J Francho

Somewhere between 1 and 4 pounds. Nice fish!

Nice work, AJ. That's a slob! Had a 55%'er in the boat yesterday, but I didn't catch her. Nice to see some big brown fish out of Lake Ontario.

That's a Largemouth.

A+. I love Erie. Upped my personal best there two years ago. My old PB had stood for almost a dozen years.

I know JUST what you mean. Like trying to explain steering a fish with "side pressure" with words. You kind have to see it.

No it doesn't. It only changes your leverage on the fish. Resistance of the drag is relatively constant, save for situations where it gets wet, or overheats (a possibility in salt). You can easily prove this to yourself by attaching a spring scale to a fixed object, tying to that and measuring the force applied using different angles.

I hear you. I'll be in the boat tonight. Have to see how bad I munched the prop last weekend. Nice $200 screw up.

Five o'clock can't come fast enough...

With a big fish, I'll actually dial the drag back a bit. Nothing worse than getting 99% of the job done, and the fish tries to take off on a short leash. Not so much a bass issue, but with northerns, steelhead, and salmon it is.

OK, "bonded" then. Only adds to the blurring. Personally, I don't see the difference. Sounds like marketing terms to me.

Could be the difference between bass and crappie models. The bass series is that camo finish and comes in Hyperlift, while the crappie series has carpet and is not the hyperlift hull.

Just get orange or yellow, and color 1/2 the spool with a black sharpie.

Stealing your fast food!

Hope your rabies shots are up to date!

Copolymer is a mono filament line made with two different materials. To further blur the picture, there are also coated lines, like Yo-Zuri Hybrid and P-Line Fluoroclear.

You can't paint all copoly with the same brush. You can pretty much use them for all your fishing.

The Xplorer series have a fast taper, but honestly, mine doesn't seem that fast. It's not like a Tracker. Probably close to the G3. Anyway, the only boat I've been in that goes shallower than mine is my buddy's 20' Bullet. The only difference is I'll take mine through stumps and over laydowns, lol.

Maybe I'll get my caliper out, and get down to the thousandth of an inch? It's an H18 w/ Merc 115.

It used to be, you wanted a "high speed" 5:1 reel for cranking. Now you have to buy s slow 5:1 reel for it, lol.

My 18' Hyperlift floats in about 8-9" water, full fuel and livewell.

Yes, JJ's or Megastrike, regardless.

Between those two, it doesn't matter.

That is about the only advantage I can see with a rear drag. Abu used to make a spinning reel with what they called a "middle" drag. The stack was behind the spool, instead in front of it. The base of the spool was a dial that adjusted the resistance. The stack was huge, like 9 elements, and at least 2" in diameter. Greater surface area, easy to adjust, and still had push button spool swaps. These were Swedish built reels. I guess that's just too complex for China to make.

I use a longer 52" model due to the rougher water I fish in. Keeps the prop head in the water. They're quickly adjustable if you run shallow, and don't get in the way. 42-45" is standard for bass boats.

After like 5000 reels serviced, I can honestly say I've never had to replace a broken or worn spring in a bait caster. Lost a few? Sure. But that us a part that doesn't fail.