fishwizzard

That is crazy, I could never do it, it would be like having a loose tooth...

I also have been making a push to get cranks into the rotation, I have been using jerkbaits/minnow baits and lipless cranks for a while, but wanted to branch out. Here is the order I made as a starter kit; I went for the colors I did to have one "natural" and one "loud". I fish a lot of shallow ponds from the bank so I started with a shallow and super shallow lures, with a plan to pick up some medium divers once it warms up a bit and my desire to get out in my yak increases.

I am also just getting into swimbaits and I started out with a ROF5 68 Special and a ROF12 Huddgill. The 68 falls very very slowly and wants a painfully slow retrieve. It does come through grass very well but I have been to chicken to throw it around much cover. I have not caught much one it, but again, I have been pretty conservative in throwing it and I think that is really hurting me. I did have an osprey divebobmb it once, so it can trick predators other than bass. The gill has been more productive, with a couple of fish on it and a dozen or so more hits I didn't connect with. It seems to gather grass a bit more readily, but no more than say a paddletail on a swimbait hook. I am also going to stock up on a few swimbait/bigbaits during BF and try to fish them more aggressively in the coming year.

Yea, I should have said "Soft/Brittle", but that still doesn't really express what I meant. The Gopher hooks will resist deformation, but will fail by bending. The Zman hooks, imho, are less resistant to deformation, but fail by snapping. I never thought about the weight being on the shank helping with roll/fall, but it makes perfect sense when you think about it. The new Zman heads have a lead keeper on the shank. I was turned off by the heavier hook, but I might have to give them another look. A more far-out option might be the Gene Larew Bass Shooter Pinhead jigheads. They have all the weight on the shank and should give a fall/action like a weighted swimbait hook. I think they might be too big for a proper MWF lure, but I am curious how they would work on larger finesse plastics.

There are some sellers on ebay who sell ned heads with smaller hooks, but of the few I have tried, none are super great. Gopher seemed to be the perfect balance between strong/brittle, but they are too unreliable these days. If they go under for good I hope they sell their equipment to someone who will keep making them. Right now I am back to the Zman heads, the hooks are brittle, but I have yet to break one on a fish, only pulling out snags. I don't like #1 hooks as I feel that they "roll" more on a super slow retrieve and hang up more. The ones Seibert uses are strong as heck though, in my informal "bend" tests they take a lot of strength to bend out. I am going to give the Power Ned a try this coming season and will use the Morels and full size Hula Stickz.

That is the last one I tried, I liked it but for the fact that it seemed like every time I had to break my lure off I lost dozens and dozens of feet of line instead of it breaking at the lure. I put the rest of the spool on a BFS reel and it seemed really sensitive to damage when I backlashed or wasn't super diligent in pulling out loose coils. I am trying 7# Sniper now, it seems way more durable but with a lot more memory. I really dislike braid/leader, the sound/feel of the knot hitting the guides harshes my mellow, so this next season I am going to give a few monos a try and see if I like any of them.

I have been fussing around with floro in the 6-8# range on my ML spinner, but have yet to find one I really like. I am going to give Tatsu at try next spring and if it isnt amazing I am going to stick with braid. I have also been trying a few different weights of braid and have settled on 8lb. Any thinner is too hard to tie with cold fingers or in the wind.

Wow, that feature might push me over the edge into buying one. Most of the puddles I want to fish don't seem to have charts available.

The 4" Ochos are a bit lighter and thinner then the 4" senkos and I feel like they have a more aggressive wiggle and slower fall when rigged wacky. They are bigger/heavier enough over a 3" senko that they fill a niche for me. The profile of a 4" senko never seemed different enough from the 5" to warrant carrying both, so I prefer the 4" Ocho as it is a good "in-between" size.

Small fish will hit them, this guy smahed the 50 you see at my feet. http://imgur.com/4JZVWW7[\img]

If it's a hippy colored Rat (morning dawn is the real name I think?), I will take it! But you should keep it, they are a blast and I have been shocked how well big baits have been working in small MD waters.

Thanks! I had heard of the Carolina Floater, but not the other one. I had a pack of plastic screw-in "cones" from RI, but they seem to be discontinued.

Interesting, I agree that I get a lot of hits when I lift it off the bottom and less on the fall. I tried smaller hooks but had a awful time with hooksets until I tried the 3/0 cutting point hooks. I mainy fish them on a BFS combo, so I dont have a ton of hook setting power to work with.

I got a Hippy colored one in 50 and had a great couple of days on it. I was amazed at how often it would get bit on even the smallest of ponds. Then I started throwing it too close some pads and as I was getting cocky, I tried to get too close and and lost it. I am going to buy a pair of them on BF.

6" Jelly Worms and 8" Producto Torunment Worms. Soft, super boyant, super cheap. I don't do much shakyhead fising but they are my goto for that as well.

I just bought a small pile of tiny tubes with an eye for drop shoting them for panfish and crappie.

What hook do you like for this? I throw them on an Owner 3/0 straight shank, but like to use a 1/32 steel weight as a protective nose cone of sorts. I want to try and find some super light plastic cone of some sort as I like the action better w/o the weight.

I use 1/20 or 1/16 for everything. Letting it drift along with the current is where most of my better smallies have come from.

For me the Menace is the only "essential" plastic in their lineup. It is so versatile and there isnt really any else out there quite like it.

That blue cat is amazing, but I am far far more impressed at a walleye in the canal. EDIT: I need to stop being lazy and drag my kayak out to Widewater. It can be such a pain to launch that I never do it, but it would be amazing to be able to fish the entire thing.

Oh, I just googled the article name, it comes up as the first or second result. I am using my grippers more and more lately. I have the grippers/scale in my back pocket and it is very quick to reach back and grab them. I feel like I am getting the bass back in the water faster with them as well, without having to focus as much on keeping a good grip on the bass, I can get the hook and the bass back in the water in less time.

That is interesting and the xrays are pretty cool. I have switched over to using a small fish gripper to both weigh bass and to help control and lift larger ones out of the water when using multi-hooked lures, it is good to hear that lifting them this way isn't harmful.

Really? I will have to go look for it, do you remember if the listing had good pictures? I gotta say, the more I look at the flat green on chrome, the more I am liking it. If I could find a rod to match it, a SV103 done up as a "bootleg" might be kind of fun.

I disagree. The shellcrackers were a dead match to small, thin-bodied panfish. They have such a subtle glide to them when rigged on a lightly weighted swimbait hook and give amazing hooksets. They also skip like a dream and are very durable. I am gonna buy up maybe a hundred of them, that should last me a good long while.

The "special" zillion I think is the most fun would be the "A Fishing Ape", a line of reels, lures, and clothing done in collaboration with the Japanese streetwear brand A Bathing Ape, more commonly know as BAPE. The reel is simple in design, but I really dig the flat green. Some of the clothing is really cool, but way way too expensive and likely even an XL would be too small to ever fit me. I might pick up one of the lures though. [/url] Edit, I can't seem to find a large hirez of the zillion.