MassYak85

I always use weaker line than my mainline. What I'm saying is I want the weak point of my leader to by the connection to the lure so I can break off a snag without trashing 6 feet of leader line. I'm also not sure the "0-100" thing is accurate. Tied correctly no knot should fail anywhere close to 0% line strength.

Anybody still fishing open water? Most places near me have about 2" of ice so I'll be fishing hard-water for the next few months (hopefully).

Personally....I DO NOT want a knot that is at 100% line strength. I run leaders for most of my fishing and it is critical that the connection knot to your lure fails before your leader knot connecting the lines so that I can break off snags.

The ROF 0's don't come with hooks right? Gotta BBR or STE rig them or something? I've thought about doing the same. There's a lot of ponds I fish that are shallow and I can't go as slow as I'd like without sinking into the dying weed beds and getting fouled up. A ROF 1 or 2 would be great. I've tried shaving off some of the lead of a ROF 5 68 weedless but it still wasn't quite what I was hoping for.

How's the stretch?

Depends what you mean by slow and what you mean by swimbait. If you mean just barely creeping bottom in water that's about to freeze with larger baits (I'm talking like 4-5 seconds for a single handle rotation on your reel slow here), then in that case the only ones I've tried that will still have tail action just nosing the bottom at that speed are the Hudds, Real Preys, and Little Creeper Trash Fish. Otherwise keitechs are always a good choice but they have a bit more exaggerated tail action (which is a good thing sometimes) at faster retrieve speeds. I'd second this too. You can always discretely add nail weights to a ROF5 to really dial in your preferred sink rate. You can remove some of the lead from the harness of a ROF12 too but that's a bit involved and is obviously a permanent change to the lure whereas with nail weights you can swap them out on the fly.

I shove a bunch of 3700 size planos into one of those waterproof boat bags they sell at bass pro. Certainly not bank-angler friendly but when I go in my kayak or from the bank it's easy enough to throw some of them in a backpack, and I have a milk crate to hold them all in my kayak.

That's what I figured. I sent them an email since the reel is still under their 1 year warranty period on the chance they'd send me one but if not I'll just pick one up at TW or something. Do you have a preference for after-market bearings or are all ABEC5 bearings basically the same?

So I started doing yearly maintenance on my reels today and was taking apart a Tatula Type-R that isn't even a year old. It looked like I would expect inside for a relatively new reel, grease from the manufacturer but not much dirt or grime built up yet. Except the right spool bearing (under the cast control knob) looked like hell. Lots of dirty grease. More like something I would expect to pull out of a reel that hadn't been opened at all in like 5 years. Upon closer inspection the bearing wasn't even spinning, it had basically been acting as a bushing for the spool shaft for who knows how long. And I don't mean it was just rough so the shaft was spinning inside...it was locked, I could not spin it. I put it in my small ultrasonic cleaner for a while which got ff the grease and dirt but the bearing was still frozen. Has anyone had this problem? I am going to send Daiwa an email and worse case I'll just buy a new bearing but it seemed very odd to me a for a reel this new. The opposite spool bearing looked flawless.

Was going to go out in my kayak today but I check a few lakes and ponds near me and they were all mostly or completely locked up. Maspenock and A1 (past the island) had open sections but I figured it was best not to use my kayak as an ice breaker, although the thought did cross my mind, the ice was only about 1/8" thick. Maspanock had a section along the road that was open due to the sun heating the rocks so I stopped there for an hour to cast. Tried a jerkbait, hudd 68 and hair jig with no takers. Beautiful day though, I was bummed I couldn't take the kayak out I was actually pleasantly warm just standing there in the sun. It was probably my last time of the season given this week is supposed to be almost all below freezing. Looks good for quality black ice and hopefully fish-able ice in the next couple weeks. I started cleaning my reels today too.

Close call there, if that offer did stack to get the 40% off I would have had to jump on some 110's. Not today bait monkey!

Yea I've been using it as backing since I started this thread, it's been fine for that. I'd probably trust it in a pinch if I had to use it as mainline tough, it doesn't seem awful especially for the price.

Yea a lot of my blade bait bites are on the fall and unless you've got a good feel of the semi-slack line you basically just have to hope they are still on when you lift it up again. Earlier in the fall when they were more aggressive I could feel them crush the blade as it sank but not much anymore. I feel like it's one of those techniques where we'd be disgusted to know how many fish took and spit it out before we even felt anything.

You and me both. If it's the summer I'll tolerate up to about 15-20mph winds in my kayak, this time of year if the leaves are even moving on the trees I get second thoughts lol.

I use a Tatula 200HD on my Fury 795. I use mine for hard baits in the 1.5 - 3.5 oz range with 20lb P-Line PF Original. It's honestly a dream to fish I love the combo. I think you would be very happy with the Tatula you linked in your original post. I used to have a Cardiff 300 but I just didn't like it all that much honestly. It's not a bad reel by any means just personal preference. *Word of Caution*: If you plan on running braid to leader....DO NOT get a T-wing reel. The leader knot WILL catch on the t-wing if you run a long enough leader that the knot goes into the spool. You can get away with this somewhat with lighter lines used with conventional techniques but try running 50lb braid to a 20lb leader and it'll give you nightmares. Of course if you run 4ft leaders this isn't an issue. Just something to keep in mind.

I always hear people say to leave like 1/8th of an inch and I try to do the same, but I also seem to get them when the line has gotten even shorter after cutting a few off. I don't think under-filling would cause them right? Thank you for the responses so far guys. My suspicion based on everything people have said is the leader knot may be hanging up more than I thought it was.

I've tried 4-5 lines in the past couple years, including higher end 8 strands. They do help, but it ends up happening still. It seems to me they are forming at one of the lower guides and then make their way out on the cast. Really bad ones will wrap themselves around the 1st or 2nd guide and stop the cast altogether. Almost like the line is coming off too fast and bunches up. I've used FG, albright, blood knot, and uni. FG and Blood knot being my favorite, but none made a noticeable difference.

This time of year is always so weird. There were guys ice fishing out in the higher elevations of central MA today, we were out in a boat in Worcester (water temps on Quinsig were 38-40 by the way), and I'm sure some of the Cape Ponds are still in the mid-forties right now. All within a couple hours drive.

I do all of that diligently, I don't think loose loops in the spool are the issue.

So as the (soft water) season comes to a close for me, I feel like I got pretty dialed in with my gear this year, except for one thing... I can't seem to stop wind knots. I've tried various lines (Smackdown seemed to behave the nicest) but eventually had wind knots with all of them. I really am at a loss for what the issues could be. My current setup is a Dobyns Fury 703 and a Diawa BG 2000 with 15lb Diawa J-Braid and I generally run a leader, but I've had issues with past setups as well. I can't imagine line twist is to blame since I mainly use this setup for bottom contact stuff where I am just taking up slack line (and yes I make sure not to let loops form in the spool). The only thing I can think of is one of three things; my casting motion being too aggressive/snappy, the leader knot momentarily catching and letting loose line build up behind it, or that I am using too light of a lure. I stay within the rod's weight range though, and don't feel I have changed my casting motion all that much over the years, I'm also using light leaders and don't feel the leader knot is really hanging up much if at all. I should also mention actual significant wind had rarely been present for most of my wind knots. Any suggestions? I was honestly so frustrated this year and had my spinning setup out of commission for the day too many times that I'm at the point I'm considering going all baitcasting and trying a BFS setup. I'm done using it for the year anyways but come spring is there an approach I should take to try and narrow down the likely causes?

Today was probably my last day out until safe ice. My dad and I hit Quinsig (North launch was one of the only places around that didn't have an iced-in ramp) late morning for a few hours. We found a huge school of perch off of the beach and probably had about 20 between us, coming on blade baits and hair jigs. We actually left the school after about 30 minutes to try and find some bass but no luck. One of the Eagles was hanging out near the nest so that was cool to see.

I'm sorry but I've got to agree with @MickD here. I may have youth and decent eyesight on my side but this seems like a 30 dollar solution to a 3 dollar problem like he said. I've never used the Fuji but I can't imagine a situation where I would ever need anything more complicated. If one of these showed up in my stocking, sure I'd use it. Would I ever purchase one myself, nope.

This is the first Black Friday in a while I don't plan to buy any fishing stuff. Take that bait monkey! (Unless of course, I check this thread tomorrow and one of you find something too good to pass up.... ?)

Got out to the sudburry to cast the hudd from shore yesterday since this is the last weekend it's open. I only fished for like an hour and no bites. It's such a peaceful area though and fun just to hike around. I was surprised to find a weedbed in one area that was still very alive and green, not sure what the water temps are like there but I expected most of the vegetation to be dead at this point.

Late Fall last year. I was fishing a 9" MS Slammer and was just dead-sticking it next to a tree. Maybe 15-20 seconds go by and it just gets slurped under. I set the hook with a pretty tight down drag and it started taking off for deeper water. I couldn't gain any line, the handle was just turning against the drag. About 10 seconds of just grinding against it and it pops free underwater. My theory is it was hooked outside of the mouth and the line started wrapping around the milfoil bed it was swimming through and gave it enough of an angle underwater to pull it free. I never got a look at it but I'd loooooove to know what the size on it was.