ohihunter2014

would you guys think the medium/heavy rod would be causing an issue and i should go medium?

I think my issue was not keeping the thumb over the spool. i was pretty much treating it as a zebco 33 LOL. It didn't do too bad yesterday. about 2 pulls of the line out would straiten things back up. just seemed like it was occurring more when trying to go overhand. throwing sideways would send the lure about 50ft left of where i wanted it.

Ive got the left hand knob set on 9-10 and the knob under the drag set until the lure free falls. Its a pinnacle. costs around $60 was gifted to me last week. cant afford anything high dollar. there is a large knob on left of reel with 1-10 and i set it on 10 and then click the button and let the lure fall slowly. Its a Berkley lightning shock rod 6ft6 medium/heavy.

So should I push the button and hold the line down and cast or just push the button and cast? I was told don't hold the line down by someone. What ticks me off the most is overhand casting always birds nest but a sidways sweep no issue.

Got a brand new 7bb reel with pp braid and all goes well but if I cast overhand I always get backlashes. Cast sideways and always goes about 30 ft left. do you run your thumb over the spool as it's casting? Seen someone do this and it made me backlash. is it really this hard or just me?

now dumb question if its not marked how do you tell? I seen a pic of mod vs fast and fast only bends so far at the tip. I have a fast Cabela's rod and it bends a lot at the tip. way more than the lightning.

so everyone has told me to go with a medium moderate rod for crankbaits. what are lightning rod shocks? I currently had a medium/heavy but looking at getting a medium for crankbaits and need to know if they are fast or moderate actions.

what's your favorite under $40 polarized glasses? can i get away with Berkley or ugly stick Wal-Mart glasses?

So my 6ft6 med/heavy won't work?

what type of waters?

i was thinking about the speed also. i was going pretty fast with the trap lure cause it got caught on something a few times so i went a little faster. ended up getting stuck and lost the lure.

do you guys used a flouro leader on braid when using crank baits like square bills, ratltraps, etc? if so what type of leader and weight do you prefer? i was given a reel with PP and want to use it for my cranking and have another with mono for top water.

The place i was at last weekend is a man made reservoir and when throwing a ratl trap and texas worm i could feel the lures hitting something on the bottom so I'm assuming rocks? i found a map of this place from odnr and it shows the depths. what depth do you guys like?

Now dumb question. Do bass eat smaller bluegill and crappie? I know some spots that hold a lot of those in a weed bed I can see from shore.

would a cheaper pair under say $50 work well?

basically look for minnows or small bluegill? I seen shad jumping Saturday and nothing would bite for me. how do you know there is a rock bed? so say if my reservoir has stone all along the sides try throwing along the edge?

I'm bank bound and going to hit this bass fishing pretty hard this year. upon talking to some guys with boats and hearing about water temp, graphs, etc. How the heck do I know what's a good area to fish from the bank? I spent all day Saturday at a large reservoir and didn't catch squat.

This reel was setup by a tournament guy. I'm sure it's got 40-50lb power pro on it cause it's what he uses. I didn't have a bad time getting suffix elite backlashes out. I figured braid would be more of a pain.

I was just given a brand new pinnical 7bb bait caster and its spooled with new power pro. I seen mention I shouldn't use braid being new to bait casters. what issues will this cause me? I used one this past weekend with mono and didn't have many issues accept when the spool tension decided to loosen all the way up and give me bad backlash. this reels going on a med/heavy lightning rod. I don't do much "slop" fishing which I see is the reason to use braid.

i quit using spider wire this year because it frays very easy after a few months and became sticky on the spool.

small update. I dragged a couple large limbs off the bottom with my medium heavy rod and this reel over the weekend and not a hiccup. the trick was put a lot of epoxy over the break not just gluing it back together. I think id have to catch a shark to break this thing again.

I was given one of these things and tried it out in WV fishing a lake with a lot of brush, trees, etc. I threw this thing where an old car was in the lake and a lot of bush type things around it and gave it a couple jerks and got a couple nice bass off of it. probably caught more bass on this thing than a normal worm.

thanks for the info. The reel was doing great the first few casts. what I did was turn the tension knob all the way tight until it stopped and then turn it slightly until the lure fell very slow. I think I turned the knob maybe 1/8 turn for the sweet spot. on the 3rd or so cast the knob would now take about 3 full rotations to turn it back to fully tight. it was wiggling itself loose for some reason. I would get maybe 25-30yard casts the first 3-4 casts and not a sign of backlash and then all hell breaks loose.

Put just over the knob to keep from spinning?

Thanks. I've never used one before and thought man if I have to keep adjusting the tension screw this. I enjoyed using it the first few casts until it would go free spool on me. I'll pickup something soon to replace it. Have you ever ordered from fishermen outlet?