MickD

The wind on Saginaw Bay and Lake St Clair interferes in two ways, by simply blowing you off the water, and by messing up water clarity along the shores. Pre-spawn and fall can be great, but the wind can screw it up fairly often. The fish will be easier to find than summer, but it's not a piece of cake. Summer, if you can find the fish in 15-18 feet, can be great, also. But this is big water, with miles and miles and miles of what appears to be featureless, fishless, bottom, but there are spots the pros know will most likely produce, so a good guide is essential for the fisherman new to the area. I am fairly familiar with the deep water summer fishing, but have yet to "break the code" on summer fishing on St. Clair and Saginaw Bay. Even with a guide, there is no guarantee. You need to talk in detail with one of the good guides in the area to make the right decision for you. I would do it sooner rather than later as the good guides have regular clients that fill much of their calendars.

Sifuedition has it right, there is no single answer to how to do it. You have to let the fish tell you whether they want a slow gentle nudge, a sweep, a sharp twitch, etc. I assure you there are times when one works and nothing else does. As others have stated , the slack line lets you control the next move. For example, if you don't have slack line, you cannot execute a sharp twitch. Rapala just introduced a new lure based on getting a total stop, then the twitch, or sweep, or . . .

Don't try to fix it. I doubt if the manufacturer will argue about it, but if it does, do not easily give up. As stated, that is not an easy or cheap fix and you should not have to deal with fixing it.

If your priority is balance why would you be considering a 7-3 rod over a shorter one? Given similar blank characteristics, the longer rod will always be more tip heavy. I think other considerations take priority over balance, a characteristic that is affected dramatically by the lure you attach and the attitude of the rod (when vertical, all are in balance, when horizontal with lure attached, almost none is).

Sometimes they like fast, sometimes slow, sometimes twitched, sometimes just reeling constant speed. You need to try all sorts of techniques and colors. But greens are good almost anywhere. When I first started fishing jigs I had all sorts of trouble. When I finally started making my own high modulus graphite rods and using braid line, many times more effective than before. As someone already mentioned, if you have a "sloppy" rod, and don't set the hook, then you are giving away a lot of advantage. You need crisp actions, at least medium power, and a solid hook set for plastics. I also recommend you try exposing the hook point (no weedless feature) if you have not already done so. A mistake many newbies make is assuming that hook sharpness is not a big deal. It is a very big deal. Make sure your hooks are "sticky" sharp, meaning they will grab onto your thumbnail as you drap the point across your thumbnail. As you gain experience, you'll find out what is more effective, and come to your own conclusions. And you will catch more fish. Another possibility with clear water canal fishing is that a smaller lure might work better. If you have not tried the Ned rig, I suggest you get some. Very easy to fish, small, so few fish will refuse them, but big fish eat them too. Lighter colors for clear water. Buy both the grubs and the jigs designed for them. After gaining experience with the real Neds you might want to experiment with your own similar options, but start with the real stuff.

Works well on both SM and LM.

In the rivers here, olive wooly buggers are, based on my experience, the best color for SM, and in Lake St Clair and Saginaw Bay, white plastics twitched off the bottom are very effective. I've not used hair at all in the past, but will be doing it this next season. A jig that has an entirely different action, and may be effective, is the "glider" jig used for bonefish fly/jigs. I'll be trying a few of those, too. I think that white in SB and LSC is so good because fish there are often found in schools, and when one is caught it often disgorges very white partially digested shad, which the other fish in the school eat.

Nice looking jigs. Do you have a favorite color for clear water?

Neds come in a lot of colors, so try at least a few different ones. Makes a difference. Around here for LM the PB&J is very good, the Junebug is very good, especially in stained water. For clear water SM the greens are very good. For rock pile SM late in the season, snapping a white one off the bottom works well at times. Remember, as others have written, there are a lot of ways to fish it, and fish sometimes want one over the others. Experiment. When you get it right, it is a really good lure. Some times it has been the ONLY thing we could catch SM on. My son says it catches only small fish; he is wrong, it catches all fish. There are just more small ones than large. It has been a tournament winner for big SM in this area (MI, Lake St Clair, Sag Bay).

I'm looking forward to recognizing what I'm looking at.

Light breathable low hiking shoes. With the pant legs on the rain gear long enough to go over the shoe tops.

Give him one of those hospital urine jugs for Christmas, would be a real step up for him.:-)

I would replace his old "lacquer" with new. I really like UV curing epoxy-you need a UV light and the epoxy (do a web search and you'll find a number of offerings - I've used solarez). You can do your own weed guards from 30# hard mono leader material. If you're making a minnow imitation, you can get stick-on eyes, too. But you should cover them with epoxy or some other head cement or they will fall off. Again, UV cure works well. I like it because it hardens in 15-20 seconds and is crystal clear. Another fast drying option that is easy to find is the hard clear topcoat for fingernails.

Good idea on the used Lund, but they are rare. I sold my 2000 Monark 16 foot single console deep V earlier this year for $6K. 50 HP Suzuki 4 stroke, a bullet-proof engine. A boat like that would do you nicely. Buying used has the risk of getting a leaker or a less-than-perfect engine, so be careful. Check the service records, if none, beware. Check for hull damage.

It looks like you have plenty of power to go to 3500, cooling in your area is probably not a problem, the braking comments are very good. One way to check is to require that your purchase contract for the rig include your 1. Trying it on the water, and 2. Towing it to the water with your vehicle. I did this once with a dealer around here and he had no problem with it.

I strongly disagree with this statement. I have removed a few glued tiptops that were a real struggle, always on the edge of too much heat. If you want it to "pop right off," use some sort of hot melt, preferably the type called "ferrule cement." The fact is that super glues do not melt. They degrade with enough heat and time, and those conditions are very close to what it takes to degrade a blank. Yes, it can be done, but the margin for error is very small.

What is included in the tow package this car doesn't have? Most likely a trans cooler and a higher capacity cooling system. You live in WI, so it's level, not that hot even in the summer, a BIG difference from someone from AZ asking this question. I think that if the car WITH the towing package goes above 3500 pounds, then you can tow anything up to at least 3500 pounds. If the limitation is the engine power, it's a different story. If you try to tow a 3500 pound rig with less than about 200 HP, then it's going to be a grind. I don't think you will damage the vehicle, but it will be underpowered.

Look on Ebay for a Tatula SV103 , won't have 5:1, but other ratios will work and there will be no damage no matter what you're fishing.

You don't use that much leader material, so its cost isn't much of an issue. With your experience and priority for abrasion resistance, I think leader material is the right choice. One thing that stiffer leader material provides is tangle resistance, especially with lures like blades. Since it is stiff it tends to stay straight instead of bending into the hooks.

Travel is not an issue to smallmouths. Studies have shown they travel many miles in big water. I would not consider it a factor when looking for spawning areas.

I agree almost totally with Steveo. My only difference is that I will start with about 5-6 feet of leader. But the reason is not visibility or line stretch, it is to give me more cut and ties without having to retie the line/leader knot. I use the FG, and it's sort of a pain to tie a good one, so I try not to have to tie many. The FG is a great knot, the smallest and strongest (according to most tests) of the line to leader knots, and since it is so small, it will go through micros and all other guides without getting beaten up. So it can last a long, long, time. That's my story and I'm sticking with it.

No. 'the differences are very small and the best bet is to match the action and the power with what you want it to do.

Putting rods into the back of a car is really risky. It helps to bundle them so that instead of one tip getting jammed, if you jam them, there might be more taking the load, so you sense the force and back off before breaking anything. Here is a plan for you, Further North: Have your fishing partner sit at the other end of the boat and play with his phone while YOU and YOU alone take the rods out and put them away. :-)

I stand corrected, the difference between mono and braid fibers being greater than I remembered. Significant to casting performance? I doubt it, but if one thinks it's better, it's better.

I really think that there is nothing to worry about here. I would use the rods and return them only if some functional or major appearance problem shows up. As others have reported, cracks at the feet are common, but these don't even appear to be cracks. Having them "repaired" by a rodbuilder will be expensive, and probably will solve nothing. If you are really worried about the new rods, take them back. If you have them altered there will be no warranty.