blckshirt98

I'm a 100% shore fisherman and have never used electronics to find fish, I've always relied on just walking up and down the shore looking for points/structure/fish. I often see reports from the same bodies of water I fish of people killing it, but realize a lot of people use electronics to help find the fish. If fair chase hunting would be the hunter using a topo map to try and find his animals, would the fair chase fishing equivelant be a fisherman using only topo maps to try and find the fish, instead of having electonics? If you could make an analogy to hunting it would be like a hunter having a topo map, as well as a gps that has markers where the deer are in the vicinity. What I'm wondering is how would the pros, or even yourself, do if all you had was water topo maps but no electronics to find structure/fish? When watching the Elites on ESPN, do they often settle in spots where their electronics picked up a ton of fish in the water and they just throw various presentations until they found what the fish were looking for?

Yamamoto Kut Tail, Molix Sator Worm

That thing looks sweet! Kind of reminds me of the ROF 0 Hudd Gill that was just released but this lure will probably be 1/3 the price.

Hmmm, the first Vengeance MH rod I'd spool with 20 lb braid and use it for jigs/shakeyheads or anything else where you'll have a big fat hook you'll need to drive into a fish's mouth. The Sojourn I'd put 12 or 15 lb braid and use it as my all around rod, using a different fluoro leader as needed. You could dropshot/c-rig/t-rig/wacky and throw small and medium sized crankbaits/spinnerbaits/jerkbaits/etc. The Lightning Rod I'm not familiar with so I don't know how the guides will hold up to braid (grooving?) in the long run. Maybe spool that one up with 6-8 lb mono and use it for lighter finesse presentations?

Growing up, Trilene and Stren were the "premium" lines and nowadays Trilene seems easier to find so that's what I use (Trilene XL). However tons of people swear by good old fashioned Ande monofilament.

These look criminally similar to the Yeti coolers but they have my attention! I might preorder that Roadie 20 copycat!

Not cereal box but long rectangular (square end) corrugated cardboard. I had one box folded in half like an accordion lol, though I have ordered other rods from STP that made it to me in good shape. The STP boxes easily fold in half when breaking down to put in the recycle bin.

There's a lot of other coolers out there with similar performance but Yeti is defintely the "sexy" brand name in that category of coolers. Price wise, other coolers that "hold ice for a week" are similarly priced. Yeti are often excluded in sales but one way you can save money is by buying gift cards at online resellers (like Cardpool) - you can by Bass Pro gift cards at 17% off and apply that to the Yetis at Bass Pro, bam, 17% saved.

+1 on the St. Croix Rage. Great deal and an awesome rod..St. Croix doesn't get as much run as it deserves either, they're like the offensive lineman of fishing.

Fluoro is stiffer and will coil up and bounce off of a spinning reel, especially if the spool is close to full/freshly spooled. I only go straight fluoro on a baitcaster setup where the line doesn't have a chance to spring.

YouTube, magazines, TV, forums. Some of the pros that I like to watch and pull for and listen to more carefully when I see them post a video or written piece are Chris Zaldain (local guy that made it), Aaron Martens (because he made his name with the dropshot which I fish most of the time, KVD (all time money leader must know a thing or two about catching fish), Andy Cuccia (retired pro and highly regarded CA Delta guide).

Dropshot x10000000000000000000000000 You may never want to learn another finesse technique.

I only started bass fishing again about 3 years ago so I went right to braid. I dropshot probably 90% of the time and use 12-15lb braid (PowerPro or Sufix 832) with 6-7lb fluoro leader (Sniper FC or InvisX). I also use a swivel because the knot to tie the lines together needs to be *perfect* to avoid a weak spot on the fluoro. I keep my leader pretty long - I'll pull off like 30 inches of leader before tying my dropshot, and put my hook about 8 inches about the weight.

These things will change your life if you switch out lures a lot and don't want to deal with sticky sharp treble hooks poking and sticking to things. Also saves some line in the long run because you're not always cutting off line as you re-tie.

Instead of a snap swivel try using Bill Norman Speed Clips...no swivel failure point and they let you change lures out quickly.

I'm assuming you're fishing finesse by how you're describing what you're feeling on your rod. Quick/hard tapping are the little fish thumping their tail as they peck at the bait. Panfish will do this, as well as baby bass that are too young to know any better than be overly aggressive. Larger bass are wiser and won't rapidly peck at a bait..it'll usually be a very light tick and a slow pull on the line, or something it'll just feel like you got a snag until the snag starts swimming away.

I try to keep my plastics in original bags as much as possible, especially with so many plastics nowadays coming with scent. I store the original bags in Ziploc Freezer Bags, they fit really nicely if you put them in there "standing on the end" where you can store them side by side - which when full also stores perfectly in Sterlite bins. Also many colors will bleed into other plastics which might be good or bad depending if you want an "accidental custom" color. Also never mix ZMan plastics with any other plastic. Just a bad scene all around there.

I use a swivel but only because I have knot breaking issues between my braid/fluoro connection. Haven't noticed any downsides to using it, so decide for yourself.

Bang for the buck I'm gonna look at the SPRO rats. A lot of the small custom rats run $70 and up, the SPRO Rats look great and as stkbassn mentioned, they're coming out with a 40 and 30 size at iCast. if you're looking for a wooden rat the most affordable I've found were CL8 and Trap Bass Baits, but sourcing them can be tough.

I use a pair of Merrell Moab hiking shoes (lowtop) for shore fishing and they're light, breathable, comfortable, with good traction. Have fished all day with them and they're great, will buy another pair once I wear these to shreds.

I fish from shore only so don't get to really fish deep water but if I did I'd probably give some of the deep diving crankbaits and dropshotting first crack at it!

You can probably find a good rod for trout/bass or bass/salmon, but trout/salmon are so far apart unless you use like a 10 foot noodle rod (which won't be great for bass), finding one for all three may not be possible. The only thing that comes to mind is maybe a Fenwick Methods rod?

Fish don't care if you're using a $600 Calais or a $15 Zebco spincast. I know with spinning reels if I close my eyes I really can't tell the difference between a $30 Sienna and a $200 Stradic. I've caught fish with both. I think expensive gear really only scales value/utility wise if it's because of a stronger target species, i.e. if you're going after 200lb tuna you need beefier gear that won't fail. But we're all targeting bass and that extra $300 bucks for a high end rod/reel is mostly for the fisherman. You can have the most expensive gear ever created but the guy with a $50 setup will outfish you if they know where to find the fish and how to get them to bite. One of the local pros says he's caught something like 90% of his tournament fish with a Zoom trick worm, and he uses S-wavers instead of the fancy Deps/Roman Mades and kills it.

Another thing to try is try switching lures back to the Aruku Shad. If it casts with no problems then you know it's not the line digging into the spool and it's the spinnerbait. If you're still having a tough time adjusting your cast or finding the right settings on your reel to keep the backlashes from occuring, you might want to use a spinning outfit for your spinnerbaits. No shame in that, especially if it means more time fishing and less time messing around with your gear.

For finesse baits I'll stick with your standard green pumpkins/watermelons with flake variants (red or gold preferably), blacks/purples, and since I've had success on them the Morning Dawn/pink colors. Those are the ones that give me the most confidence and I've had good success with them. For reaction baits I'll try to stick with the "match the hatch" concept and get stuff that resembles the forage out here on the west coast - shad/bluegill/crappie/crawdad/rainbow trout, with color variants to take into account variance in water clarity (ghost colors, chartreuse highlights, flash finishes, etc). I know some people will say color is one of the most overrated factors in catching fish, but confidence in what you're using is a big factor, so even if they say most lures catch fisherman not fish, get whatever colors give you the most confidence, just don't go crazy and buy so many things it overloads your choices and locks you up.