Sienna vs. Sedona

I only use Sienna reels on my ice rods, and I think they are just great.
I’m wondering why some of you use Sedona reels?
They cost twice as much and while I’m sure the performance and build quality are better I don’t think it’s necessary to buy the nicer reels for ice fishing.
This is coming from a guy who owns only Stella and Sustain reels for open water.

I buy the nicer reels to show off to the ladies! Bow-chicka-bow-bow!

I run Sienna’s on all but one of my winter rods, both for panfish and larger species, and I love them. They’re a great value for their cost. I have on Sedona on my main walleye rod. The Sedona’s and higher have a much better drag system, and it works much better in the cold. You could easily upgrade your drag on your Sienna’s (which is what I did) and get close to the same performance, IMO.

How do you go about doing that upgrade? Sienna is a little stiff in the cold

hamms wrote:

How do you go about doing that upgrade? Sienna is a little stiff in the cold

They sure are. I can give you two resources that I found to be very helpful.

Here is a thread that Joel Nelson created a short while back that was very useful
http://www.in-depthoutdoors.com/community/forums/topic/ice_1185548/

This is a youtube video that pretty much sums up the process, start to finish, minus the actual greasing of the reel. For that, I would recommend using Hotsauce or something similar.

Between these two resources, it was pretty simple, and really improved the performance of my Sienna’s. I don’t have as much money as I’d like to throw at top-of-the-line reels for all of my rods. This is an extremely satisfactory alternative.

Cheers!

Where do you buy those carbon washers? Hardware stores?

rednax wrote:

Where do you buy those carbon washers? Hardware stores?

http://www.smoothdrag.com/index.html

I run Siennas on most of my ice rods and the upgraded drag washer makes a huge difference and is well worth it. I’m it really smooths out the drag and its easy to do.

I notice the siennas bind up a bit under 20 degrees. I switch out the drag washers with carbontex, but in cold weather the Sedona out performs. Otherwise hard to notice a difference in good conditions.

For drag washers and grease go here. You want the 10301 model # for sienna and Sedona 500s.

http://www.biggreenfish.com/

Love my Sienna, but very surprised at how easy it locks up in the cold as well. I swapped out my drag washers with carbontex for my musky reels and am VERY impressed. Looks like I will be doing the same for my Sienna.