J Francho

Happy Birthday!

EU Milfoil, zebra mussels, quagga mussels, round gobies.....all made fishing better. It's impossible to get rid of them, or control them. I'll take the improved fishing.

Those are great!

I don't recall the insurance company ever asking about the CG plate on my boat. My Bullet has an "unlimited" rating, as far as HP goes.

I use lots of braking, and very little spool tension. The rest is just my thumb. A flip is a really close range technique. You can zip the bait in and out of a precise spot repeatedly. Sometimes it takes many flips to irritate a fish into biting. I usually pitch, but if I see a target that is close, I'll flip to it, rather than back off, and pitch at it. It's easier to flip to a target that's 6' away than to pitch at it. I can generally pitch a bait more than 20 yards. Flips are generally just a bit more than the rod length.

"Match the hatch" is a phrase I truly dislike when referring to bass fishing. I associate the phrase to trout fishing during a major bug hatch. Trout can get crazy selective, and if you can't emulate that hatch, you aren't getting bit. Even then, it rarely occurs, since I generally fish for trout in the winter, and there aren't too many hatches going on. There are times when bass are keyed in on a specific forage, and it isn't wrong to try to emulate that forage. But that forage has rarely just "hatched." A specific situation is when big schools of alewife congregate in spring, and smallies are after them. drop shot Gulp! minnows and smaller, "finesse" sized umbrella rigs are good baits to try. Then again, sometimes you have to play the "opposite game," as mentioned above. That's just one piece of info where you'll always get conflicting info. It boils down to fishing being part science and part art. The science aspect will only take you so far. Then you'll have to be creative - artistic, if you will. Try things, until you can put together a pattern for success.

Nice looking jigs. The screw lock is interesting. Are these wire tied? Couldn't tell from the pics. Kind of expensive, though.

This crude video shows me pitching, flipping, and something I call a flip-punch, where I smack the bait through heavy mats. No cats were harmed.

I do load the rod when I pitch. Maybe swing the bait a little harder than most? It's a flip where I don't really load the rod. At any rate, I'm just as likely to sidearm, roll, pitch, or flip when I have a bait tied on. In that respect, I try to stay within the ratings.

Mud Puppy. They get big.

There's over 300 species of crawfish, or "crayfish" as they're called up here. Many, many, many, different colors and patterns.

Not in heavy weed cover. I tie direct. If I'm pitching into submerged wood, then yes. It helps to feel the knot rub a branch, knowing your bait is a 18" or so behind, and you can gently hop it over that branch. Also, if you do get hung up, you can break off without completely disturbing the location.

I use an Okuma TCS Mat Daddy for pitching punch rigs and other 1-2 oz. baits. I reviewed it here. I really like the rod for this, and it wasn't super expensive. http://www.bassresource.com/fishing_lures/mat-daddy-helios-review.html

You can pitch with just about any rod. What kind of baits and weights are you looking to pitch? That will determine what rod you want.

Stay away from micro guides, if you're tough on gear.

I have a "comfortable cadence" I use when retrieving moving baits. For large billed cranks, I prefer a slower reel. I don't really like a high speed reel, even though it should be as simple as slowing down. It's a preference I developed over time. I'm not the only one with that preference. So much so, reel makers keep making slow reels, and marketing them for this.

Crestliner makes a nice boat. Fit and finish is really tight on these boats. G3 (Yamaha) also a good boat worth considering. Never been in a Triton tin, but I've been in plenty of their glass boats. The ones I drove took some "driving" to prevent chine walk at high speeds.

Mike's a great guy, and he'll make just about anything for you. Prices are right, too.

Off Topic, but I've rebuilt several of these. Often, I find a donor reel on eBay. Are there any parts broken, or is it just in several pieces you can't reassemble?

Cardiff is a great choice. It's a simple process to upgrade to a Carbontex drag, if your even slightly mechanically inclined. I believe the drag washers are less than $10 from Smooth Drags.

Just another means to an end. With the blossoming segment in the marketplace, you're going to see some interesting offerings that on the surface, might look like they don't make sense, but might be useful to a niche market. Some of the more creative solutions make it into mainstream offerings. I could see fishing resorts having a livery of these.

I don't see anything on the site that would sway me away from Mike Siebert's offerings.

For perspective, I have 6# Tatsu on a spinning reel that is now 3 seasons old, as part of a long term test. The 5 season old 6# InvisX will be replaced with the Finesse fluorocarbon, since I'm satisfied with the InvisX result. It doesn't need changing, but I want to try the new line. Fluoro does not degrade like mono. I don't recommend that any push it this far, but just wanted to chime in results on a couple of specific line brands.

Sounds like a couple places where deep milfoil have zebra mussels growing on. Braid doesn't always work here. Awful stuff. Oneida has emergent weeds, called "water willow." Stuff actually has bark like stems. With zebes growing on them. Ugh. Can't relate to the size of those fish, but I can relate to the problems with cover.

Like most other pad hull boats. My first Xpress ride was in an X19, a 12 mile run on Lake Ontario in the standard long rollers that toss most boats around. Rode fine, can get rough in chop over 2', like any bass boat.