Bluebasser86

I use a 6.3 for jerkbaits. I find I overfish my jerkbaits with a faster reel. I do have one jerkbait rod with a 7 ratio reel but I use it for big jerkbaits I fish when the water is warm and I'm moving them very fast. All the rest of my jerkbait reels are 6 ratios and even had a 5.0:1 I used for quite awhile before switching to all 6 ratios for continuity.

I use 20lb braid on a few different casting combos and never had any issues. It cast a mile and I mainly use it for treble hooked topwaters which allows me to just reel into fish for the hook set.

Yes, except I fish a slower reel and mono with a jerkbait. The 6' 2" is better for when I want to fish it in place. The 6' 8" is better when I'm moving the bait forward more.

I fish mine on either a 6' 2" M/XF or 6' 8" M/F, both with 20lb braid and a 7.2 reel.

The shakee blades that most companies sell are all pretty similar and work just fine. You can find a lot of different styles of blades on the bay if you're feeling adventurous.

I avoid them as much as possible while night fishing. I follow the same game plan as @A-Jay. Don't get too many rods out and don't leave stuff laying all over and accidents are less likely to happen. Still, I've dodged my share of baits flying back at me (a 130 plopper my BIL was throwing a couple years back was the last one), it's not a good feeling. When I do fish trebles at night, I don't get crazy with hooksets on topwaters, usually just reel into them, and I play fish out and net them.

The Bubble Walker is a great bait. I've never done any good on a Popmax, but I've killed them on a Bubble Walker 80 many, many times.

Just don't fish a weedless one. It's not a heavy cover bait, never understood the need for a weedguard. The hook mostly rides pointed straight up and comes over a lot of sparse cover. Gamakatsu Finesse Wide Gap or Berkley Fusion19 Finesse Wide Gap in 2/0 are both great hooks.

Savage Gear Shine Glide 185 FishLab Bio Gill Wake Bait 5" FishLab Bio Minnow 6.25"-10/0 Owner Beast Savage Gear Pulse Tail Bluegill Spro Rat 50 I'd highly suggest saving up for a Slammer when you get a chance.

I've caught smallies on 7" glide baits that were under a pound. They'll try to eat anything if the mood strikes them.

Exactly, don't be stupid and don't make it so shutting down the lakes becomes something that needs to happen. There's a couple lakes that are closed here and I wouldn't be surprised if a couple more closed as well, but I think that a majority will stay open. There isn't any way to enforce a full scale lockdown in most areas with many bodies of water and being out in a boat fishing by yourself or with 1 other person is way lower risk than a lot of other activities.

I've got some of both but mostly use the #2. I actually have some #6 that I'm going to modify my mold to try to get to work also.

I didn't mind him giving advice, but writing off a technique that is proven on that body of water and had already produced multiple fish in just an hour seemed (and proved to be), foolish. I don't ever tell anyone not to try a bait or technique, I've been surprised before, but the hardheaded ones that try to force them to eat something all day when it's clearly not working is frustrating.

I doubt those little bluegills are going to put enough pressure on the line to grove the guides.

x2

It's a great bait for around rock and laydowns were normal bladed jigs tend to snag. The head acts a bit like the bill of a squarebill and rolls the bait over obstacles. I used a black and blue one once on shallow lake with a lot of snaggy rocks and wore them out with it.

Continued our new Wednesday family fishing tradition this week. It was pretty windy but I found some up shallow in the back of a creek arm that were biting. The boys got to reel a bunch in and Finn is slowly getting over his fear of touching fish. I got him to cradle and release 2 of them with me and he was very proud of himself for doing it. Thursday was on a small lake fighting a howling wind all day. Caught a ton of fish, mostly on a homemade bladed jig or spinnerbait. Big fish of the day was on a big homemade spinnerbait. I also got my first sight fishing bass of the year and first frog fish of the year, which turned out to be the same fish as I spotted one sitting in some dead lily pad stalks and put my frog right by her and she immediately sucked it in.

I've only fished with a guide a couple times. While I was in Mexico it was enjoyable. The guides drive the boat and obviously have all the knowledge of the lakes you could ask for and were able to put us on fish. The other I used was on the White River in Arkansas and it was not an enjoyable trip. We'd got there early and caught some trout from my boat, including a couple browns which were the whole reason we'd made the trip. The guide basically told us what I had been doing wouldn't work then because of conditions and we needed to do what he wanted to do. We told him we wanted to catch browns, didn't care one bit about catching rainbows. The first spot we stopped at I caught one sickly looking brown trout. The guy liked my new spinning setup I'd bought for the trip so much he picked it up and started fishing with it until I finally asked if I could have it back. Each time we moved he told us there was going to be fewer and fewer brown trout as we moved downriver. Didn't catch another brown and I got frustrated and asked if would please use our last hour to try and target the fish we were trying to catch. He fired up the motor and while we were running upriver, hit a rock and his whole motor flew off the back of the boat and sank. I caught the throttle right before it went under and managed to haul the 25hp motor back into the boat but it would start again after the dunking. My buddy and I had our waders on so we pulled the boat, all the gear, the guide, and my buddies stepson upriver against the current for almost 2 miles. Then the guy asked us to pay him at the ramp. I told him to look up how much it would have just cost him to pay for a tow up the river if we hadn't been nice enough to pull him. We didn't end up paying. I've been guiding for about 5 years now on top of my full time job and it's been mostly enjoyable. I think the hardest people to take are the ones that want to do everything their way instead of listening to what I'm telling them to do. I don't understand the concept of paying someone to take you fishing and then all but refusing to do what they're saying will work. I haven't ever had anyone get skunked, but I've had a couple come close. The ones that want to go fish the power plant lake in the middle of winter are tough. It's a tough lake but they see the pictures of me with big fish and don't realize how hard I'm working to catch those fish. I just make sure to emphasize how tough it is, how tough the conditions are to fish in, and that I'm taking them to learn what I do, where I do it, why I do it, how I do it, catching fish is a bonus because even I don't catch them every time. As long as I can get them into that mindset, it goes well and I'll share stories of each location and big fish caught and big fish lost in the past. I've had several repeat customers and several have my phone number and like to message to ask questions about different situations and share pictures of their catches. It's rewarding to me to be able to teach people and see them enjoying the trip and experience.

Big black crappie, nice ?

#5 shad rap

Savage Gear Pulse Tail bluegills

Nice ingenuity

Almost feel like I'm going to be fishing live bait ?

Those are the same people that blame the blue cats for eating all the walleye too ? One lake I fish a lot they blame the smallmouth for eating all the crappie ? I'll bet crappie eat way more smallmouth fry than smallmouth are eating crappie.

And here they call everything in the sunfish family (bluegill, green sunfish, redear sunfish, warmouth, longear sunfish ect), "perch" ? Like nails on a chalkboard when I hear it. Some even break it down into subspecies like a green sunfish is a "black perch" ? can't even get the color right.