HESH2:
Last year we sold the Tica series for the first time. Was a bit up in the air until the end of the season...John did see the Camry (made in China) and is the sister to to the Stradic( about 115.00) for $79.00. The top of the line is the Tica Tauras( 230.00 to 245.00), sister of the Shimano Stellaq(645.00). Found out that the Tica company actually makes the Shimano reels or the parts, not sure which.
As a mater of fact I just finished doing a winter cleaning on a tauras for a customer, who BTW fishes extremely hard and is very hard on equipment. I was impressed on how the reel held up to this masher.
Problem was delivery of these reels. When I went to a distributor show in November the rep claimed there would not be this problem this coming year.
The other reel I was impressed with was their 7 ball bearing SPORTERA SR Series Baitrunner model for about 100 bucks.
Here is a link to their site:
http://www.ticaglobal.com/ and a picture of the Baitrunner model