mod479

Me too, I bought every pack chinamart had in the bargain bin this past winter. Good bait on a small football head. Bama bug is my favorite color.

Exciting was getting my first 3 frog fish in a tourney this weekend, talk about fun. I am usually a light line kind of guy, but winching largies out of the grass and goo with 50 lb braid was just too much fun and something I dont always get to do where I fish. Boo-ya pad crasher....best 6 bucks I've spent in a while.

If you have strong current, you will obviously use more weight, but I dont know your rivers conditions. 3/16 is where I usually start, wont snag up too bad if you keep it movin'. If you're donating lots of tackle, drop down weight, or rig one up texas style with an internal weight and a straight shank worm hook 1/0-3/0. Will still get wedged in rocks, but wont have an exposed hook to get stuck on everything it touches.

Dont only focus on top. Try a lightly weighted (1/16-3/16oz) 2.5" -3.5" tube in a natural color drifted downstream in current. Give it an occasional pop with the rod tip, or just drag it along bottom and let it skim over rocks like a crayfish. I like green pumpkin, melon, black, and white for colors. Torpedos and buzzers can be a blast when theyre on a topwater bite, they will wear the red off the hook of a black cavitron on the right day

3 - 5" finesse worms in green pumpkin, melon, or black is a good starting point just about anywhere. I try to keep it simple now that I have confidence in the rig instead of messing around throwing a dozen colors of the same bait. Not neccesary in most cases.

Healthy looking fella there. Probe any laydowns located near deep water and you will score the big brown fish you seek.

I've been following your saga for some time. Never really offered my $0.02 so here it is. Temp fix: Tell her you're through with her petty BS. Yell, scream, break something if you want to and tell her its OVER. Walk out the door, dont tell her where you're going. Go fishing, or go grab a few drinks with a buddy. Let her call and text and call and text til shes blue in the face. Answer only if you are in the presence of other females, let her hear them briefly. Hang up on her. Go home late, sleep wherever you d**n well please. Watch her come crawling back to you. She will likely revert back to her ways in short order, dont be a glutton for punishment. If she doesnt make an effort in a few days of you going off doing your own thing, you just saved yourself a considerable amount of time. Permanent fix: Get yourself the best divorce lawyer you can afford, do as the court orders. In ~10 years you will be on your way to freedom, your standard of living will only increase, hers will steadily decline. Your kids will still be yours and with a decent lawyer, you will still get to see them often. Think of it like a 2nd chance. Do it for your kids. The toxic environment you and your wife create is far worse than seperation. Serious.

Dobyns champion 703sf / sustain 2500 - 6lb yozuri hyrid Champ extreme 703SF / Ci4 2500 - 10lb power pro braid and a yo-zuri leader Champ extreme 763SF / Ci4 - 10lb power pro ties direct usually, this setup is just for draggin' vertically in deep water/strong current. 1/16 - 3/4 oz internal jigheads for fishing exposed hook which is how i fish them whenever possible for best hookup % 3/8 - 3/4 oz bite me big dude heads for dragging goby imitation in big water 1/8 - 1/4 yamamoto tube weights and 2/0 owner or gammie straight shank worm hook for a weedless presentation Small tubes work well on a dropshot, something to keep in mind. You dont have to nose hook them either. And, dont be scared to throw or flip a 4"+ tube, they can be a big fish bait and will still catch numbers SK coffee tubes, Dry creek tourney tubes, fat gitzits, yamamoto go to tubes are my top 4. megastrike craw scent If they're no interested in full body double dipped tubes, I'll go the opposite way and break out lighter gear. My finesse tube setup is: A 7' ML spinning rod and a 1000 reel spooled with 4lb copolymer line. For a bait I will pick up a pack of yamamotos chub tubes or SK bitzy tubes. 2.75" - 3" length. Finding the right hook took a bit of experimentation on my part, but I found a winner. With those little tubes pick up a pack of owner ultrahead darterheads, they have either a #1 or 1/0 light wire hook that is the right size and sharp. You'll have to deal with a 90 degree line tie however, but that can sometimes give a tantalizing spiral, sometimes I'll gently bend it forward with a pair of plier to decrease the angle which allows you to fish a tube like a soft jerkbait. Many ways to fish these baits. Try that out if you are looking to gain confidence throwing tubes.

I drag, swim, and stroke them on an owner ultrahead football. The 1/0 hook is perfect for that size beav.

No offense taken here. I love braid for 2 techniques, one where my line rarely goes slack, the other where strikes are all visual. Dragging a tube deep and frog fishing. Can't beat the strength and low stretch qualities

Sure, but dont start threads where you ask for direct comparison, why people use it in place of rope, then just disagree and bang the drum because you like it more. No reason to try and run people out of the thread for answering your question or disagreeing with your views. It's your preference afterall. If you want a braid thread, make a braid thread. You want to hear why braid sucks for some applications, well, you started it right here and there's guys out there who will tell you. For the record I have rigs with braid, straight FC, and hybrid copolys. Each has its purpose. I'm not in anyones posse.

Mikell....I have 8 spinning setups. Some high end $600+. Some low ballin', ~$60. Each has been setup for certain baits and techniques: Dropshot, Dropshot #2, T-Rigs/tube, T-rigs/tube #2, shakeyhead, soft jerk, topwater, medium jig. 3 BC setups: cranks, jerkbaits, and heavy jigs. Cant say which style is better for you. I can tell you both spinning and casting setups have their place on my boat though. The thing is, one guy might like working a tube on casting gear and that is great, I cant even be bothered to try because I have 2 spinning rods which are just as sensitive and capable of doing that job. Its all about preference really. Will say I prefer BC gear for cranking, it just feels right in comparison to a spinning setup. Get yourself a medium action spinning setup with a 2500 sized reel. This will cover most situations you'll come across, it will toss weightless baits, light t-rigs, dropshot, tubes, topwater, soft jerks, hard jerks, grubs, darterheads, and some lighter jigs. When you need heavier gear, pick up your baitcaster.

Wrong. Oh so wrong.

Nice thanks for explaining. Gonna give that a shot this weekend instead of throwing just senkos

Does it stay level or drop to a side and glide down ?

Paul Mueller

My favorite topwater bait actually, frog, chrome, and firetiger covers the colors you need on the bottom of the bait. The stock hooks suck, I added an St-36 and a owner dressed treble to the ones I have. Still sits back in the water like it should. Its a good prop bait til you want to spend more $, then I suggest a LC Kelly J.

Fish the mouth of the Chazy River where it runs into the lake.

The general concensus will be FC is not for topwaters. As much as you like it, (And I do too) its not exactly ideal using sinking line on baits mean to float. Common sense right? Think outside the box a minute. It could give many baits a whole new action, think poppers spitting instead of blooping / or popping louder since they dig into the water a bit more. Consider the kelly J which sits lower in the water by design than traditional prop baits. It makes a real racket when you want it to. FC could even be an advantage for buzzbaiting. Walking baits might not work at all. That being said, there's people out there that claim FC works with some tinkering. Adding fly-line floatant to the line near the bait, or tying FC on as a leader to mono. I have to think that even if you had a way to keep the first couple feet of FC on the surface, the slack line is going to sink eventually, bow underwater, and drag your topwater down with it, or ruin the action on retrieve. There's guys out there that say its all they will throw poppers on now because it changed the action, only one way to find out really...

Not legal in NY. There's a group of kids here that fish at the same dam I do for muskie and flatheads using baby bass. They work, I've seen the results. I'm just waiting for them to do it this season, I know the DEC guys around my area and they're gonna nail them.

No reason to limit myself for a brand name. Even though I have many Dobyns rods for certain techniques I also regularly use a Veritas, a Crucial, a Cumara, and an old school 6' Berkley bionix. Some rods just have a feel that is right for the way you fish a certain bait, even if they're not high dollar, or matching your reel.

Good thread. The best day of fishing I have ever had was a team tournament. We launch out of Chamount Bay in Lake Ontario but the boat motor wont go into gear. Talk about losing confidence. We were originally going to make a run to Henderson and fish some rock piles. Without the main engine we dropped the trolling motor and took off into the bay. I had a smallie on before the rest of the teams had even got out of the bay, and we caught them from 630 til when we trolled back over to the launch around 230. Easily a 80+ smallie day between the 2 of us, and all on senkos. Black and blue flake in the am, pearl hologram after the sun got up. 20.54 for the day...which only got us to 4th place.

Content on that site has gone way downhill. Even tried to fill mine up with fishing sites, reports, tackle companies. Still nothing in my news feed except selfies, babies, and humble-brags. Deleted it.

Woah. First time seeing this....and I'll say look at the size of that fishes mouth relative to his hand..... looks like a 5lb frame full of eggs/food. Wouldnt doubt 6-7lb, but 9.....well you'd think he woulda put it on a decent scale before creating an internet sensation. haha

Different species, smallmouth prefer cooler more oxygenated water when they can find it. That doesnt mean you wont find them cruising pools below rapids in the low light hours. Big Kev hit the other reason on the head! They let the current do the work while lying in wait, similar to trout.