MIbassyaker

@ScottF speaks the truth. There is no shortage of productive waterbodies in MN, WI, & MI with rent-able waterfront accommodations. For all practical purposes, the options are endless. The lake smallmouth fisheries up here are in something of a boom at the moment. The Michigan state record, for instance, has been broken twice in the last 3 years after standing for 100+ years. Just be aware the farther north you go, the later "late spring" is.

I actually really like high-water on my own local rivers -- both largemouth and smallmouth will get right up in flooded bushes and trees, which you can pick apart with the ol' 1-2 punch: Cast and retrieve a buzzbait or spinnerbait as close to newly-flooded cover as possible, from a few different angles. Then flip a jig or t-rig a few times to some likely spots before moving on.

It's amazing how much the big lakes wreak havoc on the weather here --almost anything can happen, anywhere, at any time. I've lived here 10 years, a couple hours south & west of you, and I'm still just trying to get used to it...

I think black/red is a greatly-underrated color for jigs and plastics, and in my experience just as effective as other dark colors, or better. If I just take a look into my jig boxes to see what trailers I have rigged up at the moment, ready to go for the next time I head out, here's what I find: --Berkley Powerbait Chigger Craw --Berkley Havoc Pit Boss --Megastrike double tail --Rage Tail Rage Craw and Space monkey --Yamamoto fat baby craw --Yum Bad mama --Z-man Batwingz --Zoom super speed craw

Yeah, that's a smallie...nice one, too! Once you catch several of each species and get used to seeing the range of variability in markings, you can see it pretty easily. Congrats! Overruns of mono are a LOT less expensive than braid if you have to cut them out....I'd recommend picking up some Berkley Big Game to spool up instead while you're still getting used to baitcasters.

Here's how I think about questions like this: Megabass Vision 110 on TW: $25 3 packs of GYCB senkos on TW: 22.5 So: Will I lose/break/wear-out my megabass jerkbait before I go through about 3 packs of senkos? If so, it may not be worth it. Otherwise, possibly worth it.

Stiil fishing the 1-minus? Heck yeah.

Given somebody might have found a good score, I think I would feel (marginally) better about that than what I did last year, which was to have a 3600 with similar contents slide over the side of the kayak in 30 feet of water......of course, with some air inside, it sank slowly, so I'm watching it fade into the blue-green depths as it glides down in slow-motion, as I flail away uselessly in full panic with the only instrument I had, my paddle... First-world problems to be sure, but still traumatizing.

I have an avid x M/XF spinning rod, and it is perfect for wacky rigs and weightless plastics. The casting model M/XF I would use mainly for jerkbaits and topwaters. However, I do have a 6'6" M/F model in the premier line, and that one is really versatile -- it use it for all the things mentioned.

Classic!

I have braid spooled on frogging and heavy cover combos, but for everything else I use Trilene Big Game.

Small dam backwater. Visibility to about 2-3 feet, tannic (brownish) stained. Wide shallow area on one side with pads, arrowheads, and some other emergent vegetation ending at the channel break which goes down to about 6-8 feet. The drop is moderately graded, with coontail and some other subsurface vegegation. Other side of the channel is a steep drop from the shoreline, some downed timber, but not as much vegetation. The emergent vegetation in the shallows is beginning to brown, die back, and thin out. A month ago I would have hit that with a frog and/or flipped a texas rig in there. That would probably still produce in some places, where it's thicker. But yesterday, I caught most of my fish over that weeded channel drop with a whopper plopper and weightless worms, between the deep part of the channel and the shallow pads, where the vegetation was all still thick and green under the surface (bottom of the pic below):

I like the usual suspects from Rage, Zoom, Berkley, GYCB and such. I also like a few that that don't get mentioned as often: The Reins Ring Craw, V&M Wild Thang, Biospawn vilecraw and gambler burner craw

Best of 11 from a rare (for me) evening excursion tonight. Also the best bass I've had in at least a month...it's been dink-city here, otherwise.

Just tried the General the first time over the last two days and my view is in line with Glenns -- they do seem more durable than the Senko and they have good wiggle action on the fall even weightless (Better than the Senko? I don't know, but noticeably better than some other stickworms).

I can vouch for Revenge, Pepper and Siebert -- I have all three in bluegill patterns, all nice. I also like the Siebert "Pumpkinseed" pattern.

I'm also interested in hearing more about these. I gather this is something of a replacement for the discontinued Fenwick Methods Travel rod, which I know had a some fans, but was also more expensive. When it was discontinued, the clearance stock went really fast, and I missed my chance...

How do these differ from the classic 100/200 series? Looking them up, I see it dives deeper than a 100, but less than a 200. They're heavier...are they bigger in the body, too? There was an old bandit squarebill that was discontinued a few years ago. I still have a few-- they were about the size of a 2.5. Are these new ones like those?

Generally, the bigger and curlier the tail, the more drag is created while pulling through the water, as the tip of the tail is pulled backward, slackening the outside edge of the tail. The famous undulating curly-tail action is caused by water forcing the slackened edge back and forth as it flows past. But without an additional force to hold the grub body in position, the drag on the tail will just create a spiraling effect that rolls the whole body, rather than a back and forth effect. With a jighead, that second force is provided by gravity.

I thought I was the only one. I don't know what it is, but I find the recent trend of red in rods and reels absolutely repellant. It looks wrong.

Others in this thread concur with @A-Jay Maybe I am going crazy? I just smelled it again -- absolutely nasty! I mean, Powerbait's potent, but the maxscent I got smells like there's a dead, decaying mouse in the bag, or something.

"The maxscent is not detectable by me" "...has much less scent [than the regular powerbait]" *********************** And here's @Glenn, commenting on @everythingthatswimsreview: Wait... what??? Doesn't have strong repulsive smell? I just got some packs of the General and the Kingtail, and almost gagged when I opened them! Much worse smell than powerbait, and at least as potent! What's going on here? Am I going crazy? Could Maxscent be like PTC paper, where some people have the gene that makes them taste the bitterness and some don't??

Braid, mono, or copolymer for me. No fluoro.

I would love to have a nicely-matching stable of rods from the same line with matching reels. But I'm more interested in getting a deal, so most of what I own I bought on closeouts and other sales, here and there. Most of my rods are Fenwick or St. croix, in several lines each. Reels are Daiwa, Lews, and Pflueger.

I don't feel the need anymore to stock up on lots of colors, although if I'm buying multiple packs of something because I want a lot of bodies, I'll get a few different colors "for fun". I mostly only buy colors with the words "pumpkin", "watermelon", or "grass" in the name given the choice, and don't care much which it is. But if I see a pack of something I really want, and they don't have a color I'm looking for, I'll just get it anyway. Is that "simplifed?" Sure doesn't feel like it -- at this point, I could probably stop buying plastics completely and still reach the end of my life before using up what I have accumulated so far. And I'm not even that old.