Rest In Pieces Quantum Cabo PTs

Almost 6 years ago today, I got a shiny new Quantum Cabo PTs CBC31 for my birthday. It’s been my go-to reel for chasing muskie and pike, and has even seem some saltwater use. Despite a few minor out of the box issues, the reel has performed incredibly and caught me some of my biggest freshwater fish. Last summer I noticed a strange clicking noise each time I cranked the reel. Besides the noise, I could feel a small bump with each rotation. This wasn’t an issue until this season when the bump got more severe and even stopped the reel from cranking when reeling slowly. I took the reel apart to examine the damage and figured a good cleaning would sort it out. It was worse then expected though, the main drive gear was cracked! I looked online and I found the part though Zebco’s support site and made the call to order the $7 part, as well as some addition parts so I could get the reel running and looking like new. I got the parts in the mail yesterday tore the box open, excited to rebuild my beloved reel. All the lovely new parts I ordered were there, except the one I really needed, the drive gear. After a quick look at my invoice, I scanned the part list and saw “B/O” beside the part number. Back ordered. I guess that means that I’m going to have to wait a little bit longer to get my reel back!

The Crack

After struggling to pull apart the reel due to seized up parts, the main gear cracked in three!

Continue reading “Rest In Pieces Quantum Cabo PTs”…

Cheap Quantum Cabo PT Reel!

I’ve owned a Quantum Cabo CBC31PTs for a few years now and its been a solid all around reel for pike and muskie. I was hoping to carry these in our OpenSky store, but it looks like Quantum has discontinued them. If you are in the market for a solid baitcast reel, Cabelas looks like they are clearing out old inventory and have dropped the price of the Cabo to less then $100, thats $85 cheaper then the normal price! Unfortunately for me, they only have right hand models left…

Click the image to find out more about this sale.

Back From New Jersey

It’s been over a week since I returned from New Jersey, the so called Armpit of America. Before I had visited Jersey I’d heard several stories about the filth and the smell, and I’m not just talking about the freakshows. I flew into Newark International, and at first glance Jersey lived up to the stories I had heard. After a week in Jersey, my opinion of the state changed greatly.

I worked all week, but as soon as the weekend arrived, I woke up early and took a 45 minute drive down highway, exiting at a small town name Hope. Ironically I was hoping to catch some muskie. I met up with a fellow Muskies Inc member name Cal, and after a quick introduction we headed out to Mountain Lake. When we arrived at the lake I was amazed how small it was. A lake this size I would usually refer to as a pond, but regardless of its size, Cal assured me that there muskies here that exceeded 50 inches.

One look at his Jeep and boat and I knew we’d get along just fine.

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Dispelling the Rumors of My Death

Though I’ve been missing in action these past weeks, I’m definitely not dead. In fact I’ve been hard at work the whole time, though admittedly some of it (okay, most of it) has been less than enjoyable. However, I’ve gotten a lot done, a large portion of it will be appearing here in the next month and Clive has done an outstanding job at keeping the site updated. Go Team Fury!

I’ve just finished uploading all of our awesome fishing videos to Vimeo. It’s yet another online video sharing site with a few nuances that will make the average video producer extremely happy. I will still continue to upload our videos to YouTube, but only because it’s so popular and will expose more people to our videos. Vimeo on the other hand is a much smaller site, and offers a greater range of features in my opinion.

First, Vimeo videos are much higher quality, and after uploading a few videos I noticed that Vimeo did not squash and distort our wide screen videos. That alone was reason enough for me to upload the rest of our videos, but there’s more… Vimeo also offers a full download of the original source video (the video I uploaded), and they’re already ahead of the game offering a high definition video channel. Here’s to hoping I can get my hands on an HD camera for 2008!

They’ve even got cool widgets, like the one below, you can embed on your site.

* Note: It seems the Little Vermilion video I uploaded is still being processed and may not play through this widget.

Little Vermilion Pike Meet Clive’s Custom Spinnerbaits

If you haven’t read our Little Vermilion Lake 2007 fishing logs, prepare to get pumped up in preparation for reading it! Most of you know by now that Clive has been building his own custom in-line spinnerbaits, not to mention fishing with them almost non-stop, and there is a good reason for that. His lures have been catching fish everywhere he goes, bass, muskie, even a few pike at Toronto Islands.

It is undoubtedly even more exciting to catch a trophy pike on a lure you only built the night before, but the idea of having the ability to build a lure on-the-spot for the conditions your currently fishing is unheard of. Not to mention that when one of the pike at Little Vermilion Lake was hooked very deep Clive simply cut his lure in half and rebuilt it in less than 5 minutes right on the water. I was very impressed.

Without further delay, may I present to you our first of many videos from Little Vermilion Lake. In this video Clive shows off a few of the many fish he caught on his custom lures, none of the fish shown were caught on anything else, and how he rebuilt his lure after having to cut it in half so he didn’t injure the pike needlessly. I think this could very well be the longest video we’ve done so far, and I think it goes without saying that we couldn’t put together a video without at least one of those trophy northerns from Little Vermilion Lake.

I should also point out that Clive gave this lure away to an OFN’er we met on the dock as we were just leaving Little Vermilion. I hope the lure did just as well for him, and I really hope to see some photos and hear his thoughts. So if you’re that guy please contact us!

Of course not everyone has the time to build their lures, or the money for the initial sets of hardware. Still, I’m sure you’d like to get your hands on one of these trophy producing lures and maybe you can. If you’re seriously interested in these lures leave a comment here or email Clive and let him know. I’m sure we’ll see an article all about building custom lures from Clive, and maybe even a price list of some sort in the near future.

Finally, for those of you who would rather see that video again in full resolution (and with better audio) you can download it from our site.

Clive’s Custom Spinnerbaits – Vermilion Lake 2007 (Xvid, 720×480, 128kbps audio, 100MB)

Quantum Cabo PTs CBC31

My lovely fiancee was kind enough to get me exactly what I wanted for my birthday this year, a new reel! I have had my eye on the Quantum Cabo bait cast reel for a couple of years now. The blue and grey design immediately caught my attention when I first saw it. After researching the reel I learned that it is not only good looking, but remarkably strong. I have spooled the reel with 65lb PowerPro line and will be using it mainly for musky this year. I’ll have a review written about the reel once I find a rod to match it up with, stay tuned!