Bass newb

Great pics guido. Why do you wear that face mask thing in the winter. I thought those were for sunburn protection.

. Just bought 6 rods on clearance at field & stream. About $550 worth of rod for $300.

I feel most comfortable with 6 or 8lb on a spinning rig. Flouro Braid I like 10lb

Yeah. It does fine with power pro 65lb braid

It appears as though I was using 17lb Berkley Vanish. Not 15lb like I'd said before.

I like them and the short rods for fishing in a small narrow creek that I'm drifting down. Lot's of laydowns and precision and size of a small rod work well in that circumstance, but not many others. I hate that you can't get a good hookset with one.

So far it appears as though the answer was a poor choice of rod (m/h). I don't seem to have any issue with my medium rods.

I really like braid and have been enjoying fluorocarbon lately, I seem to detest mono, but I won't rule it out. I have 3 daiwa zillion reels, 6.3, 7.3,9.1;1 ratios. I have 3 spare spools. Every spool will fit every reel. Does this sound useful: Flouro 10, 15lb Braid 30, 65lb Yo-zuri 12lb Mono 12lb ? It kinda seems like I should have some mono for the topwater poppers that will sink and have funny action unless the line floats...but I'm still figuring this stuff out and I have more money than time to fish, so usually I do what I think will work well and then weeks later revise after more water time. Thanks

Tell me what a finesse baitcaster is. Does my daiwa zillion qualify?

It just dawned on me that my line is causing some poor casting issues with my baitcasters. I'm just beginning to transition from frogs, buzzbaits, t-rigged plastics to rattletraps and crankbaits. Some of them are light and they cast fine with 65lb braid, but not my 17lb flouro. Do I need to wrap a spool up with 8lb flouro for these lighter baits? As you can imagine my experince with all this hardware is quite limited since I've only been fishing for 5 or 6 months.

I've had a much better catch to trip ratio here in December than I'd been having in August and September. That's probably due in large part to me actually learning how to fish better though as I'm still a beginner.

I weighed most of my rods last night to get a feel. The ethos h2o and tec spec arsenal rods were the lightest at 102 and 103 grams. The carbonlite, the berkley lighting rod, and the Lexa rods were all 128 to 130 grams. 3.5oz vs 4.5oz. I wonder what the lightest rods weigh?

It was a casting rod, green with cork handles at bass pro shops.

Thanks. I got the last two medium action Lexa rods that they had at my local bps. 7'2" and 7' 7" Lexa 771 and 721. $60 a piece. Just used them today and landed a couple good fish after work.

A guy at work was telling me I needed to check them out so I did.... I was very unimpressed. The balance alone was enough to ignore them as an offering. I have a half dozen same price or cheaper rods that balance better and are lighter. No thank you.

Birmingham Al close to Coosa River and Guntersville and many other lakes within an hour and a half.

My fiancée is a board certified zoo veterinarian and she says that those are battle scars, not legions or septic issues within the fish. Otter fight likely she said they are usually in pairs so a gang of them could have teamed up on ol' lady.

That's a better day than any 10 days combined that I've had.

That is the nastiest looking fish that I've ever seen. Are those battle scars or festering skin legions or what? I caught a 2+lb fish that had a bloody gash on his side but nothing like that before.

2lb 10oz today at 4 o clock!

53 water temp vs 92 in the summer.

So I just started fishing 22 weeks ago. I took the entire month of November off to get a trolling motor setup installed on my personal watercraft and take a break from 2-4 hours of daily fishing. Now I just started back fishing 2 weeks ago and have been fishing probably 7 or 8 times. I've been using a rattletrap by advice of others. Jerkbait and buzzbait a little too. I haven't been out and not caught a fish yet! This is far different than the summer where I could go several days without a catch. Is the bite that much better? Or am I finally figuring it out, or is this first two weeks back on a rattletrap for the first time getting it done? Should I have been using a rattletrap back in the summer? It seemed as though I couldn't catch a fish until twilight in the summer, but now I can catch one on a rattletrap any time of day. Help me make a little sense of this. Thanks.

I haven't kept track of how many different setups that I have used with this bait but it's certainly 2 or 3 others, and have never had this problem. There have been some good suggestions for me to try before I send this reel in for tech work.

Thanks. I'm too new to all this to know everything. ..I'll try out a new rod and report back.

Thanks. I had it on a tec spec arsenal mh fast action rod. I swapped spools with my 6.4 zillion and put it on my ethos h20 medium medium rod. I suspect your 3/8ths oz minimum is the limit for this reel. I believe all 3 of mine are the latest and greatest.