Bluebasser86

I throw chrome lipless baits when it's sunny like you said. Of all the lipped cranks I own, not a single one is chrome. I do have metallic gold that I fish when the water is dirty and it's sunny out, but that would be the closest thing.

I get it at skirts unlimited. The color is blue/blue flake, which is basically sapphire blue.

Football jigs are what I reach for when I'm dragging a jig through rocks. The wider head helps keep it out of rocks and from getting wedged as easily and because of where it's center of gravity is and where the line tie is located it keeps the back of the jig up at about a 45* angle. Combine that with a crawlike trailer and it looks like a crawdad scuttling away in a defensive position.

The Mettle is on sale at Academy this week. Get 'em while they're hot! http://www.academy.com/shop/pdp/h2o-xpress-mettle-mt2-baitcast-reel-right-handed?repChildCatid=903506

Poppers may look the same, but they can actually be very different. The say they sit in the water, their sound (both rattles and their chug/spit/pop), if they walk/skitter/dive, bubbles or no bubbles, how much water they move. I haven't fished the Rico, but I have several different types of poppers and they all do something a little different.

I don't change anything regardless of the direction I'm facing. I keep my right hand on the reel handle throughout the retrieve, it just takes a little more practice to twitch away from the reel handle as it does against it. A shorter rod might help if you're hitting the water, I have a 6' 2" and 6' 8" that I use for jerkbaits. I don't like twitching the rod up because it does effect the diving depth of the bait but sometimes I have to snap it over the top of my trolling motor, but that doesn't seem to effect it much.

That's the issue I have with yellow or chartreuse, hard for me to see when it's sunny and there's any ripple on the water. I can see white really well though. Pink is still the easiest color for me to see but apparently fisherman have an aversion to using pink braid because it's really hard to find anymore. My wife has bright pink fireline on her rod, which really helps because I can tell her when she has a bite a lot of the time.

Welcome! And thank you for your service!

I just have one of the cheap suits that was one clearance for $30. The zipper sucks and the bottoms don't have pockets, but the Velcro works well enough to keep me dry and I take everything out of my pockets when I'm fishing anyways so neither is a big issue to me. They have nicer suits also that I've heard great things about but can't personally say anything about them.

I'm guessing they see dinner! I catch some of my biggest jig fish every year on sapphire blue, enough so that I started making my bladed jigs in that color all the way down to the blade. It ended up producing the heaviest weight of the season in the Thursday night tournaments I fish in.

I have both. The Lew's is a little lighter and cast a little further, but you can also get the PQ for cheaper when it's on sale. Plus I like the handle on the PQ better. I'd have a hard time deciding if I was going to choose between the two.

Nice, fat walleye!

Welcome!

Nice! Did you do the joint mod before you painted it? That made a huge difference in the action (and productivity), of mine.

I've caught several large drum and catfish on mine. As for smallies, it handled this one just fine that was a couple ounces short of 5 pounds.

I've also had a Speed Spool for 3-4 years and have been very happy with it. Only thing I didn't like was the handles but I swapped those out with a handle from BPS and it was fine. I use mine for fishing my bladed jigs in the 6.4:1 ratio.

My adventures from this past week. Lonestar was colder and more stained than I expected, but I still fooled a few with a clown Buzz's Baits 110 or a Duo 110. No big ones but average size was a little better than normal. Wolf on Thursday was tough. We caught almost 30, but the average size was down again and man were we working for them. There's probably a ditch dug through the east point by the cable from our cranks and Rocker heads. Never caught them fast but one every 10-20 minutes it seemed. I kept getting slammed by fish that would never hold onto it. Austin caught a 7lb blue and I have a feeling that they were what was mashing and dropping my bait. Most of those fish were spread out enough the videos were too long to bother uploading. I got 3 nice largemouth in the trees in the 30 minutes we fished them but of course I'd forgotten to turn the Virb on for the first and biggest one. Douglas County on Friday was very, Douglasy. I caught a bunch of fat, healthy looking dinks (if that makes any sense?) Jerkbait on the piers was killing them. It was pretty fun really catching that many in cold water that fast. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLG96-IQoY8

I had some pretty good days on a trap this fall at Melvern for both smallies and whites. I've also caught a decent number the last two times at Wolf until this past Thursday when I only caught 1 largemouth on a Warpig. On a side note, if anyone hasn't checked out the new line up of Berkley hardbaits, I'd highly suggest it! The Skinny Cutter 110, Wild Thang, Warpig, and Pitbull have all been doing work for me already in the past 2 weeks, the Skinny Cutter and Wild Thang especially.

I would bet that a lot of people give up on baitcasters because their only experience is with low end reels that have bad breaking systems (which may or may not be the case with that reel). So many reels in that $100 range that would make their experiences so much better, but I get that it's hard to take that leap with all the horror stories you hear about how hard they are to use.

And sometimes, it's the vegetation. There isn't any finessing a bait through snot grass(moss or gorilla snot). I haven't seen a bait yet that is immune to that stuff but the bass will still hit a slime covered frog because they can't see it. We get this nasty, stringy stuff here too that doesn't usually clump onto a bait, but it gets into everything. The worse is spinnerbaits or buzzbaits because it gets on the blades, wraps around the wire, and fouls the blades. The more leafy stuff is pretty easy to fish most jigs or T-rigs though with a careful feel though.

Break Out Another Thousand

Depends on the type of weeds but a hollow body frog is probably the most weedless bait out there.

I did the only reasonable thing to do and bought 3 more

Congrats! I just caught my first peacock bass this past year as well. Such a cool fish and very intense fights when you get one on. Just made me want to go to the Amazon for the big ones even more!

The 6' 10" ML/XF will surely launch any of the baits you're planning on fishing. I can cast a Ned rig out of sight with a 1/16oz head.