Airman4754

No matter what you get your value is going to be 80/20ish motor/boat. The motor is so much more important than anything else. If your motor is a turd, your boat is a turd, period. A brand new 21' boat with a crap motor is a floating barge. Make sure they took proper care of the motor. Impeller and spark plugs every two years, lower end oil, fuel filter, and air filter every year, poppet valve and thermostats every three or four years, the correct oil. If you see they are running blue TCW3 in a DFI engine that can lead to a lot of injector/carbon build up problems. Are they running ethanol in it, are they running fuel additives, etc. Then of course get a compression test done. Anything under 600 hours isn't a huge deal if they took care of it. You don't want a motor that has been running hot or dirty.

As I had suspected it's the same finder as last year's Elite Chirp models just with a new name. That's why they cost the same. It's a good finder and I really like it, but there isn't anything new with the 7" model.

With A LOT of help from the fine people at Plano Moldings lol. My boat has cutouts in it stock to hold the 4-24 stow boxes they make vertically. So I have a T-rig, C-rig, Punch, Plastic Craws, Shakey Head, Drop Shot, Lipless/Shap Rap, Swim Jig, Chatterbait, Jerks, Casting/Football Jigs, Frogs/Topwater, and Small Swim Bait box. Those have all the terminal stuff for each specific technique. I keep three of each type/color of bait I can in every compartment. The leftover go in a huge hockey duffel bag. Before every tourney I go through and replenish whatever is short. Then there are a tall box for Spinnerbaits, Med/Deep Cranks, Big Swims and Squarebills. For rods I have three of the Okuma 32 rod storage things connected together and a wall locker for reels, finder screens, scents and terminal tackle. I might not catch anything on any of it, but I sure as hell know where it is!

I throw the heavy ones too and would definitely recommend a 735.

Jackpot!

I think if you spend your money in stuff you will actually use then price shouldn't be much of a factor, but spend wisely. Buy the biggest, fastest, baddest boat you can, once. If you can't outgrow it then you don't need to move up constantly. You can recarpet, repower, rewire, have the gel coat redone, etc. as time goes on. It will be a lot cheaper than buying a new boat every five years realizing you need 21' and 200+ hp. The real difference between my eleven year old TR21x and the new one is the new model is one inch wider and has a cool organizer in the bow compartment. That's not worth $30k more. Buy equipment once, even if you don't have a lot of money. Be patient, check eBay, check the classifieds on forums, Craigslist, etc. There are a lot of pro fisherman out there that "upgrade" a ton of equipment every year and sell their barely used stuff for 50% or less than the retail price. That's how I built up my rod collection. For bait just wait for places like Tackle Warehouse to have a mega sale. I just got $800 worth of tackle for $330 during TW's 25 Day sale.

My setup is a Steel 1/2, 3/4, or 1 ounce egg weight if I'm on a hard bottom and a steel bullet weight of the same size if I'm in weeds/structure with a glass bead. 30lb Power Pro with a 12lb CXX leader. I use steel weights because they are huge and it's more surface area dragging on the bottom causing a disturbance and the glass bead is just louder than plastic. Bait wise I only use four things. Rage lizard, Rage anaconda, Grande 4" mutant, and a 6" Brush Hog. These baits are the kings of the water displacing chain. I prefer a straight shank heavy wire hook also, but that isn't important. If you want to be subtle on bottom you've got t-rigging with light bullets, Shakey heads, and drop shotting. C-rigging for me is getting down there and being obnoxious.

My grandpa ordered the Helicopter Lure when I was a kid. I fished it exclusively for an entire summer and caught..... Absolutely nothing. The only action I ever had was one missed it right at dark when I was using it like a buzz bait. My dad smoked, a lot. I have four crank baits that look like Joe Camel's head. I fished them quite a bit back in the 90's and...... Never caught anything. One of my best friends bought the Flying Lure kit. He caught a 7 pounder in a weed line while I was making fun of him for fishing it. He still cruises eBay for them and snatches up all that he can and still fishes them religiously and has a lot of success. I'm not sure how the Banjo Minnow is a gimmick. It's a soft plastic minnow. If that's a gimmick then what would you call a spinnerbait? Witchcraft?

I have the fast sink and it's good for certain applications. It's surprising how quickly it sinks for how little it is. If you pick up bass chasing bait fish in deep water you can get down to them using it like a jig or just casting out really quickly while matching the bait they are after with a great swimming motion to boot. If you are in under 20ft of water I would strongly suggest the floating or slow sink.

1/2 ounce white spinnerbait, big willow, small Colorado, chartreuse single tail grub trailer, and a red Gammy trailer hook.

It's probably a strike target as much as anything. I only throw a single tail chartreuse trailer on spinner baits no matter the color of the skirt, blades, or water condition. It just flat out works in every scenario. Nothing a bass eats is squiggly and neon.

A plum 10" Power Worm and junebug Trick Worm. Some 10" Rage worms came in tonight and they sure do look promising!

Torpedos are the most fun to fish. They hit a craw color lipless like a train regardless of size. The most successful is a Gitzit during the spring.

I totally forgot about buzzbaits. I've had the same two for about twenty years now. I had one miss it at dusk in about 1997. I've never caught a fish on a buzz bait and I've never seen anyone catch a fish on a buzz bait. I hammer them on a Torpedo though.

I've been the same way. I will catch a few fish on a drop shot, but the shakey head is way more productive. If I mark fish on a hard bottom I'm grabbing the shakey head every time. I occasionally drop shot in the spring on beds, but it's a lot easier to just throw a weightless Senko. I catch infinitely more fish on a Carolina rig over a Texas rig too. I still catch fish on a T-rig but it's not very many. It's usually only in the summer really deep with a 10" Power Worm. This year I want to get better at drop shotting, Texas rig, and swimbaits. Small weedless, light weight swimbaits, not the monsters I throw in the spring.

It must be nice for young kids learning to fish now with the internet. I grew up in a pretty awful area for bass fishing and no one in my family bass fished. I would beg my dad to take the boat out in the summer to bass fish and beg my mom to take me to ponds to fish. I just got the trout fisherman answers. Bass don't bite in the winter, summer is for water skiing, they only really bite early or late, and they aren't worth getting rained on to fish them in the spring. I had no idea how to do anything. I fished a rubber worm like a crank bait until some guy was nice enough stop laughing and show me how to use a T-rig properly. Type in "Bass fishing" on YouTube and you will have more available knowledge instantly that took the generations before them a decade to learn. The 17 rod combos, 21' boat, multiple finders, every bait imaginable in every color, and all the other gear is another story! You gotta separate yourself from the kid with a 7'MH and a GoPro somehow .

I have a Hook 7x Sonar/DI showing up next week. I'll give my review after I set it up and fish it the next week.

For mileage and reliability find yourself a Gen 1 Ram with a 12 valve Cummins that has had the killer dowel pin replaced. You'll get around 20mpg and have endless power with a reliable 500k mile power plant.

Lamiglas Pro-X 735 is the most versatile rod I've ever owned. It would do what you need really well.

Ditto, and you can fish a Shad Rap year round. You won't find a better cold water crank. My dad would troll them along tree and weed lines and was so successful doing that. I really like the Strike King XD series also. They're just kind of a no-nonsense crank bait, have multiple sizes to cover a lot of depth ranges, and catch fish. Shap Rap for tight wobble, XD's for big wobble.

White spinnerbait, double silver blade, chart single tail trailer. 8.1lbs. My #2 through probably #15 size wise were on that same spinnerbait. There was about a two week stretch during the spawn on some local water that we didn't land a fish under 4lbs. A buddy also caught his first bass with it that was right at 5lbs. I was freaking out, he was like "Is that good?" lol.

Those weeds warm up better than open water and the fish hold in there because of it. That's why punch fisherman still do well in summer and winter. Mid day there should be fish holding in there once the sun has been on it for awhile. Punch that whole area at around 2pm if you have the gear for it. You'll be surprised the fish holding in it.

Something I do when the lake is blown out and cold (which in Oregon is often year round) is to peg a 1.5oz tungsten flipping weight with a black skirt and a 10 or 12" power worm. I fish it a lot like flossing a jig; drag, drag, hop. It's dark so the fish can see it best, it has a big profile so it is displacing water really well, and that big weight is making a ton of noise down there. Then as someone else mentioned a black & blue Colorado spinnerbait with a gold blade and a double tail black grub trailer is good. A 3/4oz black & blue California swim jig with a 5" black Big Hammer swimbait as the trailer is good too. Hit it off of everything you can. Fish this one wreckless and aggressive. If you're in weeds plow it through the weeds. If you're in timber hit it off of it, bounce rocks, etc. Lastly a Carolina rig with a 1oz steel egg weight and a glass bead. I usually use a junebug Rage lizard on it. When you retrieve have a little snap on your rod at the start of your drag to really send that weight into the bead. That specific lizard is displacing a ton of water. It has two sets of Rage craw legs and a Rage worm tail. When it's chocolate milk and cold fishing is pretty much going to suck, but if you're doing your best to help the fish locate your bait then the rest is normal stuff that you control: boat/bank position, location, depth, etc.

http://www.sandmancustomlures.com Dan is a great guy to deal with too.

I got it from this Bub Tosh video. Since matching craw colors is his profession I figured it was accurate. I started tracking moon phases and I throw trailers with a very defined red, blue, and purple colors when the moon is 85% full or more and it seems to work pretty well.