Alvey vs baitcaster

I've seen few fishermen using a baitcaster for pier fishing and just one for surf fishing. As I understand there are benefits in using a baitcaster such as casting distance and accuracy. But the cons is the learning curve.

I also met couple of people using an Alvey outfit and my cousin keeps bashing around with the pros of using Alveys. He then bought some Alvey gears from an old lady whose husband was a fishermen and gave me an old 630 A1 reel. 

I managed to have my hands on a old Shakespeare Sigma Series baitcaster reel and bought a cheap rod on eBay for testing it. After a whole session practicing it, I think baitcasters are not made for me, it feels ackward with the weight on top of the rod and too troublesome to learn the cast. I also fish more often late nights or early morning before sunrise so it makes it even harder to learn.

So my next target is the Alvey. I met a friend on Fish Raider / Facebook who is an Alvey user so I could borrow his outfit for testing and I immediately felt its potential. A bit weird at the beginning but much better than a baitcaster for my type of use.

So there I went on my favorite online store and got myself an Alvey ROD650GTS. It's a 13.4 ft telescopic rod which seems very sturdy. 13.4 ft is to my opinion the high extreme for me, but their next option down is a tad too short for my liking.

So there we go:

I'll be testing it soon in real life conditions, lets hope the fish are up for some good fighting.

Any tip is welcome!