MassYak85

What is your go to hook for this? I've tried the snell knot and while I like it in theory, I found that the eye if the hook often was sharp and would weaken the line unless it was a welded hook eye, which are not common. I've been using Mustad heavy cover hooks because they are painted/coated at the eye to reduce this.

I usually average one 5 a season. But there's guys especially some of the swinbaits guys that seem to find them fairly often. The gold pin fish every year is 9 or 10lbs so the state has some good fisheries it can just be tough to come across the bigger fish with regularity.

Break 6 lbs in MA. They're around and the 5s show up for me but I haven't come across a 6 yet.

Unfortunately the two are almost entirely mutually exclusive. People want plastic they can toss on the ground or in the water and it will degrade naturally... But also want the same properties that we have all come to love about plastic. You can't have both. A material that degrades that quickly under natural conditions simply will not last long and will be lacking in material properties. You essentially want something that degrades in water.... That is going to spend the entirety of its use... In water. It's a hard sell. The best bet for being enviornmentally friendly is to use natural baits. I think Berkley has non plastic baits and a few other companies. But you also have to worry about marketing terms. A "bio based" plastic is NOT necessarily one that will biodegrade. It simply means it was made using bio based feedstock. A biodegradable plastic will degrade easier than typical plastics but may require special conditions to break down that may be different than just losing a bait in a lake. @CountryboyinDC kind of hit the nail on the head too. There's a lot of misinformation that gets spread around to make people think they're buying products that are better for the environment when the products themselves really aren't better at all. It's just feel good talk a lot of times. Take BPA. One or the replacement chemicals, BPS (no not bass pro shops lol), is actually worse, yet they can sell "BPA free" products and people will buy it. At the end of the day the biggest individual impact we can have is probably to not litter and to pick up others' trash.

If you are confident that you are keeping tension on the fish when they jump then the ultimate reason they are getting off on a consistent basis is the rod. If it doesn't have enough bend to stay loaded during headshakes you're land ratio will go down. I like braid, but I hear you on the wind knots, they drive me insane. I also don't think switching to braid buys you anything after the hook is set so if you're getting good hookups I don't see any reason to switch. If you feel fish are getting off because you aren't getting solid hooksets then braid will help but so will upsizing your line a bit and just swinging harder or tightening the drag a bit.

It's not just the designing that's the issue. Injection molded production parts have much different properties than something you would 3D print. That snap fit feature for example would likely break pretty quickly if it was 3D printed because it uses layers of material that can break easier than one solid molded piece. I think the biggest potential use of hobbyist 3D printing would be making molds for soft plastics. The only thing ive 3D printed for fishing related stuff was a wrench for those Thule knobs on a kayak rack. I can post pictures later.

I've only fished it a couple times in that area, both times for the spring striper run so I can't comment on the regular bass fishing. The current can be fairly fast in that area and it very rocky as you head up river, I'd imagine there's some decent smallies. You're also close enough to the ocean that you get tidal effects. But again with the rocks be very careful there's some really sketchy areas as you head towards Mitchell's falls and if the river is low and the tide drops you can get into some bad situations.

Right now I have all Daiwa reels because ei love the tatula lineup but my next baitcaster will probably be a Shimano just because I want to give them a fair shake.

I saw those and they do look good but I'd just be worried about the legs all getting torn off pretty quickly.

This, if I know I'm gonna really be slinging a bait I increase the brakes to compensate on the front end of the cast.

I generally go as small as I can get away with, but for worms I always use straight shanks, and for creature baits it's usually an EWG since they're thicker baits or a flipping hook.

I agree with this, top end JDM lures get a little traction and all of a sudden the budget brand companies, which I love still, are charging similar prices for inferior products.

That using braid on treble hook baits is a bad idea because it pulls out hooks. I've never had this issue. I use a softer rod and back the drag off to fish trebles. Another one is Trokar hooks. I despise them. In my experience they do their job too well and end up cutting a large hole in the fishes mouth which allows them to jump off easier.

If you notice this happening it's time to sloooooooow down. Sometimes they want it sitting there that long.

I've gotten one 5lber out of there in all my years fishing it. In a very weird way too, backlashed a wiggle wart and it was sitting there in the waves for like 30 seconds, as soon as I started cranking it....slurp. I know I've had and lost what probably would have been a PB at that lake though. Had a 9" slammer get slurped after deadsticking it near a tree late in the fall. My drag was pretty tight but it swam out into a deeper weed bed before I could turn it and I think with my line running through the weeds it got just enough leverage to pop loose.

The law is vague and poorly written, virtually unenforcable for anything other than sinkers and clearly lead jigs by themselves. The way I interpret the law, anything that gets attached to a lead weight outside of a hook or feather disqualifies it from the law. So spinner baits, buzz baits, underpins etc are fine in my mind but I have not confirmed it with anyone. The spirit of the law was to prevent loons from swallowing small sinkers and dying of lead poisoning.

Whitehall can be weird. It gets a lot of pressure and so much of the lake looks "fishy" it can be difficult at times. There are definitely big fish in there but they're few and far between I think.

Some sort of VR that overlays your graph onto what you are actually seeing would be reeeaaallly cool

That's been my experience so far this summer, there's a decent topwater bite if you get out early but then it's a grind just to get those 2-3lbers. Downsizing has been the key for me too, small underspins have been hot. I came back to MA this weekend to do some ocean fishing with my uncle but that didn't work out so me and my dad changed plans and headed to Webster yesterday. Not a bad day overall, like @gjfisher said the morning topwater bite was there but shut off quick. My dad got a couple decent largies on a whopper plopper right away. One of them went 2 3/4 on the scale but I've never seen a fish that size look so big. It almost had that football shape you'd expect from trophy smallies. That thing must have some good genes, I wouldn't mind running into it 5 years from now lol. The rest of the day was a bit of a grind. There were a couple times I was able to take advantage of fish chasing bait near the surface and picked some off with a spinnerbait, underspin and double fluke rig. The majority of my fish came on a tube though, including a nice smallie that went 2.75. I got about a dozen bass overall, but that smallie was the biggest.

Wind knots have haunted me the last couple years, I think I currently have J-8 on mine. But for general guidelines I'd say 15lb braid, and make sure to use some cheap mono as backer to save some money in the long run.

I managed to get my 8' swimbait rods up there but the tips are touching the windshield and the butts are almost touching the rear gate when it's closed. I always put rod socks on them to give a bit of protection as they move around.

Jigs and chatterbait I always add one. Spinnerbaits I occasionally will if I want to bulk up the profile or get them to stop just slapping the blades and commit to the hook.

2008 Toyota 4Runner. Currently new-to-me but I've been able to get my old kayak racks on the roof and can throw my kayak up there. It came with a towing package which hopefully someday I'll be able to afford to use haha. But the seats fold flat so there's plenty of cargo room and I could sleep in the back if needed. I managed to rig some bungie chords and tie downs to hold all my rods inside against the roof.

Those 4" Keitech Easy Shiners have been clutch for me. Either on an underspin or ball head jig, they eat them when they won't even touch a fat impact of the same length. Yesterday when I was fishing a bass I had just caught spit up a dead shiner almost the exact same size. It's been kind of a grind but I can't lie...it's fun to catch even smaller bass (1-2lbs) when I'm using finesse gear (5lb line, light drag, spinning gear).

I'm sure some will disagree but I don't think there is any technqiue in bass fishing where braid or braid to leader will put you at a disadvantage. I use it for pretty much everything. I change how I set the hook based on the bait and what rod I'm using. That's not unique to using braid though, I would still change my hooksets using mono or fluoro. A frog obviously needs a good strong hookset to get both of those thick-wire hooks in. A tiny jerbait can get it's thin-wire treble hooks bent out with any line/rod combination if you aren't careful. I just like the braid cause if I'm connected with the bait I'm getting the best feel, and I know at the end of a long cast on a day where the wind has a 10ft bow in my line I won't have any issues setting the hook. And I don't feel like I ever need the stretch of mono or fluoro. If I need to keep trebles pinned, I use a softer rod that will stay bent during the fight. If I need to worry about light wire hooks, I back the drag off. Again, I'm sure many prefer mono and fluoro for certain things. Whenever I lose a a fish I can usually point to some error in how I was fighting it or the rod choice, it's never "I should have had mono".