's. It is ridiculously easy to pull the 10's around at slow and medium speeds and i thought it worked good for bringing in the 10's fast. I really liked this reel for the 10's and DC-9's. For 170 bucks I thought it has been a great deal. Now im just waiting for Patrick Chewing to bring me my new 9 footer to put the Saltist on.

I didnt try too much of anything else that was new. I picked up some Spanky double 10's and liked those and I let a buddy of mine use a custom DCG and he put 3 in the boat in one weekend using that bait. I got to net em at least.