smalljaw67

When I first got a hollow body swim bait I used it in the river for smallmouth, I used a weighted hook but the current pushed it to the surface and that was the end of doing that. So I'm at Cabela's and they have a sale on the Storm Wild eye swim shads in pearl and shad colors with a jig head already in it, so I decided to give it a try. It turns out the swim shads are awesome!!!!Since that time there are other swim baits I like better, such as the Easy Shiner from Keitech and the Gene Larew Sweet Swimmer but when the summer comes and I'm on the river, if the fish are in the riffles and current seams next to heavy current, then I'm using a Storm Swim Shad, they stay down and had a good tail kick, these baits also draw big fish. I haven't tried any others and really have no desire to, I know when and how to use the hollow body baits now, and the same deal with the solid plastic baits but when there is current, the Storm swim shad works.

Don't let reviews cloud your judgment, Fishrrw is always touting Phenix and to me , the reel seats on them are cheap, at least Quantum goes with Fuji but we are all different, see what I'm saying? Anyway, it depends on which Tour KVD you're talking about, is it the graphite models or the cranking models and which one of those is it? I like the 7' medium moderate Tour KVD cranking rod but I hate the longer 7'4" and the 7'10" as they are composite rods and they feel strange to me, I like all glass or all graphite, the composites just aren't right for me but you may like it. The graphite Tour KVD rods don't get a lot of love but they aren't bad, I prefer the Smoke rods to be honest, that is a legitimate stick but the Tour KVD has good sensitivity and the spinnerbait stick is the one that is highly regarded by those that do like them. Quantum muddied the waters when they came out with the Team KVD series, those are different blanks and different guides and are made at a cheaper price point but the only way you know if you like them is to fish it and see how it works for you. I'm buying nothing but Fenwick rods now but I have a few Quantum rods and they always were under the radar and it sometimes lead to a really good rod. The Quantum Smoke is a really good rod but I have a 6'6" spinning rod that I got in 2007 I believe, I paid $200 for it, the rod is a Quantum super light, it is a medium power with a fast action and go ahead laugh, a $200 rod from Quantum and what I'm about to say will get some upset but that spinning rod is really fantastic, it is so much better than my G.Loomis IMX that I gave the IMX to my Grandson, the longer rods in the series were tip heavy but the shorter 6'6" to 6'10" lengths were very sensitive rods. So keep your mind open and give it a chance, you may hate it or you may find you really like them like the way I feel about my Fenwick rods but free is a good deal so you should be happy, I know I would be.

Most of the square bills today that have rattles were designed with the rattle chamber running the length of the bait in order to aid in casting. The rattles also aid in providing ballast and by removing the rattles or balls, or gluing them in place with hinder the action of the bait to the point it won't run correctly. What will happen is the bait will either roll uncontrollably or it will run on the side where most of the weight went after the rattle were glued in place because you'd be extremely lucky to have the weight perfectly centered by just dumping glue into a hole.

Rapala DT-Flat 3, that is the first square bill I throw every season as it works in cold water and it is a great bait when the fish aren't moving much, for some reason when they aren't chasing they will eat this. This isn't a typical square bill but the rounded square bill lets it deflect and it has a tight action but it is jointed so it resembles a swim bait, the Bill Norman Flat Broke, those 2 don't has the wide wobble with a lot of thump like regular square bills but they work in the same places and you will actually get fish on them when other square bills don't work.

Tubes are made 2 different ways, most big companies, not all but most, have injection molds to make the tubes. Other companies, most small manufacturers but a few big ones as well "hand dip" their tubes, the way this is done is the plastic is in a large pot that is heated and then a series of stainless steel rods is dipped into the plastic and then pulled out. When the rod is removed, a layer of plastic sticks to the rod and then dipped again and then you have what is called a "double dipped" tube which has a thicker wall ad is more durable. Most hand dipped tubes are slightly hard because it makes it easy to split the tails, if it is too soft the plastic will tear but River Rock has a way of doing it while keeping the tubes super soft. For the smallmouth I fish for, they see tubes all the time and they spit them quick so having a soft tube is critical, most of the guides I know are using River Rock, that is how I learned of them. An internal jig is a jig head that is tapered to slide up inside of a tube and then it is fished with the hook point exposed. The "Stupid" style is rigging a tube with an internal jig weedless, there are videos on rigging a "stupid tube" . The reason for this is because a Texas rigged tube doesn't have the same action as a tube fished with an internal jig but you can fish the internal jig in the same places as a Texas rigged tube so someone figured out how to rig an internal style jig weedless so you can fish it in the same places as a Texas rig but it still keeps the action of a tube rigged with an internal or insider jig head.

I may be wrong but are you looking at this rod to fish other baits besides cranks? I was wondering because you asked about the low gear ratio which is normally associated with cranks.

I use the 3/32oz mushroom head and I also use a 1/16oz round head and no problems. The other thing is that it is a total myth that the worm or bait of choice needs to float, before the Z-Man plastics the rig used a 3" Senko and they are far from floating. The important part is that you get a slow fall, with a floating plastic it is possible to get the right head size to have it suspend in the water and that can be super deadly but I found that if the worm sinks, it can be just as deadly as long as the fall is slow. We've been using that rig for years for smallmouth with lockjaw and there are a wide variety of baits that work, if you use size 4 hook on the jig head you can use trout worms from Berkley, they are wicked but the problem is you will get crappie and bluegill along with bass, but the worm doesn't have to float, that is just put out there to sell TRD baits, but I'll say that a floating bait will just give you even more options and it will work just as well if not better at certain times just like every other bait.

Any MH-F rod in 6'6" up to 7'6" will work fine. The information is vague because we don't know what kind of water you fish, a 7'6" MH-F is going to be a little long for stalking shorelines of ponds on foot, or throwing skinny dippers under overhangs or skipping under docks. So, if you are fishing these in tight spots most of the time but occasionally you make long casts to open water off shore, than I'd look at a rod that is between 6'8" and 7'3" in a MH-F configuration. You have to tell us how you are going to use these and be specific in what you want, for example, maybe you want a rod to have a full grip instead of split, or vice versa or you don't want it to have a skeleton reel seat, something like that will allow others to give you some ideas.

River Rock Baits makes the best tube I ever used and I have used a lot. I should say that I use a lot of River Rock Baits plastics, but the tubes, those are in another class. I learned of the tubes from a guide on the Susquehanna river, then I found that most smallmouth guides have been using them so I started using them and I have never looked back. 3.5" is the universal size, it works well with an inside jig head but is also big enough to Texas rig and pitch into cover. One real nice thing about River Rock is they will dip the tubes on different size rods, I get tubes for cold water which are dipped on a 3/16" rod, these are a little thinner than the normal 1/4" rod which are double dipped and bulky, those are the ones for pitching in cover.

If I were you I'd grab something like 7' medium power, fast action with that reel and while some say it is big, and it may be a bit big, I think at your age it will benefit you, the larger spool is helps with distance and you'll also get a few less line twist plus you can still throw lighter baits and with the right rod you can get into some bigger stuff. Memorial day sales are coming up, get your parents to go to Tackle Warehouse, in your price range a *** black spinning 7'1" M-F would be a good choice but for your size reel I'd go with a Fenwick HMG 7'M-F and while I'm partial to Fenwick I will tell you that the medium Fenwick spinning will feel and handle like a medium but it is rated 1/4oz to 3/4oz, so you are getting a rod that is slightly heavier than most other mediums but still lighter than a medium heavy and it will give you some great versatility.

I choose length based on what I'm using the rod for and what I'm comfortable with. I have 2 spinnerbait rods, one is a 6'6" MH-F, this is my main rod as I target fish spinnerbaits which is short distance roll casting with a high degree of accuracy as I'm putting the spinnerbait in tight spots. My other is a 7' MH-F, this is my versatile spinnerbait rod, if I'm going on a friends boat I'll use that as I can also use it to pitch jigs and soft plastics with and get more distance than I can with the 6'6". Now you are saying that you are throwing big spinnerbaits, frogs, and swimbaits with an Ambassedeur reel and a 7'6" MH would be a good length and power to use with that sort of stuff and if you like longer rods then it will work just fine. Now you also have it right with the other rod, spinnerbaits, jigs and cranks, you can go longer but 7'M-F is a versatile set up, the only thing is you are using a medium power, I'm assuming that is because you want to throw cranks along with other stuff and that is perfect, but remember, with that deal you will have to keep your jigs and spinnerbaits on the smaller size but other than that you have a good hold on your rod selection.

Those are very good rods that are under the radar, they aren't big sellers but getting them at the sale price is a no brainer.

I never had it happen and I have a bunch of those but I never put them in a plastic bag either. To me it sounds as if the plastic and the paint had some kind of reaction.

Don't get offended but if you are breaking spinning reels at the stem it is because of something you are doing to them. It may be how they are stored or some other way. The stem will snap if too much stress is on that part, the only time I saw it happen was on my buddy's old Quantum Hypercast, he would just chuck it in his pick-up bed and go and one day he threw a 50lb bag of quick-crete in his truck and never looked, when he got home he picked the bag up and saw the reel was under it but it looked ok. The following day we went out and as soon as he hooked a fish the reel stem broke. That is the only time I saw one break and we know what caused it so being that you have had multiple brakes, I'm going to assume that it something you are doing to it in handling, storage, transportation, or all three to cause the stems to crack and then break.

What size baits are you wanting to throw with it? I have a Fenwick Aetos 6'6" ML-M casting rod, it Is rated 1/4oz to 1/2oz and I love it for fishing Manns' Baby 1 minus baits, KVD 1.5s and baits like that. I can throw a 1/2oz bait with it no problem but the sweet spot is 3/8oz I'd say. The only time I don't use it for those baits is when I'm banging the square bill around brush piles, then I use a longer, heavier rated rod.

I find it easy to decide which bait to throw, dirty water, weeds, and brush all get a chatterbait, clear water, more open with sparse cover and a scrounger gets the nod.

Your biggest problem is you are using large saltwater baits and you want 1 rod to cover those big baits and then still have a tip with flex for 1/2oz baits as well, to be honest you're going to either have to go on the smaller size for the salt water or deal with a rod that is going to be stiff with a pretty much any bait under 3/4oz. Most manufacturers now are making rods that are very technique specific and even the in-shore rods are being made in typical medium, medium heavy, and heavy so you get a medium heavy in-shore rod which handles your saltwater fine but it will be a little overpowering for the freshwater stuff. The closes thing is the *** *** Green Spinning rod, it is rated for 1/2oz to 1.5oz lures and if you want to go heavier you'll overpower the lighter end, so you either go light on salt, or heavy on fresh or buy 2 outfits, I see no other real alternative for what you want. If the tip section is going to flex without being in danger of breaking with 2oz baits on it, it is going to flex very little on a 1/2oz bait, it can't be any other way so to get it done with 1 set up you pretty much have to go with something similar to what you have. BTW, the eyelits are called guides and the guide insert is what cracked causing your line to get frayed.

I struggled with these until I got confidence and then I began using them more and here are some things I observed. The first thing is the non-ribbed Keitech Easy Shiner, Gene Larew sweet swimmer, and The KVD Swim-n-shiner type of baits have been really good in cold water, 48 and up and they seem to work well in lightly stained to clear water. I also use this type all summer as a trailer on a Northern style swim jig (1/4oz 40 strand skirt with light wire hook) and it does better than other types of trailers I use. Right now in the waters I fish, the bass are coming up and getting ready to spawn, this is when I like the Hollow Belly, Basstrix, or the Bass Magic hollow plastic swim baits, you will get better numbers with a spinnerbait but the bigger fish will hit the swim bait consistently. For shallow weedy areas I rig the hollow plastic baits with a Gamakatsu weighted superline hook in 5/0 for the 5" and 4/0 for the smaller version and I slowly swim it just above the weeds in 1' to 3' of water. I will also fish them on a 1/2oz J-Will swim bait head when I need to fish deeper than 5' and I will actually let it fall and then slowly reel it along the bottom, this have paid off in the post spawn period. The rig for the solid plastic swim baits for me is either a 1/8oz jig head with a 3/0 medium wire hook for 3.5" to 4" baits when I'm fishing in 5' of less, and 1/4oz with a 3/0 medium wire hook for fishing down to 8' and that is as deep as I use the small solid plastic baits as any deeper I feel the hollow ones do better as they move more water. In cold water the Easy Shiner type of swim baits are really effective fishing them like a tube or hair jig, and that is basically letting them hit the bottom and just giving them a slight drag, maybe 6" if the water is really cold, or a foot if the water is in the 48 to 50 degree zone. Once the water gets above 60 degrees I'll swim them most of the time and for the hollow versions I'll either reel slow along the bottom or slow and steady in shallow water, I tried but never had much success jigging those.

I'm not sure if line conditioner helps with braid or if you even need it with braid but fluorocarbon and mono it works. Now I'm not sure on line conditioners but I can tell you that I never believed in the KVD line and lure conditioner until I got some gifted and when I was testing fluorocarbon line out it really helped me and then I used it when I went back to mono and to make a long story short, I will never go without KVD line and lure conditioner again. I used the Reel Magic and it is a silicone type spray, I still have it but I use it by spraying a little in a rag and wiping my reel bodies down with it when I tear them down for cleaning. The KVD stuff is fantastic when you have line with high memory, it really relaxes it and allows for good casting, and even mono with very little memory still has some so it doesn't matter what mono I'm using, it gets the KVD L&L before I hit the water.

If you can wait for a Memorial Day sale in the next 3 weeks you'll get a better rod than what you would now or you'll save some money. My recommendation is to wait for the sale and go to Cabela's and there you can get either a Fish Eagle 50 7' medium light, fast action spinning rod or the Tournament ZX Bass spinning rod in the drop shot specific model which is 7' medium power with an extra fast action. Right now the Fish Eagle 50 is $90 and the Tournament ZX is right at $100, but if you wait for the sale you can probably pick either one of those up for $70 and they are both nice rods. The Tournament ZX has got high marks from a lot of anglers that I respect and everyone seems to really like the Winn grips ( grips found on golf clubs), and the Fish Eagle has always been a really good rod, it isn't going to win any design awards but it will give you good all around performance. I know this as I had a 6' medium power Fish Eagle casting rod I got as a back up and loaner and I ended up never loaning it as it became my backup jerkbait rod and my primary popper rod until I gifted it to my neighbor's son to use with his first casting reel.

When you were pulling on the line your thumb pushed the thumb bar down and the spool disengaged, I've witnessed that happen to more than 1 person that was new to bait casting. The reason this happens is the way your natural instinct to hold the rod ends up putting you thumb on the bar and you squeeze hard so you have a secure grip when pulling on the set up to free your bait but when you tighten your grip your thumb pushes down on the bar. When you get more experienced with a casting reel, you'll end up making a cast and your thumb will more than likely end up on the frame of the reel but right now you still have the instinct of holding a spinning rod so palming a casting reel feels strange but don't worry, eventually your hands will end up doing it without you ever noticing.

I have both the Hollow belly and the split belly and there is a time and place they seem to really work for me. The time in our waters is now, once the water gets above 55 degrees the hollow belly and the split belly will draw strikes from staging females looking to gorge right before they go to the beds. I have one rigged on a rod every time I go out now, and how I rig it depends on the weather, if the weather is stable and the fish are moving up on the flats, I will throw a 5" model with a 5/0 - 1/8oz weighted Gamakatsu superline EWG hook and slowly reel it back. If a cold front moves the fish back I'll use a 1/2oz Buckeye Lures J-Will swimbait head and slow roll it out in deeper water at the first drop. I will use one during the summer as well but the conditions have to be right and I'll use the smaller 3.5" and occasionally the 4.5" Bass Magic hollow swim baits.

There are 3 different swim jigs that I know of, a Northern style, the Coosa River style, and the California or Southern style. The Northern swim jig can go from 1/8oz to 3/8oz but the most popular size is 1/4oz, it sports a cone or bullet shaped head with a 30 degree light wire hook in a 3/0 or 4/0 size and a thinner 35 to 40 strand skirt. The Coosa River style, often called a regular swim jig is similar to the Northern only it uses a medium wire hook but it is still a 30 degree hook and the skirts are 40 to 50 strands with a cone, bullet or triangular shaped head. The California or Southern swim jig has a heavy wire hook and is often 1/2oz or more with hook sizes being 5/0 and 6/0 and they range from being 30 to 60 degrees with some even being flat eye hooks. They typically have 50 or more skirt strands and a head shape that is often wider and more rounded than the typical northern style as the northern style is made to slip through sparse grass and vegetation, the California style is designed to bang through brush and wood with heavy line and the broad head is better suited to come through that type of cover.

You are correct, it is a finesse Carolina rig and is great for fishing submerged grass. Rigging is simple, slide the Mojo weight, or other small cylindrical weight, to where you want it, and use rubber peg strips to peg the weigh to the line. I purchased a Mojo finesse kit back in 2002 I believe and it was, and still is, a killer finesse rig but has been overshadowed by the drop shot.

There are 3 aspects of a rod you need to know before using one, and that is length, power, and action. A 6'6" to 7' medium heavy power, with a fast action is considered to be a "general purpose" rod meaning you can use it for most techniques. The line and lure ratings are on a rod as a guide to what the rod was designed to be used with and it is often reflective of the rod power, most medium heavy rods are rated 1/4-3/4 lure weight with a line rating of 10-20lb, but some are also 1/4-1oz or 3/8-1oz. Medium power rods usually have a lure weight of 1/4oz to 5/8oz with a line rating of 8-17lb, and I'm not going to go into heavy powers because they are just higher line and lure ratings. Now to understand which rod to use for what technique is another ball game, but if you want to get the right rod for what you will use it for only requires a little research.