Mate, I need to give you instruction on spousal negotiation skills! YOU get the $685, she gets the $200.00 (RIGHT Jody!? )

Reely, reely well done! WOOOHOOOO!

What were your GOOD numbers?

Colin

I have a shimano nexave and daiwa heartland rod for my light combo. The nexave you should be able to get for $100 and the rod was a little bit more, but the dropshots for example are $100. There are a few other reels for that price in the shimano range (e.g. the symetre, but i didnt like it as it has a spare graphite spool which is not good with braid). You should get some braid to spool it up, perhaps 4lb stuff. The nexave has a second spool free which you could fill with mono. The braid'll cost you an extra $30 on top of your budget, so perhaps some neck massages or a promise of a cooked fish meal might widen it just enough to get the line as well . There should be a few rods at around $80, but really at $100 theres a lot of range so you can get yourself a decent graphite rod. Oh, that reminds me, I did see a nice shimano rod at campbells for $80, well, nice because it was that matte dark grey finish .

Oceanside, campbells, bluewater, all should look after you and spool your line as well. Sometimes they'll give you $10 off the combo, or $10 off each if you're really nice.

I'm not an expert (far from), but I did ask heaps and heaps of questions and do a fair bit of research, as well as spent hours in the shop, so thats gotta count for something right? :p

edit: forgot to mention, you might want to pick up a mag while you're there, I think this one would be best: magasine

thanks for the advice hlokk

Great mag

Watch for my post on sunday telling you all I have won 19,000,000 ( now what to buy first )

 Forgot to mention. I was having a look at a daiwa (forget the model), which seemed quite nice, but the shimano had a spare spool, as well as a deeper spool which cinched the deal for me (as I wanted 4lb and 12lb on it so the rod/reel combo was more versatile).

I think the daiwa was a bit more expensive, but the hardbodyz cy looks good (several features, like gyrobalance, Ti lip, two CRBBs. Also says it has digigears which is odd as i thought it was only on more expensive reels.

The bluewater and campbells site (also gotya but it doesnt have as much stuff) are good to browse through to get an idea of what you want so you know what you want to look at when you go in. 

The three shimano reels to look at in the $100 range are the nexave, the sedona and the symmetre. The sedona and the symmetre have some ARB's. Forgot why I got the nexave over the sedona though. was a 2500 size btw

--------------- 

Always interested in someone to go fishing with

Hell Simon, we've been buying slick pics for two years and won zilch! I've done the maths, so as a winner of $885.00, you owe me $0.02 for my contribution

So I got really technical and put 45 screwed up pieces of paper in a bowl and drew them out 24 times, each time carefully screwing the pulled numbers back into a little ball and redrawing them.

Yeah I know, I need help. .

My only saving grace is that I did that exercise once and we use the same set of numbers. 

Nothing like deploying Information Technology.....and that was NOTHING like deploying....

Colin

im in the 19mil draw tonight 2 systems 10 and 2 slikpix yyeeehhhaaaaaaa
brenz

You can buy a nice Daiwa reel or Pflueger and match it with a Berkley drop shot rod or similar........many options Simo!

* Oceanside- Advice, Knowledge, Experience....that's our difference *

Owner/Operator "Oceanside Tackle & Marine"
364 South Street, O'Connor, Perth Ph# 9337 5682

I like the dropshot rods. As Ryan said there are lots of options and he would know.