the reel ess

I'm looking for a place to go for maybe my 50th birthday with the possibility of catching a monster bass. I really like kayak fishing. Has anyone taken a fishing vacation they'd recommend? Private waters is not a negative, IMO.

99% male, huh? I'll bet the females are tired after the attempt to spawn.

On a budget? In addition to the kayak, paddle and PFD. A fishing rod. Maybe a beer. I don't use much more than that. I do have a milk crate rigged up with several rod holders and my kayak has 2 flush mount holders. I rig the rods with what I think they'll bite and throw several packs of soft plastics behind the seat. I have no electronics, no anchor trolley, no special rigging. I just go paddle and fish, mostly smaller waters where I know I can find the fish. I don't go on busy lakes or rivers.

I use a 7' MH/MF Lowrider BC rod with 30 lb braid. It's my jig and worm rod. But I use the Yamamoto Hula Grub, T rigged with a 3/16 oz tungsten weight.

The projected track is moving further away from us as the day progresses.

I'm in SC and as you may know we have a hurricane headed our way. I'm not on the coast, but about 100 miles inland. The latest tracking has it most likely running up the east coast parallel and then curling our to sea. What do you guys in more hurricane prone areas experience before and after a hurricane affects the weather pattern? Usually before a tropical storm we have muggy conditions with a southerly or SW breeze, but this time it's a stiff breeze out of the NE. Not ideal for fishing most of the time. And looking at the forecast, it looks that way for the next week or so. I need to kill some time off from work or lose it soon. And of course, I'd like to fish if at all possible.

Yeah, but I don't want to lose my PB because I'm purposely handicapping myself. That fish will be a challenge on any tackle. There's a place I'd enjoy fly fishing for bass and bluegill because I think now it only has small bass. But my PB came from there 13 or so years ago. You never know where your PB is lurking.

I've done it, but it feels like intentionally and unnecessarily handicapping myself.

I use an old 6-6 med, mod Lightning Rod for topwaters with trebles most of the time, but I'll also rig up a MH of the same size when I want multiple topwater rods or I have a buzzbait on too. This is not a presentation that requires a lot of sensitivity. And I use Big Game 15 lb. mono on both.

If you get the colors they're always out of in Academy you can't go wrong! But then how do you get them? I like a white or orange belly on topwaters except for Pop R's I usually (always) get silver. Well, I have one in bone. I've caught more bass on an old, black SK buzzbait than I have on all others combined.

Cabela's TZXC-73H Frog model. $96 now, but they had it for $80 a couple weeks ago. Probably upgraded it a little.

I got the grey ghost, but I have yet to get a bite on the thing.

I love BC reels . I was the opposite way completely. In my heyday, the '80s, every "serious bass fisherman" had a couple or three BC combos. Spinning was for crappie or for the women and children in the boat. BC just feels better in my hands. It's a better balance where the reel is placed and I hold ity with my less dominant hand, making my reel hand the more agile one to crank with. Now I carry 4 BC combos and 2 or even 3 spinning combos most of the time. They each have their purpose.

I haven't. Just respooled.

I would agree if it ever happened before. But it hasn't then it happened two weeks in a row after spooling two reels.

It's just odd that the entire spool to that point performed well. I've abused this line before with good results. I usually replace it about every half season because it's cheap and I moisten the line to knot it. This was brand new line on 2 reels. But I bought another big spool to give it another shot.

I've always had a good experience with 15 lb Big Game until the last couple weeks. I use it on BC reels for trebles mostly and occasionally spinner/buzzbaits. I had a breakoff on 2 rods with new line. I lost a spinnerbait and a topwater floated back up and I retrieved it. Anyone else experienced this? I threw the spool away. It was near the end anyway. It had been in my house the entire time and I keep my rods in the house when I'm not fishing. The weak spot seemed to be where the line gets a little distorted where you cinch the knot. Honestly, my opinion of it had been higher than classic Stren mono in the past 15 years. Believe me, I'm not against spending $$$ where it's needed. I use PowerPro braid on all my other LMB combos.

Something with a rattle in black/blue.I like a t-rigged black and blue Hula Grub with a black glass bead between weight and hook. That will click if you retrieve it with jerks off the bottom. I know this isn't "finesse" but my best buzzbait is an old black and blue Strike King and I have a black Midnight SK Colorado blade spinnerbait that works in muddy water. The Rat L Trap works in off color as well because bass can hear and feel it coming.

It occurred to me that these might work well wacky rigged too.

I bought a pack of soft plastics at the beach a few years ago to try for trout and redfish called Trout Tricks. I never used them because I was able to catch founder on Gulp Mullet and quickly gave up on the other species. But I made note that they looked like something a LMB would bite. Well, the bite has been slow at the local reservoir and my buddy told me the bite was very slow and to try a "do-nothing" presentation. I put one of these on a short Carolina rig with a 3/16 oz tungsten weight and the bass ate them up! They weren't responding to reaction baits but they liked these on a finesse C rig jerked off the weedy bottom.Just goes to show you you never know what they'll like on any given day. Sometimes you just show them something they haven't seen. The ones I used were an opaque purple color called mood ring.

I weigh them, but only the big ones. It's not as easy as measuring a bass but it's sort of the standard way to quantify your trophy. I'm looking for one above 6.9 lbs to be my personal best so I have to keep a scale in the kayak. I saw on Bill Dance recently a way to estimate weight that he says is more accurate than the length and girth. L x L x L/1600 if you only have a ruler. Therefore, Choporoz' bass in his pic weighs 5.79 lbs. See this chart http://www.csap.com/Bass Weight Conversion Chart.pdf I love the way guys are fishing and they'll mentally weigh a bass that was just following their bait and didn't even bite. Almost every time I ever guessed the weight of a bass I caught, I was off. I'm a little better at guessing other peoples' bass's weight. LOL.

Disclaimer: this is only my experience I bought 2 reels used off Ebay from a seller with a good rating and it kinda bit me in both cases. A lot of people will trade in their one or two season old reel at a mom and pop shop and the shop will move them on Ebay for $50 bucks or so. They'll make claims like "everything seems in fine working order" or "just a little boat rash" when in fact they've never used the reel and have no idea what might be wrong with it. But I sent one to BPS rod and reel repair and they fixed it for the minimum so now I have a $50 Johnny Morris reel that works like a champ. Now it's my #2 reel. That's the thing about reels. Most of the time it's cheap little worn out parts or maybe a tiny piece is missing. The one I sent to be fixed was missing the little retaining spring inside the cast control knob.Somebody tried to work on it, lost the part and traded it in. But I did buy a new Lew's off Amazon. Hey, new is new.

Bingo! Or the bluegill are so large the bass can't eat them and they compete for limited prey. Probably a combination. You and all your buddies need to go catch as many as you can of everything in the pond and keep them. This happens in most small ponds.

I also visited a place in the mountains that had several ponds on the property with gin clear water that I'm sure see a lot of lures. What I did there was wait until sunset and cast from one end all the way to the other with finesse baits and caught a few. They simply wouldn't bite in the daytime. But the bluegill would attack anything I threw.

When I was a kid, i used to walk to a creek and catch these little chubs we called "horny heads" because of the little bumps they had on the head. I branched out and found a nearby pond down in the woods where obviously, no one was watching. It was crystal clear and chock full of 4-6 lb (looking) bass. But they could see you from all angles and there was absolutely no way to not alert them to my presence. I went several times and managed only one strike on a spinnerbait and the fish spit it before I could set. If I were to go now, I'd probably catch a bucket of those chubs at the creek and take them to the pond for bait or I'd use a whole nightcrawler on a free line. I imagine bass are like squirrels and will forget you if you don't move for a few minutes. I just have a hard time fishing really slowly.