Dwight Hottle

Sounds like you need a moderate action rod to help keep them hooked up rather than a too loose drag. I would suggest you change your hooks over to Mustad triple grip trebles or Owner STX Zowire hooks. Big smallies will win the fight occasionally when hooked up with treble hooked baits they can swing back & forth when they jump. The right hook & right action rod will improve your landing ratio. Look at the bright side. You are hooking up the bigger fish you just need to improve your landing ratio.

Ima Flit 120 LC pointer 128Sp LC pointer 100Sp Duo Realis 120Sp

I'm not a computer nerd at all but if you look at the analyst community the differences in market share & company performance going forward clearly favors AMD over Intel. AMD has been eating Intel's lunch for well over a year. Instead of looking at historical rating consider the underdogs recent rise to superiority.

Medium heavy moderate bait caster or spinning. That gives you coverage up to 1oz baits. Since you want distance use light braid like 10lb on spinning or 20lb on bait caster. Evergreen International shower blow 125 weighs 15/16 oz. comes with the best hooks made, super sticky. Also like the Duo Realis pencil 110 weighs 5/8oz and casts like a bullet. Set you drag so it barely slips on a very hard hook set. If you can wade in at all it will help get better distance than casting from shore.

Welcome aboard.

Congrats. The smile tells it all.

Most nets have replaceable bags. Replace your rubberized netting with a no tangle netting and solve your problem with minimal cost.

Sounds doable.

Yes. There is no substitute for time on the water no matter what your level of expertise.

Good one sir.

I learned a long time ago to respect the potential problem. Simply use a boga grip to take them out of the net & hold them while removing the trebles with pliers. If it's a good one you can grab a quick weight too.

It’s infectious.

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Welcome back. I always figured you were a good stick.

Yes when you can't find smallies on the graph & can't find them fishing where they should be always track the bait because the smallies will be close by.

Congrats on the PB’s. If you really want to know better start carrying a scale.

My experience on fishing Erie for smallies proved to me that most smallies we caught did not show up on the graph. Either the fish were suspended or moved out of the boats transducer cone as the boat moved over them. When we did mark smallies they were always tight to the bottom in numbers. Those fish we could & did catch with blade baits, jigging spoons & jigs or deep diving jerk baits or cranks. This movement out of the cone was in deeper water from 15-25 mostly. Fish tight to the bottom showing on the graph were almost always 20’ deep or deeper. So don’t be afraid to fish for fish you don’t see on the graph.

Sweet looking. Black & brown makes for good goby imitations. The erie smallies always liked that color combo.

Hawgtech

That pretty well covers it.

I'm sold on Suffix Advance.

I had some peel or disintegrate on me this week. They started bleeding color as well.

Beautiful dog. I'm sure he has left you with a lot of memories. My condolences.

Congrats on the new PB.