Bluebasser86

Well I got a chance to test mine. Action is great, durability is terrible. First fish ripped the entire insert out of the middle of the bait. A bunch of mend it later, next fish peeled the bait almost in half and basically turned the bait inside out. A bunch more mend it and now I doubt it will swim right anymore it's so jacked up.

If at all possible I'd pay the extra for the Avid. The Premiers and Mojos are good rods and stand up to a lot of abuse, but not very light or sensitive. I've owned several Premiers and Mojos but have upgraded to mostly LTBs.

I fish them on 10lb Big Game and have never had any of the issues everyone complains about. A slow retrieve helps as well.

The Zmans will melt down and turn the rest of your baits into a sticky mess. I keep all my Zman baits separate from my other plastics and in their original packages.

VMC makes a nice weedless wacky hook also.

Make sure not to put them away wet. I check them often to make sure the hooks are good and there's not rust forming on the hooks, hangers, or split rings. I'll change the hooks out pretty often as well. With soft baits I make sure there's no moisture inside the bags, that's about it though.

I fish it like a normal popper, just on heavier gear. As for color, I'll fish any color frog, as long as it's black.

Wow that bait is tiny! Duo makes great baits and are well balanced (extremely critical with tiny baits like that) so I'd be leaning towards the Duo bait.

Sounds like a great place for a weedless Huddleston, Slammer, or Hardgill. Fish the huddleston through the heavy stuff, the Slammer around and over it, and the hardgill around edges.

They have great store brand products whereas a lot of other store brand stuff is junk with a few exceptions. I carry a bunch of H2O hard baits of all kinds and several of their rods now, and they're all great fish catchers. Their squarebills are my favorite, and only $4

I tried to use left handed casting reels for a minute. My left hand might as well be controlled by someone else because I sure can't get it to do what I need it to. I also couldn't set the hook effectively at all with my right hand and a baitcasting rod, just didn't feel right at all. So basically I do it because it works for me.

How did I forget this one? Double of the day at Linn Valley. 6" swimbait, 5" sunfish for me, Jon with a dorkfish.

It can't, but if you cut the main line without realizing it and then toss the bait over the side of the boat to start fishing...

I've got 6 of them. Yeah, they're pretty nice rods for the money. I don't have any of the top end ones but I do have the $60 and $80 rods and they're great.

7' 6" H/F H2O Ethos casting rod. That's my current stand in swimbait rod until my custom build gets here.

Green pumpkin bladed jig, color the blade black with a sharpie.

Get a telescoping lure retriever, you won't lose baits you snag in less than 15' of water anymore I can't remember the last crankbait I lost that I could reach with mine. Plus I get dozens of other people's baits out of trees.

What kind of structure/cover are you fishing?

Some of my biggest topwater fish have come in the middle of the day with bright sun. It's not something they see often, and it may not be as effective, but it will still work. I think one of the keys during the middle of the day is to fish it near cover where they can zip out quickly to hit a bait. 7" Slammer slow waked across the surface. Mid 70 degree water, high 80 air temps, about 2pm. Fish came out from a clump of submerged grass and stumps and destroyed the bait.

They don't eat but if something is disturbing it's spawning bed how else is he supposed to pick it up and move it? Sometimes they'll blow at it or slap their tail to try to blow it off their bed but the surest way for them to move something they don't want there is to pick it up in their mouth and move it away.

Me too, not all of them but certain types/colors were. They're sold out of all those now though

One cool night usually won't effect it much. A few nights in a row will though.

I did it once with a spinnerbait. I've cut the main line instead of the tag line plenty of times, but I've always realized what I'd done before I tossed me bait over the side.

Jon and I fished Linn Valley lakes Friday. We caught fish steadily from the time the boat touched the water until the time we left, pretty good mix of largemouth to smallmouth with a couple other fish mixed in. Mostly on the small side but I did get one long, skinny fish on a 6" Optimum Line Through that tried to take the rod out of my hands.