Tim Kelly

Is it breaking at roughly the same place every time?

I'd get the Daiwa. Match reels are shallow spooled reels designed for float fishing light 2-4lb mono. I've never used an Okuma reel I thought was better than the equivalent priced Daiwa or Shimano.

Tremendous, well done. What a fish! Sounds like it was already a great days fishing before you hooked the beast.

4" off the butt won't matter too much, but I'd bet she could get used to using a 6'10" rod without any problem. Getting the handle length right for her will have more effect than the eventual length of the rod as it will affect the handling and balance.

OK, thanks. Not sure how a swivel would stop the bait from spinning, but it would keep the twist out of the line at least.

Ha ha. I'm really not a clean and tidy freak at all, but the boat was covered in silty mud from the dogs jumping in and out, and as they stand on the TM all the time I'm fishing, that's covered too. Washed the boat down and it's back to being essentially clean and mud free, but the TM looks dirty because of the silty mud trapped in the finish. Might as well try to have it looking good for the new season.

I was cleaning my boat the other day in prep for the new season. What do you use to clean the trolling motor? Mine had a fine silt deposit that gets in the texture of the paint and is never really clean from just washing. What's the secret? Silicone car spray?

Home alone tonight then John?

No. I've looked at it very closely, there's a decent gap and it spins freely. Just seems like there's not enough keel weighting to keep it stable, but if others have 130s that run right without spinning there must be either something wrong with the way mine was made, or something wrong with it that's really not at all obvious. The body spins much slower than the tail, but it does spin.

Where did you add the swivel and how does it stop the plopper spinning?

Huh, OK. Bit of a design flaw then.

My Whopper Plopper 130 tends to spin the body as well as the tail. Are there any known mods to correct this, or is it not worth worrying about?

That's really bad. Here in the UK we have a universal health service where pretty much all medicine is free at the point of use. Most people have to pay a nominal amount for a prescription, but the drugs are essentially free. Sure we pay for the service in our taxes, but buying collectively makes the costs far less onerous than under your system. Being a self employed plumber, I can't imagine what my health insurance costs would be Stateside. Having a chronic illness like John would be very limiting.

Maxima ultragreen and CXX

Spoonplugging should be required reading for all anglers. Sure, some of it is probably a bit inaccurate or fanciful, but it offers a very useful incite into general bass movements and understanding of structure and it's importance to bass and other species. If you use the general information and add in modern sonar it can help you understand lakes much more quickly than miles of trolling could.

Does anyone really think there are benefits to using fluoro over mono in tests lighter than 8lb? The reason I ask is that I've tried a few different fluoros in the lighter tests and other than being more difficult to manage on spinning reels, I couldn't tell a difference between them and mono. Once you get to the 8-10lb catagory the difference in density starts to become noticeable, so you get the benefits of better slack line detection and the different pull angle, though 8 is marginal and 10 impossible on spinning gear, so you're soon into casting gear.

Maybe. At least it's not confusing. ?

Yeah, but you'd think points and money would go hand in hand?

Huh. Had no idea Hackney was that high in the tables, though he's won the least money by a huge margin. Wonder how that works?

KVD and Hackney seem to be really suffering under the new format.

No swivel works very efficiently if it's not keeled in some way. For the bait fishing you might want to try attaching the lead to the upstream eye of the swivel, then the upstream eye can't turn and the swivel will do it's job properly.

Different brand or thickness of braid to last year? Different type of lures being used?

That's fine for a lot of reel seats, but the original poster asked for an exposed reel seat, which is sized to fit at the position you want the seat on the blank, so it does need to be installed from the tip end. For a non exposed reel seat, you're absolutely right.

I have had this issue with certain rare combinations of leader and braid. The answer is to use a different leader line. It usually happens when I'm trying to use a thin hard leader with thicker braid. I had a problem with 3lb fluoro to 10lb braid, but swapping to 3lb mono cured it.