I've caught a LOT of fish on my Shimano Convergence all over WA BC and Alaska and have been very happy with it for the money
I have always heard those Shimano's are a decent rod especially for the price.
Nice thing about the convergences is that you can outfit your entire boat for the cost of a single super expensive rod and won't cry if you break one but they fish so well you won't notice a difference.... you could spend hundreds more chasing something only the pickiest 5% of fishermen will ever notice
I stopped buying expensive rods years ago- they all die the same or get stolen... yeah there's some really nice gear out there and nothing wrong having that "special occasion" rod/reel
If I could have it my way, I'd get a convergence blank and send it off for a custom build
There's a guy in Juneau Alaska that makes the coolest craziest most awesome looking custom rods I've ever seen, I got his card in my boat somewhere, but pretty easy to find, just call the Ace hardware in Juneau and ask for the fishing desk and ask em about the local guy who makes all the cool rods- he lives in town and has a display rack there and everybody knows him
Anyway, I'd just get a custom wrap/grip/paint job done on a convergence blank and toss on an islander reel and you'd have an awesome killer personal customized rod combo around. Fill the reel to the gills with 50lbs braid and away you go- if you start with a blank get the super good ceramic guides so the braid doesn't wear a groove in the guides. I think my mooching reel has 600 yards of braid on it.... once the hooks are set very rarely do I lose a fish
It doesn't have the lifting power for big bottom fish but will take bass/rockfish, small-medium size lingcod, and the occasional chicken halibut
About the lead pouring, the sailboat junkyard in Lynden for a while was scraping old sailboat keels and pouring em into down rigger balls and ingots and it was cleaner lead than old wheel weights, don't know if he still is doing that though if anybody needed to source lead
