MassYak85

Tacklewarehouse is a good place to start for shopping online, but keep an eye on sales at other stores and on Ebay from reputable sellers, and don't forget about local tackle shops if you have any near you.

I mean you said you were fishing open water so maybe some kind of spook or popper style lure if you want to stick with topwater. I rarely if ever use a frog in open water anyways.

Biggest topwater I throw is a 9" MS Slammer, I use a Dobyns Fury 795, Diawa Tatula HD200 Reel with 20lb P-Line PF Original and it works great!

Buy more braid ASAP but if you are going out again before that is possible, and you are truly open water fishing, and have a decently stout rod, I think you can probably land a few. I'd expect a pretty horrendous strike to land ratio though.

Massachusetts is interesting, at 15 1/2 lbs it almost shouldn't have existed from what we know/think we know about Northern Strain Largemouth...but it was caught, so the dream lives on for a Teener up here in New England. Most likely nothing will ever be caught even in the same ballpark as that fish, to break 10 is nearly unheard of, but I do hold out hope that some offshore structure in Wachusett has a big girl that doesn't even know fishing exists (Wachusett is the largest reservoir in the state that does not allow fishing from boat, and has heavily regulated bank access). For now though I'll set my sights on that elusive 10 haha.

Usually I am holding my line semi-slack. It also pays to watch your line, look to see any jumps, if it's tightening, or if its getting more slack. Unfortunately, wind sucks. You may have to upsize your weight to maintain contact with the lure, and watching your line becomes more difficult. You could try a high-vis braid with a leader.

Neither is better, they are tools and excel in different conditions. Ribbits will get absolutely murdered sometimes if the fish are aggresive but sometimes they like slower moving target.

I did a bunch of reading over the winter. Buck Perry's "SponPlugging" and Bill Murphy's "In Pursuit of Giant Bass" are pretty good reads. Also welcome to the site!

I believe it's all attitude, some of the guys in the swimbait community have this. It's not "I'm going to throw a 14" glide bait till I die in hopes of a giant bass", it's going out with the mindset that learning about big fish is more important than what you catch, and eventually that will pay off.

I'm sure @Delaware Valley Tackle will be able to take care of you if you want to ship them. Have you considered servicing them yourself? I know it seems a little daunting at first but it's not too bad. Worm gears admittedly require taking the reel almost completely apart depending on the design. Luckily the worm gear is somewhat serviceable without doing anything, if you have some of those small foam swabs you can use that to remove excess gunk and re-apply grease/oil (not both) without taking the reel apart, not as good as getting it serviced but is a nice thing to do mid-season.

I have a 130 in perch and they kill it. Two summers ago I kid you not I probably spent 50% of my total fishing time with that one lure. It has hook rash like no other bait I own.

Yea I haven't bought much there in a long time, for many reasons but this doesn't help their cause.

I've had waaaaaay to many huge snapping turtles come and check out my kayak for me to consider fishing in one of those things lol.

In response to the title....eeeasssilllyy a drop shot rigged pink Deps 250

With larger fish especially, lifting them with the rod is playing with fire (that's how you snap your rod if you aren't careful). Plus you risk ripping the hooks out and losing the fish.

I loooove the st-36's, but if you are looking for a shorter shank the 35's might be a good choice. I haven't used those yet but plan to try them. Also important to note on the st-41's is that the hook point are tilted inwards a bit, in contrast to the true round bend of the 36. Some like it, some don't.

Man what a deal! Really the only other setup I could justify at this point would be a cranking setup so I think I'll pass considering it's a 7 speed.

What lake are you fishing if you don't mind me asking. I was down here last summer and am down here again until the end of June and have had a hell of a time myself locating fish in the suffolk reservoirs (where I usually take my kayak).

Whitehall is a strange animal, I rarely do great there, but rarely get completely skunked and every now and then it gives me a day that gets me to come back. Plus I've heard of and seen the occasional giant (by MA standards at least) come out of there.

Yup, I meant when I see fish elsewhere and need to make a quick cast. Some days chasing blowups is a fools game like @J Francho said, but other days it's very effective. One nice thing about being in a kayak is I can get waaaaaaay back into the pads. Some ponds have vast lily pad fields in the summer up in MA that can cover more than 75% of the water's surface. When that's the case it's like jig fishing a lake that's littered with standing timber, it's hard to know where to start. But sometimes what I do if it's a really shallow pond or area is just start paddling, the fish we're all really after can't make quick movements in that thick stuff without bumping into all kinds of stuff, so when you come barreling in and they need to move...you get to know about it. Move around enough and you start getting a sense of where fish are and aren't, then you can let the area cool down and bomb the frog back through there and at least have the confidence knowing that fish are in that area. Man those wakes....not for the faint of heart but by far one of my favorite part of bass fishing.

Yea being from MA being around hybrid strain largemouth is a bit of a treat haha. That one crushed my old PB by over a pound.

I'm not sure it matters, under any circumstance a powerboat hitting a kayak is blatantly negligent or aggressive/rude on the part of the boat driver.

Yea the wording of the MA law is so vague and cryptic that unless you have lead split shots or unpainted lead weights lying around I doubt they could truly ever cite you for it. The whole point of the law is to save loons so bass jigs are not an issue, but I like to comply as much as I can. All my weights, and regular jigs and jig heads I converted, but stuff like spinnerbaits, bladed jigs, and underspins I have not since I believe they fall (or could be argued so) outside the law. For smaller weighted hooks I also got tungsten but there are just certain parts of the market that literally do not have non-lead options yet, so for stuff like owner beast hooks I wrap them in lead wire as weight. If a loon tries eating a 12/0 owner beast hook then I say let natural selection take it's course lol. Really the proper way to write the law would be to specify size as well as weight, maybe 1.5" including skirts, trailers, etc or something.

My general rule for distance is to leave room for both me and the other guy to make both our longest casts towards each other and not have the casts overlap. I generally find fisherman around my area pretty good with etiquette. Some guys will get a little close but never enough where I say anything. Usually any time I get annoyed at someone is from pleasure boaters, jet skiis and the like.

I believe they are lead. Pretty much any jig that does not explicitly state what it is made of will be lead. Check out the eco pro tungsten sick boy's though. They are reasonably priced for tungsten jigs makes me feel better about the lead law.