dwtaylor

dedicated drop shot but I tie generally decently long leaders already so I could tie one up on the lake. Storage wise, I secure the hook in the rod hook keeper and just twist the leader line around the rod/reel handle area to minimize snags.

You would need diamond tooling to cut tungsten because it is so hard. Those tools aren't cheap. Most cutting tools in the machining industry are made of tungsten carbide. These tools are made from these blanks and are usually made via grind from blanks or powdered tungsten carbide pressed into shape and sintered. Most fishing lure applications are likely a variety of sintered tungsten or tungsten carbide. Many say 97% tungsten but I think that might be slightly false as there may be some alloy element that includes tungsten but it is not pure tungsten.

I always keep mine as close as possible to the foregrip and in the same line as the guides (top for casting, bottom for spinning) The angle of the line off the reel to the 1st guide keeps adequate distance and prevents the line from snagging the keeper. I pretty much only use drop shot style keepers anymore as they are more versitile. +1 on the reel being a hook keeper on big baits. Makes a big difference. Same with alabama rigs.

My wife kept suggesting I get the whatnot app for fishing auctions, as she uses it for her hobbies. Against my better judgement, I listened to her this weekend. Ended up over paying on a chop block glide and ended up getting some really good deals on terminator titanium buzzbaits and a baby 1 minus. Kind of crazy to see coikes there go for 35+, but I get it they are popular.

Using heavier jigs you are going to lose a lot more baits. Sometimes they like fast falling or cracking style retrieves. I use 1/16 to 5/16 in my river I fish the most and never use 3/8 or above due to snags. Lighter weights reduce snags, but you need to be heavy enough to get to the bottom. Most years with low river/low flow conditions, I find 1/8 to 3/16 the most used sizes for me. The 1/16 are used with baitfish style colors when I want a very slow sink or a presentation where the current will take it and 5/16 is in deeper holes along bottom. I always view a tube jig as a consumable item as you will lose tackle to snags. I make my own tube jigs, but I do recommend castagaintackle tubes and tube jigs as they sell in bulk packs to help with losing baits.

Swim jigs are very versatile baits, but there are different kinds of swim jigs at play and they each have a use. Northern style swim jigs: -predominately 1/8 oz to 3/8 oz with most using 1/4 oz -light wire hooks -lighter weedguards -sparsely tied skirts oftentimes with krystal flash or mylar flash. Southern/regular swim jigs: -predominately 1/4 oz to 5/8 oz with most using 3/8 to 1/2 oz. -heavy hooks -heavy weedguards -full skirts Northern style swim jigs is what I fish most of the time because the light hook and weedguard keeps hookups great. If the fish bite it, it is coming in the boat and it is very forgiving for a swim jig. Lethal weapon swim jigs are probably the best example of this style of swim jig a guy can find online. I make my own however, it is a relative knockoff of the formerly great Brovarney swim jig. A medium to medium heavy rod with fc line is preferred here and is a tom monsoor style hookset (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdMiu1M0fp0). I still fish it around grass and wood, but if you need to wrench on fish around really heavy stuff, its not the jig for you as you can straighten out hooks if you don't have the right setup. About 90% of the time I use 1/4 oz and the other 10% I am using either 1/8 to 3/16 oz or 3/8 oz, never heavier. Southern/regular swim jigs are basically heavier, more full versions of a northern style jig. The fuller skirt has the bait float higher in the water which helps in in submerged grass and other cover. This kind of bait you can throw on a mh to heavy rod with braid or heavy fc line and is good to wrench fish out. The hookset is a tight and hefty lean set compared to the northern style swim jig. I rarely fish this and really only when around heavy grass where the fish is coming up with a bunch of cabbage. Landing % is less with this jig and as a result, I fish it far less than northern style jigs. This is also the type of swim jigs you will find most commonly available. If I need to keep my bait shallow, 1/4 oz gets the nod. If I need to keep it deeper around submerged grass, I go 3/8 to 1/2 oz. I don't fish swim jigs immediately after ice out. But once water temps get into the upper 40s, it comes out and stays until fall when I put the boat away.

well done! I am in a similar boat with my son being born in may 2024. I haven't painted a crankbait or finished a rod since. One of my early builds was that same mhx blank and I had the same feeling...way too stiff. The sj blanks have a slightly softer tip than the mb blanks, but no where near what I would call a medium power blank in the sj series. A 3 power is a medium heavy in the mb line and I would certainly call it a medium heavy spinning rod blank. With that said, I am using my drop shot rod DS822 a lot more because its lighter tip, but still stiff backbone. It isn't quite heavy enough for consistent stupid tubes, but it does have the lighter tip to load 1/8 to 3/16 oz jigs in 3.5" tubes.

I didn't buy specialized threaders, but borrowed the largest eye needle in my wife's sewing kit. I pinch off the last carapace section of a 4" maxscent chigger craw for use on a jig and used these sections threaded with silicone, round rubber, and flat rubber. I caught fish, but I am new to the dice game and this was all summer/late summer fishing with these baits. I think it would be better for me in prespawn through post spawn though. FYI, silicone will tear easily when pulling through. Be careful and maybe lube it up to slide through the bait better. Some use worm oil. I tried megastrike scent as lube and it worked well. I did not have this problem with the rubber, fyi.

https://www.tacklewarehouse.com/Spike_It_Elastint_2oz/descpage-SIE.html Spike It Elastint is made for that material. I haven't used it personally, but its worth a shot.

fish obsessed dominator mount. It is solid, reasonably priced, and offers plenty of adjustment over the factory mounts for forward, down, and perspective mode views. I have zero complaints with mine. In fact, I am very confident that their mount has been critical in my ability to refine my ffs skills and the adjustability in the perspective mode is an absolute killer in shallow water, where the factory perspective mount has a fixed angle.

I don't own any of the legend glass rods, but as far as glass rods go when feeling them on store shelves, they are likely one of the best in the industry. Great actions and light for glass rods. With that said, if given the option of a graphite rod with a moderate action or a glass rod, I am taking the graphite rod every time. St Croix makes great carbon crank rods and I swear by my 7'2" mh-m victory for dt6, dt8, dt10, warts, rkcrawlers, and money badgers. The extra sensitivity around rock/sand/etc transitions is key. With that said, it doesn't have a traditional mh backbone and the medium is very soft, but would likely be better for the light wiggle warts or bandit 200s that I also throw.

I wanted to go this year, but fear of having car troubles driving in the sub -10 degree weather made me not want to go. I looked at the vendors and there is getting to be fewer and fewer folks setting up shop there than the last time I was there in 2022 or 2023 whenever the last time I was there. Prior to covid, I went to that show, the milwaukee show, and the madison/wisconsin expo every year. I haven't gone to any for at least 2 years and don't have the desire to do so. No reason as most vendors have very minimal sales or deals for what I am looking for. Frankly, my fishing expenses have gone way down hill since having a kid.

I bought a zillion 100h older model with a custom 7'1" mh st croix legend tournament rod for 85 bucks at a pawn shop. It had a lot of boat rash, but I might clean it up and paint it eventually. Mechanically pretty sound too, but that era of Daiwa and Shimano reels are pretty bullet proof. I prefer my e series shimanos and have over 30. They work always. If I find a good deal on them, I buy them.

most fun? Frogs hands down. Not only do you get an awesome strike, you get to fight and wrestle the fish on the way through the weeds back into the boat.

Who knows. ISU will have 2 quality games before the cyhawk game and Iowa won't. I don't think it will happen, but my biggest concern is if Iowa turned the page in a drastic improvement on offense. Your new guy has a decent arm and some wheels on him and that can give a team fits, but overall ISU is used to athletic qbs in the big 12 and their defense is set up for it. Its almost always a close game between us but I think its as close on paper as it has been in recent years and ISU is starting to fill a more competitive roster with guys that play hard like Iowa has always seemingly been able to accomplish. I do think Mark Gronowski is the X factor in the game to keep their offense 2 dimensional. ISU's secondary is better than Iowa's receivers but Iowa's OL group has a slight edge (very slight) to ISU's Dline group. I think ISU has a good game plan to try to get the new guy to beat them with his arm and I think there will be a lot of punts.

I have several different baits I throw, but in this circumstance I am talking about the dirty jigs scott canterbury 1/4 oz with the white blade and a white horny toad as the trailer. Horny toads are heavy plastics so casting distance and accuracy is not a problem. The 1/4 oz bait has a smaller blade so you need to work it a little faster than the ones with bigger blades, but adding a big trailer like a horny toad will cause it to be unbalanced and keel over if working too fast. FYI, I have almost exclusively (not 100% though) gone away from skirted buzzbaits to a toad, fluke, or swimbait trailered buzzbait without a skirt or trailer hook. idk what it is about it, but if a fish hits the bait enough to get hooked, its coming in the boat unlike skirted baits. I ditched the trailer hook because hookups were good and now I can fish it in heavier cover without snags. Hoks suk, go state!

Topwater frogs and buzzbaits are my best producing topwaters. I tried catching fish on walking and popping style topwaters this weekend and 1 bite...I picked up a 1/4 oz buzzbait with a horny toad trailer on it and caught 6 fish within 30 minutes. It is hard with that kind of production to not fish it. All smallmouth and decent ones at that.

I got bit pretty good this weekend on a 1/4 oz custom snootie jig but broke off on the good colors...back to pouring, painting, and tying up more I guess. I always go by weight I need to keep bottom contact but not too much to get snagged up. 1/4 oz this weekend was perfect in the current with a sparse skirt and a 3" chigger craw trailer. A 3/8 got snagged up too much, but that was a trimmed up full sized jig to keep a compact profile. I have found to love the snootie jig for smaller compact finesse jigs as they are pretty snag proof around rock and wood which is the majority of what I fish it on.

https://www.amazon.com/Timbertech-Multi-Purpose-Airbrush-Dual-Action-Decorating/dp/B07SQYLBR5/ref=mp_s_a_1_3_pp?crid=2ZNXAEQUQNAPS&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.KqQOj_7ONJcG9no3MPe9sJA6ppEvwCctjc66waTIp_58lRzP3q3GyAR_yWXVw7e0gYqB0BrVAAiciP-qr9bwwfkycuUkBMs2bcfSjZG7ZABRPZvuLEE7yupsQylx750vj2FCoqcoGg-DfretPOFiIOf5Bw8IX1Yeb40QosAowKs5HUcBERtvbgRlbqwiijAb4yLLK1ImBdrKZu1uIdBBkg.Np1DJPbbL7AZpLU_EmcMqBvlqPRQdHuwclw4s8PfUew&dib_tag=se&keywords=air+brush&qid=1752601780&sprefix=air+brush%2Caps%2C426&sr=8-3

I was a pork chunk guy and kept it hush hush when they were hard to get (uncle josh started making them again, albeit in maybe less than ideal sizes/shapes/colors) for cold water (sub 60 degree wt) jigs. I almost exclusively use maxscent plastics as jig trailers now because they are that good. The meaty chunk for a zoom super chunk style trailer, a power chunk for a zoom salty chunk or pork frog style trailer, lil trooper craw for finesse jigs, chigger craw in both sizes for jigs, especially football jigs, and creature hawgs for flipping jigs. A local tackle shop, the reel shot, is going out of business and is clearancing stuff out like crazy so I bought several years worth of chunks and creature hawgs at 50% off.

I recommend 30lb braid with a 12 to 16 inch leader of 14 to 20lb mono for that application. Berkley big game is nice for leader material and is relatively cheap. You want heavier mono because topwaters have a tendancy to catch the treble hooks on the line if the line is too limp like braid is. A stiffer leader will help reduce issues like that. When going to a braid reel, only put like 2 or 3 spool rotations of backer line on before putting on the braid because you can absolutely launch baits and having that extra line is nice.

good work! I too keep found lures and wash them up to repaint if they aren't water logged or in really bad shape. I also sand the top coat/paint off the baits for 2 reasons...paint adhesion and performance especially on suspending jerkbaits. Painting over primer/paint/topcoat with more primer/paint/topcoat increases the lure weight which could cause suspending lures to sink or floating lures to suspend. My favorite airbrush is available on amazon for like 25 bucks and is basically an iwata eclipse knockoff and comes with a .8mm tip which is really nice for laying down heavier paints like metallics and pearls.

I use the gamakatsu superline hooks with the screw lock swapped out with an owner center pin style screw lock. I think I use 4/0, but they could be 5/0 size too but I use them mostly for horny toads. When you line up the hook where it would come through the body like a normal tx rig with the bait straight, go another about an 1/16 to 1/8 inch further back when putting the hook through the bait. This bends the bait, but make sure the bait is bending down towards the bend of the hook and not up away from the hook. That slight bend down shifts the center of gravity of the bait below centerline, which allows the bait to flip right side up. It may still land upside down, but simply raising your rod tip up and reeling in with a slight bow in your line it will flip back over, provided it isn't over a pad or something stiff preventing it from turning. I don't like the belly weighted hooks as they collect too much snot grass on it. If we had consistent eel grass, hydrilla, or milfoil instead of scum I would probably use them, but since we don't have those nice weeds, I just use a bare hook.

Just like the hok football team, it sounds like your line is only good for the first few weeks and choke down the stretch. The only difference I guess is that your team will squeak by with a late win against nebby to get you to the capital one bowl to get kicked around by a mid-tier SEC school whereas your line will probably continue to break/choke. I have had spools of line go bad before that were new from the store. I just had to trash a bunch of line from a yozuri hybrid spool that I had where multiple rods were having similar break offs. I respooled with the same line, but different spool and haven't had issues. You have no idea how long that new spool of line sat on the shelf or in a non-climate controlled storage/distribution area. Like others have said, check the guides and even the levelwind of the reel. Storing your hooks on the reel body like that and you will likely end up scratching things that shouldn't be scratched. I never recommend storing baits on the reel like that as it will only cause bad things, never good. Use your rod hook hangar or buy one like what fuji sells.

The MB 110 KOs on LPO's website are certainly not anywhere near the action of the OG MB products. Predator blanks are close, but still a little off from the OG ones too. I catch a lot of fish on my wiggle wart knock offs and the 1.5 sized squarebills from LPO so thats not to say these knockoffs don't catch fish, because they most certainly do.