Hammer 4

Plain ole lead weights have caught fish for many years, color imho has no effect on the bite.

Yup. Broke my right wrist 2 times, broke my ankle, then I had an acl tear in my right shoulder. Altogether that was 24 weeks of no fishing..

I think your gonna like the Storm Arashi's action. Had mine out last week, and the way it swam with just a small amount of reel turn was amazing. I'm really interested in how you like the new reel.

You may want to look into the War Eagle and Siebert spinnerbaits.

In my case, about 35 years, and never had a spinnerbait break. Even some of the lesser expensive ones. Had many skirts fall off, but those are replaceable.

All I do is make sure there is a normal amount of grease on the gears, and clean oil on the bearings especially the spool bearings. The only mod I do is to polish the ends of the spool shaft to a high luster using Fine DuPont polishing compound. Never tried aftermarket bearings.

Exactly the way I tie my dropshot hooks.

Same rod for both spinnerbaits and chatterbaits.. Heck, I even use the same mono line..

Anytime I'm fishing plastic's, which includes my swimbaits, I'll dab on some Megastrike.

Jimmy Houston.

Same, except for inline spinners and small spoons which I don't use.

Having fished from a float tube, and from the shore, the shortest rod I ever owned was 6'10", my shortest rod I have now is 6'9", but I prefer a rod 7' or longer. Fishing from a float tube where your pretty restricted, you find ways to make longer rods work, i.e. pitching with a 7'6" rod, or casting a 8' swimbait rod with a 5 oz bait. For me, a shorter rod, say 6'6" really isn't anymore accurate than my 7 footer. Using the length of rod that suits you best regardless of what others use is the way to go.

Some years ago, there were a couple of local So. Cali fishing forums, and any time one of us caught either good numbers or a good size bass that we posted pic's of, we would always photoshop the back ground out as not to give away the spot we fished. See my avatar, notice the background is all white clouds. Otherwise the pond/lake would get blown up by non locals that would usually trash the place, hence why did the photoshoping. Nowadays, I hardly ever post pic's.

I will also be following the restoration. My guess, it will look like a million buks when done.

Yeah, that's a bit much for my taste... ?

AIC Sound Garden Pearl Jam Nirvana didn't do much for me.

Never used tape, always tied my line to the spool.

I set my drag on my baitcasters at about 2.5 to 3 lbs for most applications. Flipping I'll tighten it down just before lock down. Heavy swimbaiting is probably around 6 to 8 lbs. via my pull test. Spinning is about 2 lbs. as I only use 8 or 6 lb test on it. I can always tighten or loosen the drag as needed.

So hard to guess the exact weight from a pic.. And yes, some measurements would help greatly. But if I had to make a guess, I'd say 5 to 5 1/2 lbs.

Mine is when threading line on a rod, I'd miss the eyelet, and put the line through the foot. Not fun when you go to cast a 3/4 oz bait with a top hook and have it come flying back at you. And yup, done that more than once...

You got that correct. I use the 100, 150 and 200 Tatula's. I use the 200 for glides and swimabits in the under 3 oz range, I see no advantage to use a 150, or swap spools on the 200. OTH, you can use the 200 for other baits if you wanted to, so having said that, I think the 200 is your best bet. I did polish the the ends of the spool shaft on mine, makes for easier casting and a bit more distance. Oh, I'm using 19 lb mono on my 200.

1 trait I look for in a spinnerbait is that the blades, in this case willow blades that don't extend to far rearward of the hook. The reason is, lots of times bass will key on the last blade if it has 2, if that blade is to far in back of the hook, the bass will completely miss the hook, hence, No fish. I discovered this a long time ago, so there are very few brands that I buy.

This is how I read it too. And I agree, you could swap switch rods with that reel.

When you say Large Swimbaits, what weight are you talking about..?

Biggest, and most fish caught were on warm sunny days.