JustJames

I’m waiting patiently for them to come back to spawn. Shouldn’t be too long now, been stocking new bait and sharpen some hooks.

Do you really need lightest braid for your all purpose setup, especially for those chatterbait/swimbait? For those setup I use #10-12 Izorline and it is very effective. I don’t loose fish when it suddenly yank the rod out of your hand. I have enough shock absorb to give the big slab on the fish. For braid there will be some that use thin braid and some that will not recommend under 40lb. A lot depends on how you cast, type and weight of lures. Light thin braid 20lb and below generally for lighter bait with good aerodynamic. Best for shallow, lightweight spool where you do not need whipped cast. Al least 30lb for those hard cast and heavier weight lure. I only have one setup with 30lb braid where I use mostly for jig, frog and topwater and occasionally chatterbait/spinnerbait. I also have CQ50 with 10lb braid but only use for Ned Rig, the rest are 8lb braid/Nanofil but those are shallow spool which doesn’t count for regular use. Choose the line that match your setup and lure weight and techniques. Moving lure you don’t really no stretch braid.

The only problem is Tatula LT is widely available more than Kage LT and more often you can find it at discount price 150-170. If only 10 different, I would go for Kage LT any day. I like old style Daiwa chubby knob better and the bearing, even though I can’t see it improve any performance but still better than bushing. I even ordered RCS cork knob for my Ballistic to match Kage LT and that cost more than 10 or 20 for sure.

Depend which reel, either straight 6lb Izorline or 8-10lb braid to either Abrazx 10-12lb FC or 8lb Izorline . I do drag Ned rig some time and don’t want my line draging around rock too much with full FC.

I’m gettin away from fishing this winter. I plan to learn how to play golf the whole winter until spring. I spent all my Christmas allowance on Golf equipment, lessons and golf net. I hit about 100-200 balls every day in my front yard lol. Hopefully I can hit some balls before my crappie season start.

Any type hook should work as long as you are matching hook to your lure. Nose hooking, with finesse wide gap/wack hook, body Tex-post with long shrank/Neko hook and weedless/Texas rig with EWG hook or rebarb hook. For you, I strongly recommend #2 Roboworm Rebarb hook for any worm type. You will be fishing in small shallow pond, a lot of thing to get snagged down there. Weedless style is the way to go unless you prepare to lost your rig often. The light wire of roboworm should be easy enough to set hook as long as you hook plastic correctly (meaning bringing the hook point out of plastic first before leave it in plastic), for a little bigger body like Zoom swimming fluke or craw #2 Gamakatsu EWG hook. I use nose hooking when fishing deep and most of the time more vertical than horizontal. You are not gonna fish school of bass or target bass but you are locating roaming bass so more action is needed. You gonna have to keep moving your lure otherwise you might have to wait for hours before bass see it. Don’t worry about those text book that said, do nothing or move your lure but not your weight, those for ppl fishing from boat in target area. Experimenting is the way to go, don’t be afraid to drag, lift and drop, short pop and let slack. Too much is not good as well as too little, don’t skip 5-10’ in front of you that where a lot of ppl start reeling in fast for next cast and missed a lot of bite.

As far as plastic goes. I have at least 30-40 bags that haven’t caught anything.

You made me go down and look into my lure collection lol. I can say I never catch bass on crankbait but then again I never give them time or try them hard enough. I caught bluegill and crappie on tiny crankbait but that I set my goal to catch one. All I can say I’m weak at moving bait all around, like spinnerbait, paddle tail swimbait, deep and shallow crank. Those will be the last things I take out fishing with me lol.

I used to use mend it a lot for most everything big and small. It helped saving some lures especially Fluke (Yamamoto D shad) and Senko. I tried with smaller body plastic and it hit and missed. I think my first one only good for half bottle than got dry. The more mend-it is not always better, especially on the nose piece. It would make plastics hollow not firm and hook wouldn’t stay on. I found if I can glue two pieces together better than patching just a hole. Nowadays I don’t use mend-it much. I save for some expensive plastic (Yamamoto bait) or damage to body where I can remove the damage section and glue two parts together. Another great tool from what I’ve heard is Solder iron with flat tip. I was gonna try that but cannot find my flat tip anywhere.

I used to like Shimano 50 series more than any reels and have had a few myself from Chronarch 50, aldebaran mg7 now only have one left Scorpion 1000XT. I’m not sure what but some how the 50 shape hurt my palm when fishing with jerkbait where never happen with curado 70. I also feel a lot of time that I can get more distance with 70 than 50 with same type/weight lure. I planned to collect all the 50 but the hype on Core makes it impossible to get one at reasonable price. I got offer around $220 a few time for super nice core but turned those down. If the core price at 250 or more I’d rather spend a little more and get 2020 Met. IMHO. BTW that scorpion and of course CQ50 still the smoothest reel compare to any modern shimano reel even compare with bantam MGL.

I like the built of older reel but performance of newer reel. No matter what newer shimano will not get as smooth as older shimano compare in the same class.

You should give Daiwa spinning especially any in LT series a try. The Daiwa is way smoother and best bang for the bucks. Compare at any price point up to $200 reels, Daiwa win hand down. I am a shimano fanboys after I tried Legalis LT I bought 4 more Daiwas from Exceler LT all the way to Ballistic FW.

Zoom z-drop used to be my goto dropshot bait especially “the green weenie”. I caught fish every time when using this bait but only last the best two fish.

Have you seen or compare 200 and 300 size in person? Most of bass fishing 200 size is good with enough line capacity. I use my Curado 200i from 3/8oz jig up to 2-3oz lure. 300 is way over kill both weight and size when using in normal bass fishing. Most of big swimbait 3-8oz guys use bigger reel for line capacity and bigger/stronger gear for chucking big heavy bait.

Agree with this, but to me translate to Comfort and Balance would make a good rods, feel better. Brand to me is for trouble free, last longer and good value.

Agree with this ^^^^ if not the same they are definitely close. Is it worth 300? Absolutely not but at 150 it is a may be. A 6.1oz reel with only 10 grams deep spool, should be able to handle wild varieties of lure weight. Are there any better reel in the same price range? Definitely YES from shimano and Daiwa but not Lews.

Light Texas rig 4-6” worm, dropshot 3-4” fluke style or paddle style bait or weightless 3-4” senko or 6” fat roboworm. Might be a good time for you to hop in Ned Rig bandwagon also 1/16 or 1/20oz. Concentrate 2-4’ around concrete barrier wall.

Yes it works for me oftentimes with light-medium backlash and pretty helpful at night time, but I wouldnt use this method with light line or FC.

I have tried 3 of your list, PPSSV1, Daiwa Jbraid x8 and Sufix 832. You are right-on on your comments, Daiwa Jbraid the softest and smoothest braid. I had a friend who always use original PP handle it once, he didn’t even know it was a braid line. Sufix 832 was my favorite of all three, especially on spinning outfit. The stiffness as you mentioned prevent a lot of tip wrap where J-braid is the worst when fishing in even light wind condition and also the stiffness help to deal with windknot a lot easier than super soft braid line. The stiffness of 832 is no where near original PP and also a lot quieter passing thru guides. I don’t know if anyone else feel it and this is my main reason, why the 832 is my favorite. It seems the line sink and cut thru water better than other braid line. Doesn’t create big bowl underwater when using light lure.

@WRB @jimmyjoeWould it be bad if I agree with you guys? Even though I was one of them. Lol. I m not completely agree with this statement. It isn’t necessarily novelty but it can be “enchanting” especially my style of fishing. I do quite a bit of finesse fishing, like you said it can be done with modern reel easily, but with these BSF reel (thanks Tom) it can be done even more efficiently, further distance, more control, less worry of backlash, and more accuracy. I don’t even need BSF rod, just regular 1/8-3/8oz bass rod work just fine. Let’s talk BSF rod, these are not just typically trout, whippy noodle rod. There are some that as powerful as regular bass rod with the advantages of being lighter weight, and softer tip. Heck my Light/BFS 1/16-1/4oz, even have more backbone that my crucial Medium 1/8-3/8(dropshot rod). You can ask a lot of those 4lb bass I caught.

@redmeansdistortiongood point on the weight of setup spinning compare to baitcaster. It was the reason I wasn’t fond of apinning at the beginning. I got left frozen shoulder thus I forced myself to use more spinning and started building up my UL. Now I have 3 setups that weight less than 10oz, it is not as light as my Pixy but comparable to others. I have no excuse not to use spinning rigs anymore. It is too crazy when one buy 3-400 reels then add another 200 for spool just to be able to cast 1/64oz trout magnet. Im pretty much done with BFS (still wanna try aldebaran though). I’ll utilize what I have for ultra finesse for my bass other than that would get sold.

If you never tried, you will never known. There are some advantages of using BFS over spinning outfit. Line twisted/wind knot issue and accuracy cast in tight area are the most and obvious advantage. I know a lot will say they never have windknot problem. But in light lure and target casting windknot will happen. In tight space like say Kayak or Float tube, baitcaster got some advantages over spinning, a lot easier to handle and control the rig. Vertical jigging, baitcaster is easier to adjust the depth. There might be even more but that I can think of from hand on experience. Expense or cost of BFS, a nice spinning outfit can cost even more than BFS setup. At least mine are and not even that nice. Now of course since it look cooler to use baitcaster over fairy wand and a lot of YouTube started showing with those cheap BFS, the hype started, INCLUDING ME. The thing is, I bought my first ultra light baitcaster rod about 10 years ago, and I’d been using baitcaster throwing kastmaster for trout 10-15 years ago. Nowadays I built up my UL spinning rigs, a few of them and enjoy using them more than BFS. I learnt how to deal with line twisted and windknot, I know when its gonna happen and how to prevent it before it really happened. Of course spinning is all about distance when talking light lure but that is not everything, isn’t it. This video show why BFS. https://youtu.be/ujmub9cW4tQ

You should head to tackle tour forum and look under Ultra light section. There are ton of enthusiasts about BFS over there. You will get a lot of comments for gear junkies who crazy about rods/reels more than fishing and some that uses the techniques or gears to their advantage. You gonna need to provide more info like fish species, weight of lure prefer.

Agree with @Choporozhere about a few hundreds yds of braid to fill the whole spool, #8braid is about 2-4lb mono line. I normally use small mono 4-6lb line as backing, than plumbing tape on top to cover the knot. Depend on what spool size and how much main line do you need, you might have to spool to about 2/3 spool of backing. I even backing my shallow spool because I only use #4 nanofil on 2000 and #8 Nanofil on 2500.

First of all, you cannot compare the distance between frog and spinnerbait. Frog would cast out a lot further due to aero dynamics no matter which reel. You could try to cast same frog on your SLX setup and compare distance. The SLX is a good distance reel, I use between 1 and 2 on depends on lure type. You might need to add a drop of oil on spool bearing.