If money were truly no object, then I would have to try a Van Staal or a Zeebaas (both of those are spelled correctly, BTW.)
But since I don't want to spend the kind of money that will buy a decent rifle on a reel, my go to salt water inshore spinner for years has been the original Daiwa Black Gold, BG15. They are not elegant, but they are tough. I cannot say I use them as hard as some, but people I know who use equipment seriously, the late Billy Sandifer for one, speak highly of the original Black Golds. I keep thinking Daiwa is going to quit making them, but so far they have not. I guess they have a loyal following.
I have been getting into surf fishing and one of the more knowledgeable and still alive people I know, Nick Meyer of Breakaway Tackle Development, likes the newer Daiwa BG (confusing, I know) reels. They do have a lot of features for the money. I've a BG5000 I like a lot, but haven't used hard enough to recommend. That said, the Alan Hawk BG review mentioned earlier is as complete a reel review as you will ever want to read. I'm a PhD engineer, and I made a copy of it for my records. That said, I still bought a surf sized original Black Gold BG60 to put back in case Daiwa ever quits making the series. (I think I have enough BG15 reels to last me.)
If you want to learn from the folks that use stuff hard, read the surf fishing forums. The old Penn "Greenie" series and the almost identical SS series also have a following, and rightly so.
Finally, the first thing I do to any spinning reel is remove the parts that automatically close the bail. Learn to close the bail by hand and your spinning reel endeavors will go a lot smoother. Some remove the bail altogether, but I don't think that is necessary if you convert to manually closing the bail.
Hope this helps,
Gun Doc
you from corpus?
