McAlpine

That is terrible news. Our thoughts will be with Mr. Murski's family. Very sad.

I used Vicious 10lb flouro on several rods this past season. It gave me a great feel for the baits but it has more memory than I care for. I will probably go back to berkley next season and use what I have left as leader material for braid.

I REALLY did NOT want one of these due to the camo but couldn't pass up the $30 price. Figured if nothing else I would use it as a catfish rod. Ordered a 7' MH. I agree on all the above. For $30 these are a steal. Think I will use it as a crankbait rod.

Doug, the suggestion above on the Berkley lightning rod is a really good one if you are perhaps a more casual angler than some of the guys that frequent this site. You'll have to understand there are many tournament anglers here. Anyway, I have some Lightning Rods' that I have had for years and even though I have moved on to a different type of equipment they are still some of my favorite rods for throwing light tackle and unweighted flukes. For the average weekend bass fisherman they are very good at an excellent price point. They are commonly found at Walmart or Dicks and can be found in an IM-6, IM-7 or IM-8 blank. The difference is that as you go up in IM number you should be getting a higher quality, higher modulus blank. However; you cannot compare company A's IM-X to company B's IM-X because there is no standard. Just play with them and see what you like. Now, if you are willing to spend $100, $200...$400...on a rod then I bet you can get some great opinions... ;-) good luck!

Stay away from the Diawa megaforce reels. A fried of my wife who buys overstock and return auctions to sell on ebay recently got a lot from Gander Mountain. There were a ton of return reels and she brought them to me to see if I could fix them up for her to sell. There were alot of different reels with several different problems but the two reels that stuck out as the most prolific in the batch were the skeet reese reels and diawa megaforce (the diawa with the twitching bar). I'll tell you now, after ordering spare parts and working on a bunch of both, these reels are both junk. The most common issue on both of them is that the pinion for the spool on the gear side just goes all loopy and falls out of the slot for the spool pin. No fix for that. After working on both then taking to the pond to cast around to see how they were doing, even if you fix it, it just pops back out eventually. There is a reason that both the skeet reese casting reel and the diawa megaforce were way higher in numbers in that return pile. I will never have one of either...period.

That's a nice set of feature upgrades. I am intrigued by the saved mode structure map. Wonder how that is different from my HB's side/downscan capture mode? Regardless; the main driver for me when I went HB instead of Lowrance on the new boat this spring was that I was able to go to my local BPS and play with both manufacturer's units. The Lowrance really seemed to be doggy rendering and switching between views compared to the HB and I read much of the same. In my very uneducated opinion, they need that processor upgrade pretty bad. That also seemed to me why they shipped the bit crunching off to an external unit for the high definition downscan on the LSS-1.

Thanks for all of the info guys. Appreciate it. IBN, how do you like that carbonlite? I am a big fan of these in a 7ft, medium action either fast or medium tip teamed up with JM BPS Carbon Black in 6.4 or 7.1 depending upon the use. Have 3 of these rigs now. Super bang for the buck quality rig. I was going to get the MH while they were running their recent sale for my deep cranking use but looking at one (lucky to have a BPS 20min from home), it just seemed well, bulky. Not as slender and light or with the same feel as the M action, just didn't seem like the same rod.

Or you can get a couple humminbirds and they already do side and down scanning as well as natively network to share transducers, gps, waypoints, etc. I have an 898 on the back of the boat and a 788 on the front. It's a good rig and has opened up the way I fish.

I'm with the others. I wouldn't suggest any of the reels on the list. If you are looking to be effecient with your expenditure, I am a big fan of the Pfluger President as bang for the buck. Nice reel.

I thought Loomis was designing for TFO now?

Help! For years I have always been most comfortable with medium action rods and lighter. They just feel better to me and work well for the way I fish. However; this makes it tough to fish large crankbaits that plow alot of water. I want to make a concerted effort to get away from the bank this next year and open up my game a bit. Looking for suggestions on a crankbait rod and reel, most especially the rod. I am thinking about a good stiff 7' medium heavy. I really like the smoke rods and have wanted to pick one up but they have a fast action and it seem's I should have a softer tip to not rip those trebbels out if I hook up. Just need to come up with something that has enough backbone to not kill my arms by bending like a noodle cranking a big deep diver but is still an appropriate rod. thanks!

Well that's a good idea. I didn't think that my sonar would reach out to the side enough to see a crankbait coming in from the side. I'll have to try that.

Hmm, I get that "try until you get the right one" and to me that makes sense when you are fishing a point or bank etc, traditional "run into something" type of cranking. However what if you are fishing midlake structure, suspending fish etc. If you go over and mark something on your sonar and you want to get to X depth. You back off and start casting but how do you know your even close if you dont know where to start? I could be dragging that bait right over the top of the school or strucutre like I want or I could be 5 or 10 feet off. I like the idea of the electropencil on the bill, that's a good one. I generally use 10lb for larger cranks and will go down to 6lb for smaller ones and I do fish cranks quite a bit. So I get a good general feel for where the bait is going to run but...it's that mid water stuff where I get stumped. Getting away from the bank is one of those skills I really want to work on this next year.

So I have this problem...I love crankbaits. Therefore I have a ton of them, considerably more than I really need. And when I look in my box I have little idea how deep each runs other than a SWAG. Long straight bill...deep 10, 15, 20?, short square bill..maybe 4ft. standard short round bill 5ft? etc... So yeah you can get a rough idea but all of these baits come in a nice little box with an average diving depth printed on it when you buy them. If your like me though, space is limited and the box gets ditched asap. Does anyone do anything to mark their baits or put a note in your box or the slot where you keep each crankbait to denote what the advertised average running depth is? Seems like it would be awfully helpful when out on the water and you know you want to hit say 15ft. Any ideas?

Also this was in the span of about 2 hours and I only fished maybe 30 minutes of it. Wow.

But the good kind? My new boat does not come in until the end of next week and I have the itch. Went to a local pond and took a friend from work and he brought his daughter. Really it was all about teaching them about bass fishing. Tied on bomber mini-whacker spinner baits for both. I find that in the spring these small spinner baits will just tear up pond bass and wanted them to both get some numbers. One in chartreuse and one in white. Anyway, they were doing well but catching dinks. I tied on an xcalibur squarebill in the sexy shad rip off color. BAM! 5.44 lb bass. Biggest bass of my life. Put down the rod and spent time helping out friends daughter and she caught a few more dinks. Went back and got my rod, walked around back of pond. BAM 4 lb bass. Put my rod down and said I was done wanting to leave nice fish for them. They caught several more including a huge crappie for the daughter on the small spinner bait. Then I gave my rod to my friend so he could learn how to work a casting reel. I took his spinning rod with the small white spinner bait and after teaching him how to cast I stood there by him and made one cast with his rod. Got up to the bank with the spinner bait when a 4.71 lb bass hit it right in front of us. It's like I was freaking charmed. The 4.71 and 5.44 are both the biggest I have ever caught. My previous bests were all around 4-4.25. Luckily I had my digital scale in the truck. Buddy has some pics, bad ones but at least we got them, on his phone. Hope he emails them to me soon and I will post them. Wow, that was crazy.

Last weekend I caught a 3 and a 3 1/2 lb that were flat up against the bank due to high water. I'm in IN too. As soon as the ice comes off they start coming up shallow, usually the dink's first. As it warms there are more in there and better quality. Try around 5pm to sundown with sunset timeframe the best on shores with a steady light breeze pushing in a light wave. Anything that mimics smaller baitfish is best. These fish are pre spawn and post winter. They are ready to eat. Good luck.

Putting in an HB 898 and 788. Who makes a good map chip? Or is Navionics the only real choice? thx

Marty Stone and Edwin Evers. ;-) We got a good draw. Both were really nice guys and very informative. Only wish I could have had a chance to ask Marty how he was rigging his senko style worm to make it fall in a circular pattern while displaying his "flip shotting".

Also, I went into our local bass pro and looked at both companies units. The processors on the Lowrances are painfully slow...guess that's why they have to add the extra box for DI and SI for number crunching.

went with Humminbird. 596 HD DI on the front and 898 HD SI combo on the back with y cable, regular xducer and high speed. After looking at what it took to get SI And DI with Lowarance, lack of info on their website plus I couldn't get ahold of them after repeated tries...the Humminbird sold itself to me. Oh well, now I just have to wait for the boat to get here.

Which do you prefer and why? I have looked and I like the Lowrance but have heard the Hummingbird is more reliable. About to purchase and interested in some other opinions. Specifically I am looking at a 7" display with side imaging, gps and other normal functionality on the back and a 5" display with down imaging, flasher and normal functionality on the front. Thanks!

I saw the test report on the last Lund Predator 1810 the dealer sold. 51 MPH with Honda 90. It can take a 115, but just does not need it for what I do. Not sure I would want to do more than 50 in an aluminum a boat with an 85" beam.

Putting in an order for a Lund 1810 Predator and have an option between a Mercury 90Hp 4 stroke and a Honda 90 Hp 4 stroke. The Honda is $890 more but I have heard such good things about them. Is it worth the extra? Any input appreciated. Thanks!!!!!