fishwizzard

Ah, Bassdozer, got you. He has some great looking stuff, but none of it ever seems to be in stock.

What is a "Dozer Jig"?

I use a MBR 783 GLX for these lures and love it. I have some ergonomic issues with the rod, but no complaints on how it fishes.

I have maybe 40-50 bags of Rage Shellcrackers due to some panic buying. I think that will be a lifetimes supply.

I've had two pairs of them I bought probably back in 04 and although the legs have long been lost, the shorts are still going strong.

I use a lot of different hooks for flukes depending on what I want them to do. One that I really like is the VMC XL hook. It's an ewg with a long shank that puts the weight to the middle of the fluke and gives it a horizontal fall.

If you still have one of each, I would love to see a S-Waver 168 next to the larger Shine Glide. The Shine looks a ton taller than the 168, which makes me leery of it. I get enough 1-2lb bass on the 168 that I worry that a taller bait might not let them really get it in their mouths.

Got into some crappie this afternoon. I had never really caught them before, they are a blast on my Ned rod.

I would agree, but I think a ewg picks up less algae and muck. I use senkos a lot in little ponds with slime bottom when my brain rebles against pulling slime off of my lure every cast. With the hook head buried a senko is maybe the most slime resistant lures out there.

I have only been fishing a few years and have never heard of this thing, it look clever, if a little fussy, what was wrong with it?

Between this guy and three of his friends, I have a 100% hit to land ratio with a frog this year. Not counting ones that missed my lure by like a foot, come on bass, get your act together! I am also thinking that a short, like 6', frog rod would get a lot of use around here in some of the more informal rodside wetlands in SoMo. I am using a XH/M rod for frogs this season and am liking it so far, other then it make walking them harder. I wonder, is there any kind of saltwater rod that will be close to that spec, but in the 6' to 6'6" range? I see a ton of short, heavy looking rods at tackle shops but I have never looked at them.

Have you tried heating the hooks to soften them before punching? You could heat and then air cool to soften them or get frisky and punch them while hot.

I can pop a popper OK, I can walk an easy walking lure OK, but I can't get say a PopMax do either. And for both I have to work it sidearm to get a slow, even cadance. Like every fifth cast I can do it perfectly but I am not seeing what I am doing differently from the other four times. I keep a rod in the car all the time so I want to get better at them as they seem like the perfect after work "technically it's still dusk and the park is open" lures for when I have very limited time and need to cover water.

I double-set all the time when fishing plastics. A lot of my early bass fishing was for river smallies while wading upstream. It seems like 3/4 of the time they would grab my ned rig and run right down stream at me, so my inital hooksets were often pretty poor, so I got into the habit of giving a second set once I had pressure on the fish.

Yea, I am setting a hard ~$30 limit on big baits until they really start producing. There are too many picks around to mess with the more expensive ones at this point.

7lb Super Sniper works well on medium sized reels, but it isn't great on 1000 sized ones.

It's not a super rigorous test, but a cheap luggage scale will let you get an idea at what level of "force" your lines are breaking at.

http://moanerhooks.com/product/316oz-predator-finesse-jig-head/ How do these look? I have been fishing some small jigs made on these heads and really like them, but am losing them at a good clip due to using light line. I think a bare head w/ a hula grub would be a cheaper option for current and snaggier spots.

I view braid as a necessary evil on spinning reels but really do not like to use it. I am trying it on a few casting reels this year and so far I am not liking it at all. I have been tying leaders and fishing it straight and neither way seems better then just straight fluoro or mono. I am having the most success with the thickest stuff I am using, 55lb Suffix, and having the worst with the thinnest, 30lb J-Braid.

You can find knot-assist tools for the FG on a lot of the Japanese tackle sites, but often they are crazy expensive.

That is not a bad strategy! I have had my license checked twice this year, both times on weekday mornings. I was randomly by Rocky Gorge the day it opened and there was a officer there checking for permits and the second time I was fishing a large rat lure and I suspect he walked over just to get a look at it as he seemed more interested in it then looking at my license. I suspect that most of MD's manpower goes to chasing guys poaching crabs/oysters/stripers, so it's allways surpising when I see someone checking at freshwater spots.

This is me exactly. I usually go out with the mindset of "I wanna catch some bass on this lure or presentation". If the bass don't want what I am trying to give them I usually have a few back up lures on me, usually stuff that is a 180 from whatever my primary presentation is for the day.

I change all my inlines spinners to single hooks but yea, weeds will still foul the blade and ruin the cast. I do loose very very few of my single hook spinners, so it's worth a try. I used to work with a guy who swore by replacing the treble with a small EWG hook and using a thin white grub as a trailer. I built some up but never really fished them.

This season I am giving a lot of time to “the classics”, a blue/black or GP jig with a craw trailer and a black or GP t-rigged worm. I have different versions of both for different rods but so far the jig is out fishing the worm by a good margin across all of them. For reasons I have yet to figure out, I get a lot more feel with a jig vs a worm, even when the are close to the same weight. I still find it hard to get a sense of what the worm is doing down there while I am getting really good at “reading” the bottom with the jig.

If you want more variety in 2-part rods, look to Japan. MajorCraft in specific has a lot of 2-part rods in their lineups.