I bought this rod and reel as a birthday gift for my six year old son, because he wanted a “big boy” fishing rod to replace his little kiddy combo. I’ve had good luck with the Zebco 33 spincasting reels in the past, so I thought I was getting a quality product. The rod itself was fine, but the reel was total garbage. The drag did not work at all out of the package, and even catching a small bluegill with a pull drag. My son had to clamp the line to the pole and basically pole the fish in by hand. I had already thrown away the packaging before we discovered this when we took it out for his first fishing trip. I tried to take the reel apart and figure out how to fix it, but it’s so poorly constructed that the parts just fell out and broke. Ive repaired and rebuilt all kinds of reels before and never encountered one that’s so cheaply made. In my attempt to fix the drag, one of the plastic parts that held the reel together cracked. It was such a frustration that I just threw the stupid thing in the trash. I’ll repurpose the rod for an ultralight spinning setup for myself, but I ended up having to buy another new combo for my son. I can’t believe Zebco puts their name on this garbage. Again, I like the full size Zebco 33’s. But this particular micro 33 reel with the trigger is very poor quality.
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