Further North

It's the end of spawning activity. The fish need to recover from the impact spawning has on them.

Casting gear is more accurate, casts as far, and it's easier to stay in contact with the line during a retrieve than on a spinning rod.

...and that's why I debarb all my hooks, right there.

I use casting gear - down to BFS - for everything I used to use spinning rods for. It's better in every way I can think of.

The most fun you can have catching panfish is with a 4 or 5 wt. fly rod and little foam spiders or poppers.

These all work on our local rivers. Not sure if they fall into the "bright" category.

You'll notice, particularly at the end of a long day on the water.

Other than the tools used to put the fly/lure in front of the fish, there's no useful difference between fly fishing for bass (or anything else) and using conventional gear. The process is the same: Find out where they are. Find out what they want to eat. Show it to them.

Even jerk baits aren't really my thing, but I get it. My favorite is small rivers in a drift boat...I'll take that over big open water every time.

Same here. I find the style of fishing on Lake Erie - which I understand to to be mostly jigging - to be a thing I don't care for. If others like it, that's great!

If you're 100% on a power boat, that means lakes, and that means Canada, IMO. If you were OK with river, and floating, the river mentioned above in Wisconsin from a drift boat, or jet are great, but you're not going to get a v-hull into the upper reaches of them.

There's so many open questions that make it difficult to recommend anything... What kind of fishing do you want to do? Rivers, lakes? Wading, floating, power boat? Conventional gear, or fly fishing? What part of the country (or Canada) do you want to go to? Is it just you, or will there be others with you? Will you be staying in hotel(s), are you looking for a lodge, or will you be camping? Will you be driving to where you fish, or flying?

Yes, both the fly and conventional angling books.

Sorry about the slow response, I just realized the notifications icon got moved... Great question: When I want the fly/lure/bait to have action on the pause, I use the multi-strand. It's amazingly supple. When I'm just pulling a fly/lure/bait (think Mepps/bucktail/spoon, etc.), the single strand is great. It's also great for turning over heavier flies on the fly rod. I tie a double fly with about 18" of space between them and it works great for that. Absolute truth. Same, but I use mono, and 50# on the 10 & 12 wt, #40 on the heavy 8. I'm curious why you say this? I've not had that experience.

Certainly a possibility. A couple of our rivers produce really dark fish, including the eyes; lake smallies here tend to be lighter. ...the rivers have so many crayfish it seems like the bottom is moving sometimes...