Bassohol

Ahhhh hah, someone is aware. Vanish is great line if you use it for the right purpose. I will say, it is not real shock resistant. However it is great line for drop shotting and flick shake's, dart heads, any thing that a reel set is all you need. Its not my favorite line, but it is not a bad line at all. To the other poster, if your buddy's knots are not holding its because he is not tying it properly. Ive used it on shakey heads and drop shots for years with no problem at all. It can certainly be used on cranks and rip baits, but its not my choice. I can assure you that all the problems were not the fault of his knot tying abilities. The knot did untie a number of times, but we both had a go at it with different types of knots and kept getting the same result. We all well know that FC is notorious for sub-par knot strength, and I believe we were witnessing just how bad a lower end FC can be in that department. Aside from the knot problems with the cranks, spinners, and buzzbaits, the line just broke on a hookset a few times as well. I'm not talking about a breakage down by the lure signifying a need to retie, these breaks happened about halfway down the rod on a new spool. Parts of the line that hadn't even seen water yet. Maybe he just had a couple of bad spools, but neither of us have messed with Vanish since then. I gave up FC for good, but he stuck with it and uses BPS XPS and Seaguar InvizX now. No problems like that have happened again.

A lot of people really like Yo-Zuri Hybrid. I have it spooled up on most of my setups right now, in fact. It is pretty good line, but I still haven't found anything I like better than P-Line Floroclear. In my opinion, you really can't go wrong with either of those.

I keep a pretty small list of brands. I keep the stuff I've had the most success with and therefore the most confidence in. Zoom is probably my first go to brand. They have such a wide variety and good prices. My favorite soft plastic is the Brush Hog, and most of my worm fishing is done with Zoom plastics. Second would be Reaction Innovations. Fantastic baits! They would easily overtake Zoom on my list if it wasn't for the fact that I have a hard time finding them anywhere locally. The best RI bait for me has been the Sweet Beaver. It is a killer as a jig trailer. Third is Strike King Rage Tail. I've used the craws, baby craws, Thumper Worms, and Space Monkey and had decent success with all of them. The fourth and final brand is a newcomer into my arsenal, but I love them already. Strikezone Lures. I love their Senko type stick bait because it is a little tougher than the Yamamoto counterpart and they come in such great looking unique colors. I also love the Shake Up Head worm. Best looking worm I've ever seen on a shaky head as far as underwater presentation goes. Just fantastic.

Vanish ;D That really is some horrible line. I'm not a fan of fluorocarbon at all, as I've said. I tried the higher priced stuff as well including Sunline and Seaguar Tatsu. Didn't like any of it, but I would use it if I had to. However, if it came down to fishing with Vanish or not fishing, I may just have to choose not fishing! I watched my buddy throw two crankbaits, a buzzbait, and a spinnerbait into Beech Lake because the knot wouldn't stay tied with that junk.

I watched "A day on the Lake" the other day featuring Alton Jones. He was asked about his preference in knots with fluorocarbon and he named this same knot. He called it a "hangman's noose" though he admitted that he thought that there was another name for it. He also demonstrated it nicely a couple of times. A-Jay I watched the same thing ! ;D The knot he was tying is actually not a hangman's noose knot as far as I could tell. It actually looked like a 16-20 knot to me. I use the 16-20 for everything except braid and dropshots and I'm nearly positive his knot was a 16-20. Perhaps a bit modified, but the same idea.

I fell into using FC largely because of what jdw said. The pros told me, "you just can't fish without it!" I had it spooled up in various weights on all my setups. I went through every different kind I could get my hands on and came to the same conclusion on all of them. I HATED it! The biggest problem I had with it was the stiffness compared to the co-poly I had grown so fond of. It was so much stiffer, it just felt like it casted like crap and, in my opinion, it did. Second, I found it to be a bit stronger on a dead straight pull, but it nicks up SO much easier than other types of line. I found myself having to retie much more often with the FC, so I decided to take some pieces and run them around the corners of things representing dock posts and such. Just as I thought, the FC nicked much worse. The third thing I hate is obviously the cost, but that wasn't that big of a factor. I do believe the FC is supposed to be a little clearer and harder to see in water, but I don't put much stock in that. All in all, I personally found a negligible difference in strength, so with the higher cost, higher stiffness, and decreased knot strength, I had an easy decision to stop using it for good.

I got a Mag TS for around $90 shipped to me direct from Kistler. I feel like I got a great deal. I really like the rod.

I've all but given up on fluorocarbon as well. I still have it on one setup that I throw a Texas rig with, but that is because that is the only reel and setup that I've yet to have a problem with. I use Yo-Zuri Hybrid and P-Line Floroclear on everything else besides my heavy pitching setup which I use braid on. I just found FC to have too much memory, nick too easily, and be too stiff to cast like other lines. I just didn't feel that all those little nuisances were worth the minimal increase in sensitivity and decrease in visibility. Plus, the copolymer lines are more versatile in my opinion.

I haven't fished with the Bucoos either, but I have spent a considerable amount of times playing around with them at my local outdoor store. I needed a lighter powered rod to put my Sol on to fish weightless plastics and light jigs and had it down between the Bucoo micro and the Excel micro. I ended up going with the Excel micro and haven't regretted it. I do have to say, though, if you are looking at the micro models, I like the Fuji guides on the Bucoo a lot more than the American Tackle guides on the Excel. But, that is really just a cosmetic preference. All in all you really can't go wrong with either and at the prices both those rods are at and the performance you get for it, I may just end up with the Falcon, too!

It does bleed. I don't know what kind of special spool you got that doesn't, but I ended up with green fingers while spooling and green droplets the first couple times I fished it. It does seem to have stopped there, however. I haven't seen any color since and it doesn't seem to have faded too much either. I've been really impressed with the 832.

I went through a similar stage and have progressed on past it now. I swore off nylon monofilament line when I really got into bass fishing and read about fluorocarbon. It was clearer, it was stronger, it didn't stretch as much, it resisted water, it was more abrasion resistant, and so forth. So FC is all I used for quite a while. I tried every different line I could get my hands on and finally came to a conclusion on FC. I hated it. All of it. The memory was ridiculous, the stuff was so stiff I felt like I was trying to cast fencing wire, and in my experience it nicked up easier than nylon. So, I now use copolymers and braid exclusively. I love P-Line Floroclear and YoZuri Hybrid, and I'm currently using Sufix 832 which I am very impressed with.

My fishing buddy just got an HMX in the other day. The first thing he did was call me and say, "man this rod feels awesome." He came over that next day and let me give it a try. I have to agree with him. It was a fantastic feeling rod and a great price on it as well.

I've had horrible luck all winter using the typical methods. I've tried jigs, deep cranks, and slow rolling spinnerbaits. I went for nearly two months without hooking into a bass that way. Yesterday I got the idea that I needed to try a soft plastic. I was sitting at work thinking that I needed something with a very muted action that I could just throw out there and let it do the work. So, I got home from work and tied on a 5" Senko and headed out across the road to this extremely small farm pond that I've seen one bass caught out of in the past 20 years and that was in the dead of summer and it weighed about 1/8 of a pound. On my first cast the bait reached the bottom and was there a total of 5 seconds before it got slammed. By far the heaviest bite I've had all winter. I set the hook and brought in a bass that weighed about a pound and a half. I plan to test out the Senko in a little bigger body of water this weekend, but it seemed like a good tactic to me. I didn't catch anymore out there with it, but I was only there for about 20 minutes and was getting bites on pretty much every cast.

I've been hunting some new "go to" line lately. Due to this thread and others like it, I ordered a big spool of Hybrid earlier today. I've never really used braid but I do LOVE to jig fish, so perhaps I should give it a try soon. I've been on a fluorocarbon kick lately and I've switched brands every couple weeks trying to find one that I liked. I had this silly notion that I needed to be fishing fluorocarbon so I was sticking to that. No matter what brand I bought or what price I paid, I absolutely HATED it. It was either very prone to abrasion and breakage, too stiff to cast well, or too prone to kinking up. I used to use P-Line Fluoroclear and liked it pretty well and was thinking about going back to that, but maybe this Yo-Zuri will be the ticket for me.

I've got an older model Rick Clunn reel that I use every time I fish. I've never had a bit of trouble from it. It is still as smooth as the day I bought it. I don't have a lot of experience with the Shimanos or Garcias you mentioned, so I can't really compare. I've mainly fished Quantum and Daiwa, and the BPS is as reliable a reel as I've used.