smalljaw67

I don't know why it was developed or who came up with it but a friend of mine showed me how to use one and he said he read an article about them being used on suspened fish out west. I will tell you that I've only been able to catch fish on them in one lake and the biggest difference is the water clarity and the lake we did well with them was pretty clear water. Casey Ashley using it was the first time I heard of someone working it along the bottom, I learned by counting it down to where fish were spotted on the graph and then slowly reel but from all I can gather is that it is a clear water bait but I have only limited experience with them fishing for suspended fish.

I have a 6'6" M-F 1st generation Vendetta that I got with a gift card, it was to be used as an all purpose rod for the jon boat because I can only take 2 rods and I needed something that would leave me in tears should it get stepped on or lost overboard. I still have it and I still use it, that rod I considered a steal because it wasn't what I'd call sensitive but it was great with anything moving like spinnerbaits and it is an excellent casting rod, and it is very strong without weight a ton. It is going to be my grandson's spinnerbait stick this year.

The HMG is a nice rod and it has a lot of sensitivity for a rod in that price range, it is certainly worth a look. It uses that rubberized compressed cork so you got good grip while still having the feel of cork and no filler to fall out but it isn't real cork so it may be an issue.

With the way everything is now, just about any rod in that price range is going to be good. My personal preference is Fenwick, their lengths, powers, actions, and aesthetics work well for the way I fish. I have casting and spinning in their Aetos and Smallmouth series and a casting in the HMG and I can honestly say I'm extremely happy with all of them. If I were you, I'd look at things you specifically need like reel seats, some guys won't use anything but a Fuji ECS, for me, I happen to like the ACS and the new SK2 sjkeleton is even better, but look at those items as well along with guides and pretty soon you'll narrow the field down. Good luck.

In order to get good fishing a jig, you need to catch a fish on it to gain confidence which will then lead to more fish. First thing I do when teaching someone, like my grandson for instance, to fish a jig is to start off with a small 1/4 jig or a finesse jig, the reason why is jigs are a big fish bait, not a numbers bait and you'll get more bites with a smaller jig. For me trimming the skirt depends on the fish, and your trailer, if you are using a large jig with a big body trailer then you won't want to trim the skirt but say you are using the same jig with a zoom super chunk to make it more compact, then you may want to trim the skirt back so the trailer will be more visible. There are a lot of variables and it comes when you learn more but if you want a good length that you don't need to worry over, 3/4" beyond the hook bend, that is long enough for action but short enough for your trailer to be visible.

They always have that.

The 6'6" MH rod is not what I would use to crank with or jerkbaits or anything with a treble hook. You want a rod with some bend to it, a 6'6" medium power fast action rod will work for shallow cranks and jerkbaits just fine. As for the 6'0" rod for cranks and jerkbaits, no problem, one of the guys in our club has an old 5'6" pistol grip rod that is moderate and he uses it for cranks, jerkbaits, and topwater poppers. The thing is the action, if the rod is soft enough you'll be fine, if it is a MH with a fast action then no, the rod will be too stiff to really fish with trebles.

You jerkbait anglers out there owe it to yourselves to try a Storm Twitch Stick, I'm grabbing some new colors next week and......no, don't bother, you won't like them.

I'd love a box like that but I can't find any, so I use an old 3600 series box that was made for one of those Bass Pro Shops, or Cabelas worm kits. I got it at a yard sale for 50 cents and I can put 4 jerkbaits in 1 slot but I only put 2 and my expensive ones get a slot by themselves.

You can flip a weightless Senko, flipping is just using the rod with a set amount of line out to place a bait in a spot close to you. Sure, we think of it as heavy cover but really you can flip anywhere with any size weight, and to me a flipping weight is the same as a worm weight, they are both bullet weights and that is it, no difference.

Since you are going with Z-man you just eliminated every shaky head with a screw lock, and because of that I'd go with either a VMC Rugby head or the Z-man shaky head. I don't even like spear type holders with Z-Man plastics, my fishing partner had Z-Man finesse worms and he was using the Buckeye spot remover with that segmented spear to hold the worm and he was able to stick it in but every single cast he was having to push it in over and over. So now he uses a Rugby head with Z-Man plastics.

You'll be fine, I actually contacted Lamiglas about the rod in the Excel 2 line-up to find out if it was an E-Glass blank and I was told that it is a composite blend and very light in weight. They changed it because the original Excel was a straight E-Glass blank and even with a split grip it was considered heavy. I've heard a lot of guys really liked that rod, and went it went on sale it was the first one gone.

Here is my take, I hated glass rods until a friend made me use his for a full day whenwe had a good crankbait bite and I ended up loving it. I still hate the weight, especially an E-Glass blank which is what I like and the reason I like it is that you can't get the same action in graphite, S-Glass and composites, yes, you can mimic that in graphite to a certain extent but not E-Glass. The reason some anglers like glass for cranking is you have a soft rod, even in a medium heavy but, down in the butt section you have plenty of power, but here is the kicker, you're into a big fish and the rod is in the power section with the fish at the side of the boat and it gets a 2nd wind and surges, the rod even under that load will still give just a bit more, you get a very connected feel with it. Now, S-Glass and composites are noticeably lighter than E-Glass, but it is still heavier than graphite but what I don't like about them is they shut off just like graphite, if you're cranking a 3/8oz DT-6 and you get a decent 4lb fish hammer it, you reel and side sweep the hook set and you are fighting the fish, the rod is bent and it is off, meaning the rod is basically the same power all the way through the blank until it hits that backbone and it isn't moving anymore. That is fine and I never minded that until I fished with the E-Glass rod, it felt as if there was 3 distinct levels of power where as graphite and composites have a single level and then backbone. S-Glass is a little better than composites, it still shuts off to high but it isn't as much as graphite or the composite and it is lighter than E-Glass by a good bit so I can see how someone could really like S-Glass. Don't get me wrong, I have graphite cranking rods and I have a graphite finesse cranking rod and for shallow cranks and square bills you really benefit from the sensitivity but glass is different and all it takes is to catch a few decent fish to understand what glass does for you but the weight is very hard to overlook, I'm trying to find a lighter E-Glass rod and if I can't I'll get a graphite rod to take its place because I don't feel you get much more advantage over graphite with other glass type or composites.

That is why I have rods from different manufacturers because not all models fit my needs. I will say that most of my rods from now on will be Fenwick rods and it is because the power, actions, and lengths fit my fishing perfectly and before I ran into these I had mostly Loomis with a few of this and that. I have a 7'2" MH-XF Fenwick Aetos, it does double duty as a pitching rod and swim jigs but it is very stiff and has a lot more power than a typical medium heavy and it works for me because I want that power rod to pitch with but I don't want it in a 7'6" or longer rod, I only have 1 flipping rod and I hate pitching with that length. My suggestion would be to see what else is around for your price range, I always wondered why they label the rod as regular it doesn't matter, I only use braid for heavy flipping and frogs so the rest of my fishing is done with copolymer lines and the mod fast tapers don't work when using a line that stretches. You could probably use that Tatula if you use braid, it would give you a rod that can double as a reaction bait rod but added flex with mono or fluorocarbon isn't the best choice.

When I started getting into bass fishing versus just fishing, a 6' rod was considered long and a 6'6" rod was really long. Most rods were in the 5'6" to 6' range and they worked fine but there are advantages to long rods like the amount of line pick up or super long casts. The thing is short rods are still in use, not as much but they are now more specialized, I got a G.Loomis CR721 GLX, it isn't made anymore in that power, at least in a GLX but it is awesome for skipping weightless soft plastics or just roll casting small plastics and jigs up under overhangs. I was fishing tournaments on this one body of water and I found a shallow flat with a lot of current but 2' from the bank there was a ditch that ran about 80' or so and it was a little over 4' deep and the rest of the flat was less than 2' deep with gin clear water. That ditch held some monster smallmouths but it was hard to get a bait to them because of the overhanging willow trees and if the bait splashed down or you got 2 close the fish were gone. So I got a custom rod made, a 6' MH-F for throwing 1/2oz spinnerbaits under the overhangs and it worked like a charm, my GLX I would use if they didn't hit the spinnerbait or conditions weren't good for a moving bait, then I'd throw a tube jig or a slug-o as the fluke wasn't around yet or the Senko. So short rods do serve a purpose if you know how to use it but todays anglers have been spoiled by reels with braking systems and super long rods...LOL!!

The MGX is a good deal at $79.99 but when it hit $59.99 I jumped on it because that price isn't going to hang too long. The thing I dislike about Cabelas sales is they very seldom have an entire inventory sale, most of it is discontinued items and the MGX is a good example of that. I will say this in defense of Cabela's discontinued items sale, most of the time they blow the prices out, I got a bunch of Sebile Cranksters for $4.88, Xcalibur square bills for $2.88, Daiwa Tierra spinning for $40 in the form of a discontinued Tournament ZX and now a Pflueger Supreme MGX for $60, those are good sales in my book.

While I would call the regular taper a moderate fast action, that rod in the video is not a regular taper. I'm going to guess that it is the 7'2" H-F, I may be wrong but the regular tapers from Daiwa's other rods flex a lot further than what the rod in the video did.

It will work with single hook reaction baits like spinnerbaits or even a chatterbait but I would not use it for jigs or worms. You aren't going to have the same amount of sensitivity or feel with the regular taper either so unless you are going to use it for reaction baits I'd say get a different model.

Just fill it until you get to within 1/8" of the spool. Fluorocarbon is going to be similar to mono in line capacity.

If you don't know what the forage species of the waters you fish just use sexy shad, the appeal of that pattern is that it imitates a wide variety of baitfish across the country. Bluegill and shad patterns are also universal, even if there aren't shad in the waters you fish, the pattern will still work. If you have stained water at all a chartreuse/black back pattern is good to have.

There are a lot of instances where I don't want a big heavy flipping stick to fish jigs. There is a spot I fish in which I use a 6'6" MH-F jig rod, it sounds strange but the area I'm fishing is 150 yards of steep bank with a lot of trees. There are lots of deadfalls and of course overhangs but the water is clear and shallow, if you get too close you spook the fish so I'm out away from the bank a little further than pitching distance and I have to get under overhangs as well. The big rod can cast but I'm throwing small 3/16oz jigs with a thin skirt and trailer and the 6'6" MH-F lets me make the roll cast with a light bait under the overhangs and it still has to power to get a big fish back to the boat. That is only one example of many that I would use a separate jig rod over a flipping stick.

Just about any medium power spinning rod that is fast, or even extra fast will be soft enough for crankbaits. I have a 6'9" M-XF Fenwick Elite Tech Smallmouth rod and I use to throw a #5 shad rap with it and it worked well for that, I don't think you need a moderate spinning rod unless it is in the medium heavy power range.

That is silicone, the same skirt making material we use for jigs and spinnerbaits, what the OP is taling about is actual rubber skirt material. I use fly tyers Dungeon for flash and dubbing and they don't sell the stuff the OP is looking for.

Is that the actual bait? I'm asking because the post on the swivel look a little large for a Sampo and the front of that fluke is cut off which I wouldn't think you would want when using a 4/0 hook. That brings me to my other point, on that head, the largest size is 3/8oz and it calls for a 2/0 hook and the hook that is probably used is a Mustad 32746. That mold needs to be modified to take that hook, it may be able to put a 3/0 in it like what is in the picture, but not a 4/0, that is 2 sizes larger than what the mold calls for and just about every Do-it mold I have you can up 1 hook size, very few can go up 2. Especially going from 2/0 to 4/0 because those hooks have remarkable diameter difference once you go past the 2/0 size. I don't mean to be too technical but in order to make that bait with the hook size he is using is has to be modified, now the swivel part can be done, that looks to be a little longer than what I saw in the video but the front of that bait is cut off so maybe it is how he did the blade but the hook size doesn't work without modification.

If you reread my post I said he used the Do-it horse head or pony head, Road Runner is the brand name of that jig, Do-it calls it Horse head without the barb, pony head with the barb and then there is a larger version called a sea horse which uses a larger, strong hook. It may be possible that he used the larger one simply because they used a 4/0 Mustad hook in it which means they used the bigger mold or the other is modified. He did say the head was powder painted and he used a 3.5 willow blade in nickel finish but he only stated he used a Sampo swivel, he didn't say he powder painted over the crane swivel, unless you have better info. So remember, Road Runner is a trademarked name, Do-it molds calls it a horse head, pony head, or sea horse depending on the model.