Search for a new scale.

[keithdog]

As most of you regulars know, I lost my Berkley Digital Lip Grip scale recently when a large pike I had caught started lunging back towards the water with his head, taking my scale with him. Now I'm replacing it. Problem is, I am torn between two scales. The one I had, the Berkley Digital Lip Grip and the new Rapala 50 pound Digital Touch Screen scale. Both sell for $49.99. The Berkley scale has received many bad customer reviews regarding it's accuracy and poor quality and failures. I myself had to buy two before I got one that worked. Once I had the second one, it seemed to always work fine. It does have an annoying feature though. You have to push the button for weighing the fish before you land a fish with it if you want the weight to be shown when pulling the fish from the water. If you land the fish without pushing the button first, you have to remove it, and then press the scale button and then put the fish back on. Plus it won't float which if it did, I would still have mine. However, it has recieved good reviews as well, and the lip grip is sure handy! Especially when the bass or pike has a mouth full of trebles.


The Rapala digital Touch Screen scale, has overwhelmingly recieved possitive customer reviews and has a higher rating from both Cabelas and BPS. In fact, it's the only scale which sells for $50.00 and under that has consistently possitive customer feedback with the exception of a couple people. The reviews at the Gander Mountain site were not so possitive. Users of the Rapala Touch Screen scale talk about it being the most accurate scale they have used, and that it is built very well. AND it floats! It also has a few more bells and whistles as you can store the weights of 8 fish, it has an air temp readout, total catch weight, ect. A good tournament scale. But, despite it's possitive points, it is not a lip grip style scale. Thats not nessasarily a deal breaker by any means, but it's something to think about.

So I'm torn between possibly a lesser quality scale that has a lip grip feature, or a better quality scale that does not have the lip grip feature. I did notice on my last Berkley Lip Grip scale, the weight shown would change each time I would weight the fish, and the weight would move around frequently while the fish hung there motionless. So I would have to average the weights to get what I felt was the most accurate.

So what would you do? I know Dean has the same scale I had, so I'm hoping he chimes in here.