smalljaw67

7' ML Avid X is a really good rod that will fit the bill. I got mine to throw small hair jigs with light wire hooks and to fish small drop shot rigs and it is fantastic is it doesn't overpower the small fish but has the backbone to wrestle a big fish should you hook into something big. I do have to mention that I only use it with 6lb line and not around much cover, basically sparse weeds or near docks with open water around them. I think the Avid X is a little more responsive than the regular Avid but the micro guides with a better reel seat probably have a lot to do with the feel but that rod would be perfect for your situation, at least I think so.

You got great advice, the only thing I will add is what I saw when teaching my grandson to use a casting reel. The first couple times I noticed he tried to cast with the same motion as he did with the spinning rod, that will not work. If you overhand cast, use only your forearm, do not use your shoulder or your wrist, most people end up snapping their wrist and the added acceleration is what causes the backlash. You want the rod to move in a steady forward motion, like a quick whip like motion people tend to do with spinning rods. Good luck and remember, keep practicing.

I use them all year round if I have clear enough water. I do change tactics though, in the warm water period I like floating jerkbaits, if you ever have clear water and shallow weed beds, try working a 13 size Rapala original floater or a Bagley Bang-O-Lure over top really fast, rip-rip rip- 1 second pause and rip-rip-rip again and see what that gets ya!!!!! I've had some of the most violent strikes with those baits when a soft jerkbait just got a small glance.

I have a couple of 5" and they work. I found that they seem to be at their best in the mid fall, when the water temp dips into the low 60s to upper 50s. The crankbait style wake baits seem to work all year for me, the only time they down is when the water is cold and I tend to use the Red Fin in the mid fall as the fish seem to prefer the minnow profile over the more rounded crankbait type.

The 6'8" medium, extra fast and there is a reason. If you look at the lure rating they are both the same but look at the line rating, the fast model is 10-17, the extra fast is 8-14, and with St. Croix rods that tells me the extra fast version is a little softer and you may want that. The 6'10" medium, extra fast is only rated 1/8oz to 5/16oz so it would be regulated to Pointer 65s and not much else. If it were me I'd look at the 6'8" M-XF

I have an old Okuma V-System 200 casting reel, that is my heavy duty frog and flipping reel, it is 10 years old and has boat rash but works like a champ. I also have the older discontinued Inspira reel when they made it out of all aluminum, the reel is built like a tank but very smooth with the elliptical gearing, super nice drag, it is the 20 size and I use it with 6lb line for fishing hair jigs.

I use 2 colors in that bait a lot, Green Gizzard Shad, for clear water or lightly stained conditions and when we get anything less that 2' of visibility I got to Black Back/Chartreuse, very simple and it works!!!

Awhile back I talked about how 95% of my medium and deep diving crankbaits are old school, and I have a lot of them. Well I just expanded my collection with colors I didn't have but look good and I got them at a ridiculous price. My Walmarts fishing section is small, but they have those cardboard boxes with discounted tackle and it is usually the cheap version of the Cotton Cordell spots but not yesterday!!! I cleaned them out of one of my all time favorite mid depth crankbaits, the Bomber 4A and 6A and I got them for $2.99 each!!! I got colors in each that I didn't own and this is where the information comes in, it turns out I didn't have those colors because they aren't listed, they are made in certain "off colors" just for department stores. Now, I'm not sure the colors are Walmart exclusive but I was told they only sell these colors to stores and I'm assuming department stores as I never saw them in a tackle shop or even Cabelas or BPS. The new colors I got were "Chartreuse Pearl" "Chartreuse Craw" and what they told me was Tennessee Shad but since I have that in color in every Bomber I own I can tell you it is a different version, a lot more olive green than the regular version. The lady that is in charge of that department also happens to do the ordering and she told me those were the names of the color on the invoice she got. Another bit of info, don't be afraid to ask for a better price if you are going to buy a bunch or stuff or something they can't get rid of, in this case these were marked down to $4.96, I asked the lady if she could manage to get it knocked down to $2.96 is I purchased all of the baits, so she called the manager of the entire store who happened to be there and they said, $2.99 was the best she could do, SCORE!!!! For those that don't know, the Bomber model 4A and 6A are $5.29 and once in awhile the are on sale for $3.99, so now I just added eight new model 6A and six new model 4A baits. I use the 4A a lot, it is great in rocks as it takes more of a beating than the DT-4 or DT-6, and the 6A is what I will use heavily in the next 3 weeks or so when the fish move out to the first break from the spawning areas, it drops from 3' down to 6' and 7' and I can get the 6A down to 7' on 10lb Big Game.

Listen to Lmbfisherman, the Fenwick Aetos 7' medium power, fast action spinning rod is a good bet because it handles the smaller stuff but still have enough backbone for larger baits. If you can wait a couple weeks for a sale, Cabelas has an exclusive rod that will work for you. It is a Fenwick Silverhawk 7' M-MF rated 1/4oz to 5/8oz and it is $99 right now but if you wait for the next sale, it may go as low as $59.99. The reason that rod will work for you is the action, it is a mod-fast, that softer tip section will allow you to work with smaller baits in the 1/8oz range even though it is rated at 1/4oz. It has a good backbone and the kicker is they made it with a Fuji reel seat with Fuji Alconite guides, when I was looking for my hair jig rod, my friend has this rod and let me try it, I was able to fish a 1/16oz jig head with a small 3" single tail grub on it, no more than 1/8oz and it not only worked but I was able to feel the tail resistance and it will work with a 5" Senko without a doubt. Another to consider is the St. Croix Mojo spinning rod, either the 6'8" medium, extra fast or the 7'1" medium, fast, the shorter rod with the extra fast action will load faster and be great for Senkos, the 7'1" would work also and I'd go that route if the majority of things you are going to throw are going to be under 3/16oz, but any of those will be fine.

I went through the exact same thing, the Mann's Baby 1 Minus and the Mann's Baby X, they are my best producing shallow cranks and while my regular cranking rod was working with them, it still felt as if I was overpowering them and it turned out I was right. I'm not saying to get the Fenwick but getting a finesse cranking rod will really help if you fish the smaller cranks on a regular basis, for me it opened up a new presentation entirely. I never realized how much deflection the 1 minus and the Baby X had until I started to use the finesse cranking rod, the amount of strikes and fish I was catching increased by 50% on average and I believe that is due to the fact the baits were more erratic, it was something you felt and saw right away. I think the BPS ML cranking rod will work but I prefer a full graphite rod because it will allow you to feel the crank better because the smaller baits don't displace a lot of water, they typically have a very fast, tight wobble and a lot of times when the fish track them they will hit it while swimming toward you and the only way you know they have it is the you won't feel it anymore, the same thing if you pick up a blade of grass. So if you can feel it, you can rip it and possibly get the debris or grass off were as with the glass rod you may not een realize the bait isn't vibrating anymore.

What is your budget for your rod and reel, the total of both of them together. That will help narrow down your selection a little.

If you are sticking with the HMG or ET Bass you only have 3 options, the 7'2 MH-M and the 7'8" MH-M in the ET Bass and the 7'2"M-MF in the HMG line. Now you happen to be in luck, I have the 7'2" M-MF HMG and to me this is an awesome, under the radar rod that works as both a medium and medium heavy power, it is kind of strange but I'll explain. It is a medium power, but it has a rating of 3/8oz to 1oz, I personally believe it is more of a 1/4oz to 3/4oz as I've thrown 1/4oz baits with no problem and while I was able to throw a 1oz, it was much easier with 3/4oz. The tip section is soft through the first 4 guides then instead of shutting off it starts gain power and then shuts off just a little further down than a fast action but that shut off allows you to be able to rip lipless cranks free from grass without much effort and it lets you bang square bills over rocks and through cover yet it still has the flex in the tip to keep fish pinned on small treble hooks. That rod is the one you want as I would say it is a little more stout than a medium power, but not quite a full MH, maybe better suited as a light MH, anyway this is great for square bills, lipless cranks and most shallow and mid depth baits. I have used up to a DT-14 and that would be the deepest I'd go with that rod but the wheelhouse is 12' and less.

The bass pros shops ML cranking rod is ok but for finesse you want that Aetos and the reason is that the rod is all graphite. I will apologize to the person who told you to go glass now, but for finesse cranking the last thing you want is glass, they are heavy and you won't have any idea what the small cranking is doing, the only good thing is it will cast well provided your reel is of good quality. A full on graphite rod will let you feel small cranks, they are smaller so they don't have the thump of larger baits so graphite here is the only way to go. As for length, as I said, the 7' medium power BuCoo will work but you'll find shad raps and other wood cranks will have a tendency to sail, that is why I believe the shorter rod is better for finesse cranking. I like to try things before I commit and I was using all of my friends different rods that fall into the finesse cranking zone, basically any medium or medium light power not rated over 1/2oz, and I have used the Tatula ML-M and it has more power than a ML, it is more of a medium in my opinion. The 7' BuCoo is what I'd go with if you have to have a 7' rod but I believe small cranks work better and cast easier and more accurately on the shorter rod but the 2 best choices are the Aetos and the BuCoo and at $75 the Aetos is a lot more rod with a lot more sensitivity, and that was the other difference between it and the BuCoo, when you get down to shad raps, you can feel it on the Aetos, not so much with the BuCoo, but most other 1/4oz on the Falcon are fine.

I use Junebug in combination with black, and I use it for 1 specific purpose, dirty water in sunny conditions. I have used black/blue jigs for a long time and a friend of mine was using black/purple one day and as we fished he said he wished he had Junebug in the skirt as the flash may help. Well that stuck in my head, I made some jigs up using regular black/purple and some with black/Junebug and there wasn't much difference until we used them on a day with dirty water and bright, sunny skies, it was the only color that worked and I've used it ever since.

I have a Fenwick Aetos, 6'6" ML-M rated 1/4oz to 12oz but it should be rated 1/8oz to 7/16oz. I use to throw the #5 shad rap with a spinning rod, the only crank I fished on a spinning rod until I got this rod and I'm going on my 3rd year and I'm happy as a clam. I can tell you my fishing actually got better with the finesse cranking rod as my smaller cranks have more action and I'm getting more bites. I like the throw the small Sebile Cranksters SR baits, they weigh 1/4oz but it feels lighter, on my regular cranking rod they worked, or so I thought and when I threw them the first time with the finesse cranking rod the bait seemed to really come to life, it dug in and and had a wider wobble and the fish were clobbering it. The closest rod to it that is longer is the Falcon BuCoo 7' M-M rated 1/4oz to 1/2oz, I have used that rod and it is very close to my 6'6" ML-M so that would work as well. There is just something with the 6'6" length in the finesse cranking that I like, I use it to throw 1.0 and 1.5 KVD square bills for river smallies, it feels like the rod was made for them, I can put it in very tight spots and I've landed 4 smallmouth over 5lb on this rod so far and a bunch of 4lbers and it amazes me every time. I'm sorry for the long rant but I'm sold on finesse cranking, I'm finding that the fish will react to these small baits when they don't hit anything else and it seems like using the right rod is critical, I never caught fish on small cranks at the rate I do now, it is that noticeable that I believe everyone should have that type of rod.

Good deal!!!! I know there are guys that hate spinning tackle but I believe a good day on hair jigs could convert even the hardest of the non-believers!!!!! I like the style of bucktails you tie, those are what I use for river smallmouth in the winter and early spring in 1/16oz to 1/8oz. All in all nice work, I love being able to have a back up when the weather isn't fit for fishing and jig making is fun and I can see you know this already, LOL!!!!!

There is nothing wrong, read this and you'll understand that the rod just isn't the right one for that reel. http://anglersresource.net/WhattoLookforinaTopShelfSpinningRod.aspx

Yep, the rattling version is a BPS exclusive, anywhere else you get the silent. BTW, I think the silent ones are the best!!

If you can find a Tatula rod at the $80 to $90 that is what I'd get. That is a lot of rod for that price, I know guys that have Steez rods that really hate how much they paid for them compared to how good the Tatula is.

You have found the reason why people love topwaters, no other excitement like that exists. You cast out and work the bait over and over, no strikes for the last 30 minutes or so and you get into a very relaxed state inside your head thinking about what you have to do tomorrow and then BAM!!!!!!! A strike that sends you heart racing and your mind goes blank and whether you get the fish or not, that feeling makes you want to do it again.

The closest you can get would be a slider head, that would be the only way if you absolutely have to use a snap.

I'm a Fenwick fan, if you are looking for a rod under $200 then look at an Aetos, the 7' medium power fast action is very sensitive and very light. I like the St. Croix Avid X at the $200 mark, but it uses micro guides which could cause problems if you like using braid with a leader.

The Senko is my follow up bait but I use it T-rigged weightless.

Raul has got you covered. The old wiggle warts would be a little off center with the hardware and it would cause the bait to have a searching action that would make fish bite. The new ones I think work well, the new original warts is what I'm talking about. The Rattlin' Chug Bug was always good, when Rapala bought Storm the quality of the baits became consistent but they never changed the chug bug design, at least not enough to change the action. The claim to fame of the chug bug is that it was a popper that walked the dog on its own, it does this by sitting level and having a bottom shape that is closer to flat than round.

The differences in beaver style baits are all subtle, sometimes a particular design works and others don't but the main difference is the appendages, less is better, at least for me. Using a dark trailer in dirty water is what most jig fisherman do but in clear water I use green pumpkin, brown, or black.