fishwizzard

I’ve been toying with the idea picking up some tippit rings to try to connect leader to very fine braid. I can get a decent night when indoors and out of the wind, but trying to tie a leader knot with 6 pound braid in the wind never seems to work out well for me.

Oh man, thanks for the reminder, I went to it last year and bought a spinnerbait from a guy that I just loved, but of course never wrote down the vendor's name and have long since lost it. I will have to go back and see if I can find them again. EDIT: so yea, I would prefer the 26th assuming I am not working.

Owner makes some that work very well and are a perfect "Goldilocks" level of tightness. They seem to have a really variable price so it pays to look around before you buy, sometimes ebay or even jdm sites will have them for very cheap.

Thanks, I will absolutely take you up on that. I even have a decent stash of lead, although I don't know what alloy/hardness it is. They are old theatrical counterweights and seem pretty soft.

Yea, I have a pair of sv103 spools with stiffer springs swapped into them, which helps a little but they are still far behind the Zillion 1016sv. The spring swap does free them up very nicely for heavier lures, which is why it's a bummer I can't use them in the Ringa for swimbaits. This just means I will have to find yet another home for the Ringa at some point. What inductor would be a good fit for the sv103 spools? Right now I am just going to fill them with cheap 40lb braid and keep one in my car and one in my kayak stuff as spares in case I have an on the water "oops" and ruin a spool worth of line.

I know, I love it so much. Bought it on a whim to try out a round reel and have fished it on about 5 different rods and it was amazing on all of them, from a 3oz swimbait to a weightless senko. With a 1012 sv spool it could cast a weightless trick worm pretty well, but it was obviously at it's lower limit. If I ever see an other one for a good price I am going to jump on it. The only bad thing I will say about it is that it is sensitive to spool inductor height, so a lot of spools will not work in it. The stock sv103 spool being just ever so slightly too long and the ZPI PG spool being obviously too high.

This is why I am not to be trusted for anything more complex then a very small room with minimal windows and trim. Can't wait to see what you do with it. This is the combo and lure I am devoting this winter to: Rod is a Dobyn's FR795SB, Reel is an SSS Ringa with 6.8 gears, a Zillion sv spool, carbonex drag, and a big fat power handle. The lure is the ever wonderful Hudd 68 Special ROS 5 in Phantom Rainbow. The plan is to try and spend an hour or two every other day throwing it in a few of my local ponds. They are all places I know hold reasonable numbers of 3-4lb class LMBs and I want to see if I can find a larger on in any of them. So far I am 1 Hudd down and have had maybe one bump in about 6-7 trips. Right now I am throwing them on .40 mono but am thinking about switching to braid to get me a little more bottom-feel, if only to help keep me focused.

I would absolutely be down for a meet up once spring gets here.

I am about 6-7 trips into "only throwing a 68 Special all winter". Zero bass so far but today I got a little bump! I think. It is hard not to drift off in thought.

Good luck! You are far braver than I.

Are you painting it up yourself?

Daiwa Fuego CT, right around $60 on ebay.

Yea, I have given up on Amazon at this point. So so much bootleg stuff and they let sellers get away with refusing returns. PayPal is still heavily weighted towards the buyer and it's super easy to return stuff or get a refund.

In the glx price range, the Megabass Addermine gets rave reviews.

I use floro as a mainline on most of my rods and usually run very very little line on the spool, usually only a long cast worth plus two full layers of line around the spool. So I end up changing my line about once a season when it gets too short.

No, I was looking at buying the heads and adding the blades and skirts myself. I have never met a laydown that I didn't want to spend an hour casting at and I think the only way I am gonna figure out how to keep a chatterbait from instantly snagging is to snag a bunch of them until I get used to working them through.

Thanks! Next season I am going to get over my fear of loosing chatterbaits by loosing a bunch of chatterbaits, so the idea of making some up is appealing.

Cool. Do you use a punch or pliers? I have tried it a few times on some random jigs I had laying around and did not have a lot of luck with pliers.

Are you guys having to open up the eye a little, or will the blade slip right in?

I only have a single St Croix rod, an Avid 62m/XF, and I really like it which has given me the itch to try an other one from one of their higher-end lines. I was thinking a LBS68MLF spinning rod as I have far more casting rods then spinning at this point. I do agree that the new Daiwa rods seem like something special. I got to hold one of the AGS rods over the summer, the long Neko/Hair Jig model. It was crazy light and the reel seat/forgrip is about perfect for how I like to hold a spinning rod. Just swinging it around the store without a reel on it made me want to take it home. I am not convinced I would use one enough to justify it but have thought up a specific inshore presentation I think it would be great for, so one might find it's way home next spring.

I had had never seen those weedless trebels before, thanks for the info.

Does anyone have strong opinions about the spinning reel seat on the new LTB rods? From looking at pictures I cannot get a sense of how all the cut-outs “work”. I grip spinning rods with my entite hand infront of the reel stem so that rules out a lot of reel seats.

They are big for the 4lb bass I am trying to catch with them. Most all my big bait fishing is in small surbaban ponds. I wanted to see if using larger lure would produce larger bass then the ones I would catch on my usual finesse presentations. I figured focusing on smaller spots where I knew there is a population of 3-4lb bass was a good place to start. The results after a season is a solid “maybe”, but that is beside the point. In any case, when you BB rig the hudd gills do you clip the top hook off or leave it? I have though about trying it but I really like how weedless they are. I am going to work on my hooksets, I am usualy a “10lb line and fine-wire hooks” kinda guy so it’s a big transition when I spend a day fishing the Hudds.

We started to make it a few year ago and age it for a few months. It’s pretty amazing with a litte time on it.

I went crazy when I first really got into bass fishing and bought so so much random tackle and lures. Over the last 3ish years I have really refined down what lures and plastics I actually use and have given away every thing else. I still buy too much stuff, but it's more focused. For example I use a ton of Zoom Trickworms but will still buy a bag or two of something else if I find one that looks basically the same but with some feature I think might be an improvement, like the Netbait trickworms with the flat head and a bit more salt. But I am not going to buy a million bags of worms just because they are on sale like I used to do. "It's not a good deal if you don't need it in the first place" is my new online shopping mantra.