MassYak85

That's a sweet looking john boat!

x2

I used to worm fish on a 5' ultra light ugly stick. And I'm not talking finesse worms, I mean 4/0 EWG's and 10" powerbait curly tails.

Tungsten I generally don't have any issues. Are you fraying the line or is the knot breaking from the weight hitting it over and over? I sometimes will put a bobber stop right snug up to the knot if I feel it might get damaged.

x2 I have the FS10, which weighs just over 50lbs. I probably wouldn't want a kayak much over 60lbs at the max, because like you said, I have to carry it over my head. With the two OP is mentioning I would definitely want a cart.

"DinkSlayer12345"

I'd go either a decent size chatterbait and trailer, or a wake bait

Glad to hear you had success with it, and yea that thing casts a mile. With 50lb braid I can completely spool my pro qualifier. And you aren't kidding about CXX, I snagged a savage gear swimbait from shore really early this year (20lb) on a deep rock, what a workout to get the line to break. I also snagged my whopper plopper in a tree a few days ago, made a hopeful cast parallel with shore, and it got caught on a branch. I decided this was one lure I would be willing to get wet for, so the shoes came off and I went and got it. Oh, and when I was at A1 on friday from shore, I saw the biggest snapper I have seen in my life. Started walking towards the water and I could see part of it's shell sticking up, he went down quick. It came back up about 30 feet from shore where I was standing a couple minutes later, must have been curious, but it's head had to have been comparable size to my fist.

Yea I would shy away from fluorocarbon. It will sink and especially if it is windy and their is some chop on the water, it will pull it under and you won't get that nice load "plop" noise that it makes. I wouldn't be afraid to pause it for long periods of times though, that's one of it's main advantages over something like a buzzbait. A steady retrieve has been my number one producer, but adding pauses in can be deadly too, especially if you pause it right at the end of a piece of cover like a dock.

It's Magic

I use 20lb for swimbaits and a UNI knot, never had any issues. If I ever respool with different line I may downsize to 15lb, I've snagged one swimbait deep from shore so far and trying to break off was an ordeal. I can't imagine you would be unexpectedly breaking that stuff unless you are using a really small diameter for the application (like 6lb for jigs or something).

I will probably end up doing these kind of things for my first boat whenever that is, I love the concept of taking a cheap john boat and basically turning it into a mini-bass boat with all the modifications.

Of all things, they made sure their socks were not on sale at all. Like, they probably took a loss on some of the stuff I bought, but God forbid they loose .50 profit margin on a freaking pair of socks.

Anything that was worth buying at mine in the fishing department was gone the second they started the sale at 10% off. I got a sweet deal on some cleats, boots for winter, and some sneakers though.

Personally I use a 7' 2" Heavy Fast tatula and love it, but like others said I would highly recommend feeling the rod in person. One companies Heavy might be another companies Medium Heavy. The Tatula I feel is what I would expect a heavy to be like, meanwhile I have a 7' 6" Vendetta and that thing a freaking broom stick, great for frogging which is why I bought it but I don't use it for much else. Both rods are Heavy Fast rods though.

Sadly I am now 0 for 2 on big smallies with that lure. One at Webster, one at Maspenock. Hopefully third time is the charm. I feel like the difference between smallmouth and largemouth is that smallies actually treat getting hooked as a life-or-death situation whereas largemouth just seem generally annoyed at the whole situation.

You can boil them, hang them by their tail. What I have done is if they come in clamshell packaging I cut out the cavity part and use rubber bands to hold the two halves together, then I can just throw them wherever without worry of the plastic getting deformed.

Yea I use mine on my jig rod. 7'2" HF Casting with 40lb braid. Works great. I can't believe how far that thing casts. My dad wanted to go swim at the beach near us, I didn't but decided to come just to cast from shore. Wind was howling but I've had success on the whopper plopper in the wind before so I was using it. Straight into the wind I was still getting very good distance. Didn't catch anything for the short time we were there though. The weather was absolutely nuts though! We get there and there is 10-15mph winds, nothing crazy. Maybe a couple gusts to 20. About 15 minutes later a cold gust of wind hits the beach, felt like the temperature dropped at least 5 degrees almost instantly. The wind direction started doing whatever it wanted, had me looking up at the clouds making sure a funnel cloud wasn't starting up, The wind is now probably a CONSTANT 40mph, I was getting blown around trying to avoid getting blinded by the sand, and my legs were actually in pain from the sand blasting into them. Whitecaps on the lake, every boat made a B-line for the ramp or their dock. The only time I've ever felt wind that strong was 5000 feet up Mt Washington. It was over in like 5 minutes though, back to the normal wind speeds. Not even a single drop of rain or a rumble of thunder through the whole event. If anyone was watching the red sox game it looked like a similar thing happened at Fenway.

I haven't caught a ton of fish on them myself, but I think a jig+trailer is one of the only lures I could throw all day, catching nothing, and still have confidence in for that day.

I have trouble forcing myself to fish deeper than 20 feet....I can't even imagine a rock quarry with sheer rock walls for banks. I would be lost.

Hmm, interesting. I will definitely be upgrading the ones on my old one, the ones on my new one almost seem like overkill. Either they made a mistake on my new one or they must have made an upgrade somewhat recently, possible you got one of the older ones that was still sitting around. My only other theory is that they use different hooks for different colors, using beefier ones on the black colored ones thinking you will be fishing them at night and they can get away with beefier terminal tackle on them for that reason, but that seems a little silly to me.

Yea I saw they have a silent version now but both of mine are the original style with the rattle. I think they might have just decided to upgrade the hooks sometime over the past year, as for the sound I can't really explain it, it's a subtle difference. I doubt it was by design, each one might just be a little unique given how the sound is generated by a softer plastic tail, which I would imagine has larger tolerances than the hard plastic body.

I've been fishing the stick-o's exclusively for years

Edit: I see the other thread someone else made so you can disregard the second part, but if anyone knows when they changed the hooks and why I would be curious.

So last year after having decent success on the 90 size, I decided to pull the trigger on a 130, but really haven't been using it until this year. After having great success on it, I decided to grab another in Loon color for some night time fishing. Upon opening the new one I immediately noticed the hooks were far beefier than the ones on my old one. Does anyone know at what point R2S changed them over? Also I am looking to beef up the hooks on my older one since a smallie bent up the front treble pretty good. Has anyone done this yet? I'm looking for recommendations on what type and size hooks to use. I like the ones on the newer one, but am not sure what R2S uses for those. Thanks!