MIbassyaker

I use 1/16 to 1/4 heads, Megastrike Pro shakeyheads or Owner Ultrahead finesse ball heads. Any 4"-7" straight tailed worm. ML or M spinning combo. Cast, let sink. let sit. twitch, shake, hop, pause, drag, whatever. Mix it up until you get bit, then do more of whatever it was you did just before you got bit.

OK, it's not tackle or gear, but I think it's stupidly part of the same addiction... In Fisherman Books 2, 3, 5, 8, 10, 13-15, 23-28 (1975-1980): #2, #8 and #15 are the study reports I had been looking for ("bass in the reeds", "bass on the breaks", "bass on the weeds"). The others "looked good too".

Medium spinning for me too. I use a 6' Pflueger Trion combo that is several years old, medium, mod-fast. I think it was $50. It's short, but it loads light weight cranks so well that I haven't found myself wishing it was longer.

I would get a Pflueger Trion, about $40 new.

The starting line-up for the summer is now complete: Add that to some offseason acquisitions: ...and the yak is now full.

Dang it! Congrats Marlene!

Yup, this one's a regular Zoom Fluke, baby bass color.

But how do you get it to fit in the kayak?

I enjoy watching pros fish. But I get very little out of shows and video clips of pros trying to give tips. Too many of them do not communicate effectively what they're doing and why, and end up touting their own superstitions as knowledge, or absurdly declaring a sponsor's product as the solution to why you aren't catching as many fish as they do. But I've seen a lot of things on youtube where some dude in his garage or living room or out on the water says, look what I made/did/tried, or says, here was a problem I figured out how to solve, and I go, "why didn't I think of that?" there are quite a lot of good kayaking youtubers in this vein. And even of the others, I can forgive a few vlogs or unboxings for some videos like that once and a while. The abiliity to comment, critique and videomakers frequent willingness to respond is also an underappreciated advantage of youtube.

If sponsorships annoy you all so much, how do you manage to watch ANY kind of video produced by any segment of the fishing industry? I expect young people like to watch the youtube unboxings for the same reasons I used to like flipping through a bass pro catalog as a kid, over and over, dreaming of one day owning every color of worm and every type of rapala. If you don't enjoy watching the stuff DIY fishing youtubers are doing, that's a sign you probably aren't the intended audience.

Not huge (3.5lb), but it's nice sometimes to re-visit a place you once dismissed as a dink factory, and find out you may have been wrong.

I fish mornings almost exclusively, for about 3-4 hours at a time, 2-3 times a week. Any day fishing is "good", even if I get skunked. I'd count catching five or more keeper size (14") or "close" to be "successful", or one or more over 4lb would also be successful. But it depends a lot on where I am. I divide my time between about 25 different bodies of water in my area (mostly natural lakes, rivers, and river bayous) mostly small (30-150 acres), but that can vary a lot in water clarity, forage, cover, vegetation, pressure, and competition from other predator species. Not all of these places are highly productive for bass numbers or sizes, they just happen to be the bodies of water I prefer to be on. Some I visit more often than others, but I hit about 10-15 per summer, and I try to add a few new ones each year. If I'm visiting a new place, or coming back to a tough one I don't know very well and haven't been there in a while, I'm happy if I catch one dink.

It's the Fropwater Spinner Crank!

Something with the words "pumpkin" or "watermelon" in the name is what I use 90% of the time. The rest of the time it's a junebug or a plain black.

I have a silverhawk and really like it for the price. It may be better than the HMX. I have a 7'0" medium -- It is not the lightest-weight or most sensitive rod I have tried at this pricepoint (EDIT: normal retail price, that is; it's pretty good for the sale price) but it has an excellent backbone for a medium spinner, and the materials are very good quality.

Other than hooking myself, nothing in fishing feels more wrong to me than holding the rod in my left hand. If I ever do it, it's ultra-temporary, for positioning or something. This topic comes up occasionally. The responses have a noticeable pattern to them. People (right-handers at least) who say they tried a left handed caster and found it awkward tend to complain about difficulty reeling. People who say right handed casters are awkward tend to complain about difficulty holding or working the rod. In other words, the complaints are actually the same: they are about doing something with your non-dominant hand you don't have any practice with. I expect that's what most, if not all, the left vs. right preference boils down to -- familiarity and practice.

x3 for the double palomar

Bait Monkey Productivity Report, Memorial Day Weekend: --TW: St. Croix Avid X 6'8" MXF Spinning Rod, some plano boxes (3601, 3731, 3670), silicone skirt tabs, shroomz heads, hayabusa weedless wacky hooks --Biospawn; T-shirt, hat, plasmatails, vile craws, exosticks --ACK: some replacement components for kayak (handles, bungees, fittings, mounting hardware), gear head mount extender, Hawg Trough ruler --Backcountry.org: NRS Chinook PFD

This one's come up before! See also: http://calfish.ucdavis.edu/location/?uid=113&ds=694

Sweet! Well, I thought I understood what "excludes" means.... guess not.

Hmmm...I see St. Croix listed under "exclusions" in fine print, yet, the discount registered just fine for an Avid X. Order compete, confirmation received -- looks like it went through....am I missing something here?

Aaaaaaaand.......its on.

I did exactly that -- bought a $200 gift card at Xmas expecting to put all all or most of it toward a rod at memorial day. I then almost immediately blew $50 of it on other stuff. Still, with 15% off, 150 will get me most of the way there.

Two of six from this morning. Top one went 3.75; bottom one about 2: