Boomstick

The Daiwa Tatula Elite rods are pretty good. They make a 6'9" and a 7'1" H/F that should handle jigs between 3/8 and 1oz well. I would also take a hard look at the 7'2" H/F Shimano Expride. Every now and then, I see people nab one for under $250 and those are very good rods for the price. Depending on what your cover looks like in your area, you might be better off looking for a MH rod designed to handle 3/8oz and 1/2oz jigs and using your current heavy rod for heavier jigs. If you can find a MH-H rod, those usually work very well. In my case, that's what I did since most cover is situational so a lot of my jig fishing is more structure fishing than heavy cover flipping, and also to me. Also, having a sensitive rod for fishing structure is more beneficial than throwing into cover imo

I have the Tatula non-elite frog rod. If you are looking for rod that serves a sole purpose of pulling bass out of the heaviest cover, look no further. But it's a little too stuff to double as a flipping stick.

Big Game is definitely stronger than XL but also fatter diameter (so is XT). It's also cheap. If you want to venture into more expensive line, Sufix Siege is worth a try. Siege is more expensive, but it handles better. This year I tried Sufix Advance and the jury is still out on that.

On all of my Daiwa reels, I set the spool tension at the point it just begins to click. With the magforce brakes, on a heavier lure if I set the brakes around 10, I can go thumb free without issue. This is generally unique to Daiwa.

On days when they hit everything, anybody can catch a bass. I have seen a ten year old girl catching bass on every cast with a wacky rigged senko, who lost her senko and had nothing but a red hook and they still hammered it. And yes, that is a lot of fun. The difference between a pro and everyone else is the ability to catch a bass when they are not hitting anything that moves. And those fish can be rewarding.

It definitely varies lake to lake for me. I have definitely increased my confidence in jigs and T-Rigs since getting kayaks last year. Getting offshore really changed everything for me. Then of course there's spinnerbaits, crankbaits, jerkbaits and poppers, all of which at times are high on my list.

If I didn't know any better, I would think that is a horror movie.

Oh that's a nice trick!

I ideally you want to have someone hold the scale at a 45 degree angle. Measure the scale reading at which point the line just begins to slip and that is what your drag is set to. If not, tie down your scale and pull up on it. If you do it this way, your drag might be slightly underset although I wouldn't try to compensate for it, but the hardest part is actually reading the scale. When I do it by scale, I usually have one of my kids read the scale while I pull up on the rod, it's just much easier that way. After a while, you can figure it out by feel. On a medium heavy or stouter rod, your ideal point is somewhere around where the line begins to slightly dig into itself when you pull on it with .015in diameter line which makes it real easy but of course with .013in line that doesn't hold true.

These two are my first thoughts as well. What I will bring up is do you have any decent heavy cover that you can target from the shore? A lot of my shore spots with heavy cover aren't very good as I have to cast through the cover, so you might get more use from a M/F spinning rod, but you would know if that would be an issue.

Man, this whole thread is just a drag. Anyway at the risk of being called a drag queen. I will say that there is really little benefit to setting your drag beyond around 4lbs on a MH rod. You're protecting your rod and your line by setting your drag properly. The only time I would really crank down on my drag more than that - and this is more for a heavy rod than a medium rod, would be if I'm flipping cover and I want to turn that fish's head quick before it can go deeper into cover.

Well I can tell you from experience that 12lb Big Game probably breaks closer to 25lbs, that line is strong!

The only time I ever use anything close to a circle hook for bass fishing is really a drop shot hook that I used for a bit a few years ago, but generally don't use them anymore. Since a typical hookset on a drop shot is essentially pulling up on the rod, you can set the hook as normal without tearing it out of the fish's mouth and hopefully it set itself.

Make sure you reel up and slack and use your rod tip to pull the fish back towards you and pray.

I'm heading up there in August (so psyched!) and I typically use 1/16, 1/8 and 1/4, largely the lighter weights. But given that the water is commonly around 70ft deep thus most of my fishing will be deep, I plan on buying at least some 3/8oz weights as well. Given that I'm on a kayak and will be keeping it along the shoreline, that should suffice but I could see the need for something quite a bit heavier to be honest, even on the kayak.

While overall I would say this is largely correct, when it comes to fluorocarbon and braid, they're about equal. Reason being if you can keep your line tight 100% of the time, braid will be the most sensitive. But as soon as your line goes slack even a little, it loses its sensitivity until a fish takes it, runs with it and makes it tight again. I like fluorocarbon because in this situation because of its stiffness it still remains fairly sensitive.

What are you planning on using it for? I have no experience with the SLX DC, but the SLX MGL 70 is amazing for throwing light lures, it absolutely bombs them. The Tatula SV is quite good for light lures too, but I would give the SLX MGL 70 is better for casting them. The SV is pretty solid with light lures as well, but imo really excels at skipping, pitching and making targeted casts. So if you are using it for T-Rigs and jigs, the SV is amazing.

On a reasonable budget, I would go with a Daiwa BG reel. A little heavy, but a very solid reel for the price. The 2000 size is quite ideal for finesse as you can run 6lb, 8lb or even 10lb test or 10 - 20# braid so it'll handle pretty much all line choices pretty well. For a rod, the St Croix Mojo Bass 6'10" ML/XF would not be a bad choice. They run a touch heavier than your typical ML and will handle ned rigs and drop shots very well and is a great blank for the price.

I would look up comparison videos on Youtube. The biggest difference is the GT-54 has a solid image up to about 50 feet and the return fades pretty quickly after 60ft. The GT-56 has a pretty solid image all the way up to 100 feet out. The first 60 feet look pretty close. Two things I will note - first, have you found a place with the GT-56 in stock? I have been trying to buy a GT-56 transducer and unable to find one and it looks like I won't until June so I gave up on that idea for this year. Most stores seem to be unable to get the units that come with the GT-56 in, let alone just the transducer, at least the ones I have checked in my area. Second, you might be able to buy a discounted unit with a GT-54, use it for a while and then buy the GT-56 and have it run about as much as the unit with the GT-56 transducer, given that the units with the GT-54 are greatly discounted right now if you can still find one.

Thanks, I'll definitely try that. Kring point looks like it could be a decent spo to fish as well.

I don't know that I can think of any examples in those price ranges, but I have seen $150 rods that were about as sensitive as $20 rods, so they do exist.

I got the YakAttack net mainly because I can stick it in a Zooka II rod holder for storage. If I had a better storage solution for it, I would look at the Frabil Bear Claw net though. That's really well designed for kayakers.

Yup. It's like micro guides without all the downsides.

I would say a single colorado blade, chartreuse colored sounds like it should be productive. You probably won't even need a trailer but you could try a trailer hook.

It's fairly common they simply didn't use enough grease from the factory. I would wager that you just need to grease it up.