Guys I'm gonna wreck your world a little.....I work in manufacturing and we have done contracted work for a group named PureFishing.


I'd never heard of them before but when we started receiving their products I was flabbergasted.

Turns out that all of these brands that we so often pit against each other are ALL made by the same company:


Shakespeare
Abu Garcia
Berkley
Mitchell
Penn
Plfleuger
Fenwick
Ugly Stick
All Star

Fishing lines:
Berkley
Stren
SpiderWire
Sebile

The former owner was Newell Brands who you probably know better was Rubbermaid....they sold Pure Fishing to an equity group in 2018.

Sadly I cannot find an American reel maker anymore for conventional reels. There's a group called IRT out of Pennsylvania but they are higher end reels $500-$1000 for a casting reel.

Just can't compete with that Chinese labor. Anyways I just wanted to point out that lot of your "favorites" vs "least favorites" are actually made by the same manufacturer