J Francho

I use both. The only reason to go tungsten is if that head is not available in lead, or lead is banned in your area. Otherwise, it doesn't matter much.

You answered your own question saying there are bowfin in there, and were using braid.

Palomar and Uni work fine. I've been using a Uni for almost a decade because it's simple to tie for me.

Happy New Year! 2020 was fine by me - got engaged, had another son, found out I'll be a grandfather in 2021. It's all good.

The dock at our cottage was on prime water: a nice slope to 15' in front of the dock, with a drop to around 25 a short cast away. There was slop between the docks, and a brush pile just off the corner of the dock. As kids, you could pull sunny after sunny out all day long with small bits of night crawlers we caught the night before. Night time in spring was for bullhead, which was always fun since we got to stay up way past bedtime to fish. You could catch pretty much anything from that dock, and the occasional bass would eat those crawler bits. Eventually I started casting lures to the neighboring docks for bass and pike. Weather permitting, we took the boat out to the "big lake" which meant leaving the bay to Lake Ontario, to fish for smallies with softshells. At around 10, I was allowed to take the rowboat or canoe to search water nearby for bass. Sometime around 12, a guy in a fancy bass boat gave me some bullet weights, bass hooks, and Culprit curly tail worms and showed me how to make a Texas Rig. That was the beginning of the end - I could now fish that slop I always avoided. From then on, it was all bass.

Some people don't like how it feels, but there's no sticking, no freezing up, doesn't even matter if you don't loosen them up in storage. They are very consistent. The feel when the drag slips is a little different. A little like the difference between mono and braid running through the guides without the sound, if that makes any sense. It has worked for me as well as many customers of mine.

I run dry Carbontex in all spinning reels (which all but one are OG CI4 Stradics) and have had zero maintenance to do on the drags in almost a decade.

My second largest NY LMB is from prespawn, a particularly warm April. The rest of the top five are from peak summer, mid July to mid August. Mostly caught in the middle of the day. My biggest SMB came in early winter/late fall. A couple came during spawn, but again mostly mid summer.

Run the line through two holes in the spool.

Pink is my second favorite color

I have cosmic powers

Way better ratio than trying to be a rock star

I use my new laptop. It has all the things.

I live right next to a cell tower, and get no LTE service, lol. My new phone has the 5G alien gamma rays feature and comes in faster than my WiFi, even while wearing a tin foil hat. Go figure.

I did the first zoom call with my iPhone, and didn't use any ear buds. Worked fine, same as a FaceTime call. The iPhone has a speaker and a microphone. If you want earbuds that plug into the firewire jack, they sell them.

I taught kayak fishing classes for a bit at the local paddle center. Part of it was "classroom" instruction on the patio overlooking the bay, and part on the water. In a sense, I was a "guiding" which meant showing where to cast, what was going on under the water, pointing out the bald eagle nests, watching out for goose nests, getting lures out of trees, etc. It was always a special moment when a new angler caught a nice fish in these short two hour on the water classes. Having pressure to to get people on fish every trip out would suck the fun out of fishing. Just my random, off topic thoughts on the subject. Yes, NY State has a rigorous program for certification for just guiding from shore. Get into boats, and it's another ball of wax. I don't know of any actual full time guides, though I'm sure there is some. Fishing is so seasonal here, I can't see it ever being a real, full time income. All that said, I'd take whomever wanted to go out and fish with me for free, if they hit me up nicely.

I did it on my flip phone with the big buttons.

It's less complicated than making a post here.

Not in this state, lol.

Start a Grumman owners' thread. I'm sure eventually someone will come on to thumbs down your boat.

I think he lost count and exaggerated a few times or more. Not buying it. I have no doubt he has caught exponentially more fish than myself.

It's almost clear on the other side of the state, 6 hours away, so not really my neck of the woods. Suffice it say, get a NY and VT license, and fish the VT side up north if you can, for brown fish. Otherwise, stay south near Crown Point for green fish. There's guys up here that fish Champ regularly that can give more accurate advice. It's 5-6 years since I've been there. My last tournament out of CP, I took a gamble and ran north for green fish. I caught a really nice limit of google eyes, but they didn't count at weigh in. Saved my weekend with 22-ish lbs. of green fish fishing near the launch, ferry, and mill.