gulfcaptain

I know it's not in the 2 brands you have listed, but Falcon makes a nice 7'MH in the Bucco series. Light, and has a mod fast action and is sensitive. Would work well for the application you're looking for. But I do have one of the Black Omens, and the 7'6"MH is light, but compared to some MH, it's more of a heavy action.

When I'm home from work for my 2 weeks off....every day right after I drop my son off at school till I pick him up....so 8-10days for 7hrs each day, and if you count when I fish at work, well a few hrs 2-3 times a week.

Depends on the time of year and what I believe the fish will be keying in on. Spring/Fall or shad spawn....A-Rig, Summer with sunny days, throw a green pumpkin creature bait with a punchskirt into the thickest grass I can find, or run a hollowbelly frog across the tops when it's overcast. Winter where I live, pick up the 8" swimbait from Dec to Feb and nothing else.

I had to have my two shipped to the store an hr from me as well. I use both of mine for swimbait rods fishng 2-8oz baits. They don't stock musky rods at my BPS.....then again there aren't any muskies in CA.

Used to use Ande in Saltwater applications. It was a bit softer then Big Game and had more stretch to it so it was a good option when I was fishing with live bait off of charter boats. Fishing plastics and jigs though, I wouldn't use it due to the stretch and softness, it also would have memory issues if it sat too long. Liked the tournament though for real light fishing....trout, light surf fishing outfit(S. Cal use 4-6lb surf fishing and small grubs). Liked the limpness and small dia that it had. But never used Ande for bass fishing.

come to think of it, most of my larger fish have been caught between 10 and 2pm. There are exceptions but 80% would fall in that window.

finesse jig, jerkbait, or could try a lipless crankbait ripped and hopped off the bottom.

look into fishing a weightless Yamamoto Fat Ika. The local city park lakes around me get hit hard yet these things still produce fish.

you want to try one of the bigger swimbaits down there, I wouldn't hesitate to look into the floating 8" Savage Gear top hook line thru baits. You can creep them across the tops of grass since they float, And at $18 half the price. You are never gonna know what you can catch unless you throw one. Just make sure you have the gear to bring them out of the cover. And like stated above, the bigger fish will give up their location when they follow even if they don't bite, you can come back later and try with something else, but you will know where they live. I'd stick with the 68 weedless if you're gonna throw the 6" models and fish it on a steady retrieve.

check out BPS graphite musky rods....they are on sale right now and can get a decent rod to fit your budget without breaking it.

Have a carbonlite reel matched on a 7'6"MH crankin rod. Use this combo for my lighter A-Rigs, nice, light, strong, and has just the right action and give for the application. Loved the reel so much had to get 2 more to go with my extremes, which one is paired to an older Bionic 7'6"MH. Great reels and rods.

Have 6 of the Bucco rods, needless to say, great feeling rods. Don't have the 6'10", have 2 of the 7'MH's and great worm rod, also have a 7'3"H and used it for pitching and punching uses. But for the price Walmart sells them for, def well worth the $75 Walmart price. The 7'6" I want is double that and wouldn't hesitate to pull the trigger if I found that for the same price.

Yep....have to agree with most, nothing beats a roostertail, well any quality inline spinner.....also available online.

All kinds of real news happening and CNN.com has this......yep avoid the real news, look at this scary ghost caught on camera. It was probably caused by climate change. That will be today's topic.

I believe the use of the glass rod is to let the fish eat it a bit longer before driving the hook home. I did the same thing for the A-rig, went to a MH crankbait rod as to let the fish eat the bait a bit longer and increased my hook up ratio quite a bit. Glass composite or straight glass just gives the fish a bit more time to close their mouths before hooking themselves. But everyone has their own techniques and ideas. Another issue is does everyone have the budget to have a rod for each technique, so a lot of rods serve double duty.

IF you're gonna get into swimbait fishing, I would get a rod that can handle what you are looking to do. I would heed Ken Huddleston's advice when he says that the 6" and 68's would be best fished on 20lb swimbait tackle and 8" bait's best on 25-30lb swimbait tackle. This isn't just the line size, it's the rod that can handle it. I would look into a rod that can handle up to 4oz to throw the smaller 6' baits, and look for something that can handle up to 8oz for the larger. Better yet get one that could do both as so once you get hooked....yes once you catch a bass on a big bait you will buy more. But you don't want to go out with a rod that isn't really made to handle those lure weights, and once you hook a fish you want the ability to bring that fish in without worry and quickly. You don't hunt bears with a 22 even though it may work, but a 30/6 would work much better. Kinda the same deal. Be prepared and have the tools to handle the technique you're looking to get into instead of getting by. When you hook that fish of a lifetime you will be glad you did.

Look, if you don't want to break the bank, want to fish bigger swimbaits, look into BPS graphite series musky rods. They make a 7'6"MH rod that will cover your needs and it's roughly 60.00 and is IM6. I have 2 and they are great rods without breaking the bank. I know it's just my opinion, but got into the bigger swimbait's last year and these rods haven't let me down and have handled all my swimbait needs nicely without breaking the bank. Leaves me more money to buy the baits to fish this way too.

Some of the small lakes I fish, the bass key in on Dragonflies during the summer. They will follow them around and jump 2ft to get one. Also watched about a 5-6lb bass follow a huge moth that happened to fly low to the water. The fish tracked that moth for about 40ft before the moth flew higher. So yes, they could eat a bird, but think they would be more apt to pick them off the reeds or if one fell into the water.

If it belongs or was stocked there it was done for a reason. Bass around my area of the country eat plenty of trout, so toothy critters aren't the only ones. I don't kill anything that belongs in there, we don't have snakeheads, but I could see the exception there as they aren't supposed to be there. But pike, pickerel, and musky, well California doesn't have any of these, but have stripers that invade lots of our waters, eat a lot of trout and other fish, yet we don't throw them up on the bank. Sounds like someone needs to educate those anglers that would do something like that....and calling the DNR could help as well.

Only rod I have broke was the Academy's H20 7'6"XH, both in the same place. The top 12-16" exploded swinging in a fish with some grass. May have been that over 90 degree angle mentioned earlier but both broke in the same place. Believe they were XF action and have since decided XF actions aren't the rods for me. Replaced the first one, and just said the heck with it on the last. Good rod just not the rod for me.

going from a 7'MH casting rod to a 6'6"M spinning rod, the tapers may not be the same as well as the difference in length can affect the your hook set. The amount of power you used on the MH may not be enough on the spinning rod especially if one is a fast action and the other a moderate action. You may need to switch to a lighter wire hook for an easier hook set where you don't have to drive the hook home as hard.

I'm gonna have to agree with WRB, a rat swimbait.

Being I fish bodies of water that have both as well as them eating trout all winter. Craw patterns work good, but let the fish tell you what they want. If you pay attention to each fish and how it's hooked it can tell you a lot. If they are just swiping at it, or trying to eat it. I would fish both, just read the signs. If you're in an area with lots of baitfish, throw the shad color. If you're in a hard bottom/scattered rock and timber throw the crawdad, but don't hesitate to re-work that area if you caught a couple with the shad pattern too.

Pork trailer is a piece of pork fat, which has been brined/salted, normally with some skin on one side and colored. Some people love them during the winter when fishing jigs slow, some of the better pieces have some buoyancy to them and will slow the jig fall. Uncle Josh is probably the most famous of the pork trailer baits. Depending on what you want though you could use them year round for different trailers depending on which model/shape you select. Would work on spinnerbaits and chatterbaits as well as a regular jig. Just move of a natural trailer instead of a piece of plastic.

If you wanted to get a rattletrap, you could get one of the floaters. Use them and they dive to about 12", but if you put suspend dots or strips I'm sure you could get a neutral or ultra slow sink rate out of it.