Impressions: The most striking thing about this reel is its unusual but well composed blue and gold finish. What better reel to add to our TT arsenal than a reel bearing our own colors? The most notable feature on this souped up CVZ is the externally adjustable sideplate. Traditionally, on Daiwa's CVZ and CVX reels, one must remove the sideplate by unscrewing it in order to reach the MagForce V adjustment dial. For those who like to make adjustments on the fly, this is a major inconvenience. Daiwa Japan offers after market sideplates to alleviate this issue, but their Millionaire Bay Casting Special comes equipped with this feature allowing for a full eleven steps of brake force adjustment.

Setup: We matched our Bay Casting Special up with a custom fiberglass cranking rod built on a Seeker B706S blank by none other than George Roth of George's Custom Rods. The rod was ordered with this reel in mind and is complete with blue and gold trim to match the reel. We spooled the reel with 12lb Yozuri Hybrid and took it out for an extended test against our local Striped Bass and Black Bass populations.

Casting: The Bay Casting Special is among the best casting reels we've tested. The externally adjustable MagForce dial is very easy to use and we were able to cast lipless cranks and rip baits great distances with little to no effort. The lightweight Gigas spool starts up very easily and spins at a nice, consistent pace during each cast. We ran into virtually no trouble casting these baits into and across wind currents but had to make minor adjustments to the cast control when throwing lower weight cranks to about three eights of an ounce in these same conditions. Still, in about three and a half months on the water, we ran into no birdsnest problems that required respooling of line or even retirement of the reel for the day. The Bay Casting Special is a smooth and consistent performer when it comes to casting.

Retrieving: Our Bay Casting Special measured in at about twenty-three (23) inches per turn. This was more than we expected and on the upper end of quickness for a round baitcaster of this size. We found this retrieve very suitable for working lipless cranks and rip baits where a faster retrieve reel is beneficial, but it served well for medium to shallow diving cranks as well. Gearing on this reel is very smooth aided by the bearing supported knobs in the handle. This smooth retrieve allowed our concentration to drift to the vibration and action of our lure rather than the soundness of the reel and had much to do with the extended tour of our tests on this particular reel.

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