Bluebasser86

Look for areas near the shoreline where the water drops sharply. Not only does it give you access to deep water from shore, but those are areas that are very likely to hold bass during the cold water months anyways. Bass sit on those deep drops and pull up near shore to feed for short spurts. Bonus points if it's a rocky shoreline and even better if it's on a side of the lake the sun has been hitting for a few hours. I've had good success fishing during the winter from shore dragging soft plastics and fishing suspending jerkbaits.

I like the H2O rods from Academy. I have several and they've been very good rods. I just picked my last one up on sale for $27 and it would make a good swim jig rod.

It's like the dam at Melvern, it always has them, but only 1 way to find out if they're good ones or not. Pretty much anywhere with rocks out there holds them, but there's lots of rocks out there and no way to know where they are other than fishing them.

Academy has a bait similar to a 110 style bait, listed as a floater, but it suspends. I have several and use them insituations where there's a good chance of losing them

Poppers are for fishing targets, walkers are for fishing areas. just a very simplistic breakdown of how I choose one over the other.

Hmmm, the reel is fragile, has paint chipping out of the box, and making grinding noises and needs frequent maintenance but it gets an 8-9/10 rating? An 8.3oz spinning reel doesn't sound very "Featherlite", either, especially a carbon fiber reel. I hope it works out for you in the long run.

Now that I finally have somewhere to put them, power tools!

Welcome!

Welcome!

This is what I've done in the past but not sure they even make rubber core sinkers anymore?

If you're looking at the LTB rods, the 6' 8" M/F "jerkbait" rod would make a good rod for walk the dog baits, and would probably also be good for things like senkos, flukes, and smaller spinnerbaits.

Your 7' MH/F should be a serviceable pitching rod, although not ideal. None of your current rods would make a very good cranking rod imo, so I'd be looking for a cranking rod. Something along the lines of a 7' MH/M would work well.

Yes, the answer to the question is yes.

I don't. To me a spinnerbait is good when I need to fish a bait fast (generally clear water), or it's too snaggy for a bladed jig. I fish a bladed jig much slower and typically lower in the water column and have much better success on them in stained to muddy water. They're also great at calling fish out of weeds and don't seem to foul as easily as the blades on a spinnerbait do in weeds. The rare occasions when I'm fishing both in the same type areas, I've seen them greatly prefer one over the other.

Popping Pad Crasher in Cricket Frog is MONEY! Durability leaves something to be desired though. The Spro Bronzeye Popping frog did a lot of work for me this year too. Looking forward to getting some of the Savage Gear popping frogs whenever they come available too. I have some of their regular frogs and they get crushed, but I prefer popping frogs because of the style of frogging I do.

Thanks, about 80 bags of Zman on the way to the house now

I stocked up on some tubes during the sales this week along with a bunch of Zman products. The V&M smallie tubes have been great for me this year and seem to be much more durable than other tubes I've fished, those wild smallmouth can really do a number on a plastic bait.

I know that I fished 35 different bodies of water this year, many of them multiple times. So I'm going to guess that I fished more days than most folks do. How many more days depends a lot on when/if I get a deer, and when baby #2 decides to make his appearance.

Glad you had a good BPS experience. I'd share some BPS customer service stories but you know what they say "If you don't have anything nice to say".

I'm not a reel mechanic, but I believe it's the size of the gears. It would be a 1:1 ratio if you think of it like a toilet paper roll (1 wrap=1 revolution). someone who knows the internal workings of spinning reels will be able to explain better than I can.

Hadn't thought of that, I suppose their own antlers might be the cause of it as well. I won't have a chance to go again until rifle starts on Wednesday, but as far as I know I'm the only one in the area that's hunting, so I'm not really worried about it.

I'll play with little fish, but if it's a big fish or a tournament, I'm skiing them in if at all possible. Same goes for swimbait fishing. If I hook a fish on a big bait, they need to get to the boat as quickly as possible because there is so much leverage to be had from that big heavy bait. Play around with a swimbait fish, and it will almost always shake off.

I had an Orra, I've never owned a spinning reel that got line twist like that thing did. Didn't matter what type or brand of line, I could count on about once an hour having to cut a length of line off because of a giant knot that explode off the reel during the cast. I gave it away to a buddy who thought I was doing something wrong, then he had the same issues I had. I have several spinning reels from different companies and never had line twist and knot issues like I had with that reel.

I like a light weight reel, and one with a fairly quick retrieve speed because you want to be able to keep up with a fish if it decides to scream towards the surface from deep water. I have not fished a Mach I, but I wouldn't fish another Abu spinning reel if someone gave it to me. I have 2 rods I use for DS, one has a Pfluegar Supreme XT 30, the other that is my main DS rod, has an Okuma RTX 25 on it.