I Love BassResource

Where in WV are you? I'm in Madison. Careful... with cranks like that I'll be on your doorstep

I settled on an HDS 8 for now. After I sale my LMS and 27/28 units I"ll likely buy a 10 for the console and move the 8 to the front. I think they're pretty incredible units.

My tech told me 115 before WOT. Is 120 the norm or 115? Just 5 degrees I know, but that would be a d**n expensive 5 degrees should it fail..

Hey Crab, I think I fished against you in a K River tournament last year. We fished out of Rod Workman's Triton if I recall. I've since migrated to Madison, so I need to update my profile. I've needed to post some pics for quite a while, hopefully I'll get to it in the next few weeks.

So I suppose you limit yourself to magnum cartridges and wide open broadside shots of under 100 yds, off a benchrest? Also, dropping one in it's tracks, doesn't always mean killing it instantly. Real hunters should know their effective range and try to take ethical shots, period. No one can gaurantee a perfect shot, even within range in good conditions. FWIW, I've seen a much higher percentage of rifle hunters take shots out of range thinking they "might be able to hit it" than the bow or muzzle loader crowds. And on the flip side to that, I've helped tracked 3 to 1 more poorly shot bow deer than anything else. Around here, archery season is king. We have lots of guys who pride themselves on being capable of excessive ranged shots with their $1,000 bows. Pick your poison, I think the original post was merely pointing out his preference for not using a "primitive weapon".

If he's such a stud, call and ask him to stop dodging Pacquiao. He's talented, a talented loud mouth...

This just doesn't work for me, so I guess its just dependent upon how disciplined you are with a reel. When I'm deep crankin, I'll always drift off in concentration and forget about forcing my self to slowdown. I've found a slower reel helps me keep cadence, plus as someone mentioned I don't fatigue as bad. Oh and the color of the curado is just plain sexy

We each have our experiences. I find using a simple spiral MUCH easier to use, when using micros. Because of the immediate bumper that comes after the butt, its really easy to keep the line off the blank. When I eliminate the bumper, I have to fine tune the placement and rotation of the guides to a gradual transition of the line to the bottom axis of the blank. I do it in a manner that keeps the line from touching the blank even while under heavy load. I don't mean to make it sound like its my idea or my concept, its merely something I've picked up from rodbuilding.org Pertaining to bass and bass rods, I have never encountered a situation nor have I had a rod request, that I could not use micros and a modified spiral approach. I have clients that use the above techniques (spiral/micros), on shiner sticks in Florida each year. Thus far they've made 4 trips, and I know of several fish over 10lbs that have been brought back. No complaints yet, and I personally don't consider that a small fish ;D

Baitfish will follow a lot of things. That doesn't mean that what they are following truly immitates a baitfish. You can get baitfish to follow a spinnerbait, a jig (swimming), even swimming a worm. So, you're point isn't really accurate. Again, this whole discussion has nothing to do with loading the boat with dinks. We're talking about catching a record fish. And the current pending world record was caught on??? Live bait.... My neighbor heads to Toho every Feb for largemouth. Every single guide they have ever hired and ever 10+ bass that his group has ever brought back, came from using shiners. Sadly enough I know this because he has 4 of them mounted...

On a side note, your rogue looks pimp

Actually, I disagree. We throw so many lures/baits that bear ZERO resemblence to anything alive to disprove this statement. Crankbaits look nothing like an actual fish. What's a Berkley Beast supposed to be or a sweet beaver or any other number of lures that look like nothing that actually lives in the water that the bass does? What anglers are doing is trying to trick a fish into striking out offering in order to hook them. Also, there's a big difference between fishing with live bait and catching dinks and fishing with live bait and catching hogs. So when KVD or any other fisherman wants to talk about matching the hatch, we should just shrug that off as non sense right? Lol If we get into discussion about types of strikes, than yes, its pretty common knowledge that not all strikes from fish are "eating" or feeding strikes. No one has an absolute reasoning behind why bass hit creature baits. Some theorize territorial reasons, others think they resemble crawfish, while others think they eat them just because they're weird. Crank baits are extremely versatile. True, fish hit them out of pure reaction. I also refuse to believe that a bass has never hit a crankbait, thinking the crankbait was a fleeing/injuried baitfish or crawfish, thus cashing in on an opportunity to have an easy meal. Thus, I've just worked to imitate the same injured shad/minnow/crawfish that I could have scooped out of a bucket and hooked through the tail. On the live bait thing, we each have our own experiences and I can only relate to my own. There is a gentleman on this board that I fish with pretty regularly. He is a tried and true live bait fisherman. On the body of water he frequents, he can absolutely double or triple the number of large small mouth caught, by using live bait verse what he can catch using tubes, cranks, plastics, etc... As far as he is concerned, he enjoys catching big stud small mouth and that is all that matters. When he takes anyone out, he'll use the fake stuff to entertain them. He's certainly thrown lures while with me, to help pacify my obsession with non live bait fishing. When he breaks out the live bait, its an all out on slaught of 4-5lb small mouth, all year long. It's pretty basic fishing, you find the sweet spots, cast and drift. Bite detection is hardly any more difficult than say a lite jig or worm bite. To be honest, most strikes are way, and I mean waaay more vicious than strikes we get on fakes. Now granted I'm assuming you've got all the basics down pat, terminal tackle and the like. At the end of the day, it really doesn't matter. We are all involved in the same sport and for mostly the same reasons. It's one of those issues that boil down to, to each his own.

No dis respect to fish Chris, but on countless occasions I can recall reading his posts where his posted pigs were caught on "crawlers". Granted his "biggest" fish may have been caught differently... Regardless, the man sure does know big fish...

I would agree with rez. The fuji alconites are top notch. I use the batson micro's as well, they work equally as well and cheap in cost. I typically use a single double foot as my butt guide in the 6mm range. Remember the primary job of the butt guide is to keep the line off the blank. I would use micros for the rest of the guides, especially on the run to the tip as there isn't any need for doubles up there. I also do not use the simple(bumper) spiral, in my experience an approach similar to the revolver spiral is preferable for casting rods. On bass rods I typically use a 6mm double, a 5mm single and 4mm/3mm runs to the tip. I've built all types of bass rods using this method and so far all my clients have reported success stories. I've only had two repairs come back, both broken rings on tip tops of flipping sticks, so they were quick fixes.

No But anywhere I've ever fished, from a kid till now... it's been much easier for me to catch them on live bait vs. a lure. The whole purpose in using a fake is to attempt to impersonate something that is alive. When you throw the real thing, all you have to do is hold on for the ride. After locating them of course, which is has to take place regardless of what your throwing.

That's very likely the case. Visually they look fine, and it took about 7-8 casts before I noticed them slowwwly starting to sink.

Head to rodbuilding.org, tons of info. I'll also echo, not that its needed, Reel Mech. If you go St. Croix, go for the SC3. It's a fantastic blank, even better if you scale down that gawd aweful handle they like to put on the avids ;D

I know nothing of H2O, so I can't comment on their build quality. To be fair, I have 4 LC pointers in my possession that were purchased new about a month ago. Upon initial use/tuning, 2 of the 4 are slowly taking on water. Granted this is the first time I've experienced this with LC, but its happening.

I typically use natural cork/eva and soley build split grips. On most spinning rods I use a 8inch handle on 7ft rods, and 7 inch handle on 6'6 rods. I will of course adjust the handle lenght a bit if need, usually no more than +/- 1/2. I utilize the x27 method of finding my first choke guide, and I use that as a general starting point. http://www.rodbuilding.org/library/spinningNGC.pdf I use 4mm micros from choke to tip, which helps lighten the tip tremendously. This of course also allows for less epoxy, which equates to less dampening on the blank, which provides increased sensitivity. I rarely have more than 2-3 transition guides to my choke. I've built a ton of sticks using this approach, and if properly done they all balance very well. If you use extremely light handle material, a skeleton seat, split grips, etc.... and load the blank up with heavy guides, use guides that are unnecessarily large, or use a traditional Cone type of placement, I would fully expect the rod to be out of balance.

I've had phone calls from two different people who snagged trojans from ads here, just an fyi. Both were nuqel.e variants..

http://www.bassresource.com/bass_fishing_forums/YaBB.pl?num=1260458295 More pics/posts and links

Thanks for the kind words, I hope that stick gives you years of good use. I appreciate your gift as well, I'll be stopping by BPS in a couple weeks to make good use of it. Again thank you and I hope you and yours have a wonderful Christmas!

Bah, Recoil guides suck

Lighter than alconites, less line slap, increased casting distances.... They don't handle some knots as well, and they don't like line with really bad memory http://www.shockwaverods.com/guides http://www.kistlerrods.com/p/KR/c-/McMag70MHC.html http://rodbuilding.org/read.php?2,317904,317916#msg-317916 http://rodbuilding.org/read.php?2,309891,309972#msg-309972 http://rodbuilding.org/read.php?2,308077,308124#msg-308124

It seems micro guides are finally starting to take hold on the mass produced rod market. Here is a pic from rodbuilding.org that shows one of the new Carrot Stix http://www.rodbuilding.org/photopost/showphoto.php/photo/10386 http://www.kistlerrods.com/fishing-rod/plugins/forum/about5815.html I"m sure you've all seen the Kistlers versions as well. I'm pretty happy to see them taking off, as I've been using them in my custom builds for over a year now. Good times!

BrianinMD and Glen are both on the right track. Depending on the email client in use and how its set to synch, original copies of the lost email may or may not be on the AT&T mail servers, most likely not. This doesn't mean AT&T can't recover them, but that's a different story/approach. If they have any current backups, we can try to re import a .pst equivalent (depending on the client), and restore most of what was deleted. I'll do whatever I can to help out.....