Have to agree with you on the SS1300's. It is impossible to kill one of them!
One thing that is often times overlooked when fishing bass, especially big bass deep, with spinning gear is the spool diameter for line pickup. You need to pick up as much line as possible as fast as possible to whip those big fish from what I have experienced over the years. You can get by with a narrow spool some of the time, but it will come back to bite you sometime and usually it will be on a really big fish.
