Boomstick

Pants? Who needs pants?

If the water really is all that muddy, I don't think the colors of the spinnerbait or blades matters that much. Maybe you'll get one less short strike using a black spinnerbait with a gold blade. If the water is stained with some visibility, gold blades and a chartreuse spinnerbait would be the way to go so they can see it from a little further away.

Nice fish, AND I don't doubt you got a roughly accurate weight - it's nearly as long as your kayak is wide!

My guess is 3.5 - 4.5lbs, but it could be bigger, it's hard to tell from a photo.

I wouldn't really be looking at overhauling what you're doing too much, as the old saying goes **** happens. But I will say I do think @jbrew73 and @WRB both had some good ideas, a narrower profile hook would help, and even better an Owner Twistlock would allow the soft plastic to come off and the hook to rotate further.

As others have said, you're going to have to expand your arsenal. A football jig is worth a shot at the very least. Or possibly a drop shot as well - sometimes the smaller baits come through the cracks but remember that you can drop shot with larger hooks and weights on larger line as well. Maybe try something like a spinnerbait or crankbait that you can get near the bottom but keep off the bottom.

Hope to see you on the next one. I plan on doing this one fairly free form, but the next one I'm planning to organize something about various fishing spots and possible vacation destinations - should be fun!

I sent out the invitation for Monday, 12/28 at 8pm EST.

AT&T should as well, but like any carrier it would matter on the area you're in. A lower population area would have fewer other switches to route through, but I would expect Nashville would have backups to the backups so to speak. And it looks like this one was a central office. Terrorism sucks. Stay safe.

For what it's worth, according to Garmin, you can run a Garmin EchoMap UHD whether it's the GT54 or the newer GT56 transducer out of the water without risking harm as they are both 500w or less. The risk when running them out of the water is that the higher powered units use the water to as a cooling system. I would imagine that demo mode would turn off power to the transducer, preventing it from running long enough to heat up. https://support.garmin.com/en-US/?faq=BzthnHQrMb4fRIZCKLnum6 Tomorrow, I will be assembling a Cell block with my oldest son and showing them both how to use his 73sv.

If this is your first time with a baitcaster, go get some 12 or 15lb Berkley Big Game and learn with that. It's decent, cheap, easier to pick out birds nests than braid and cheaper if you have to replace it. Once you get better at casting you can look at switching to braid or fluorocarbon - or even stick with mono.

The 705C is a bit less of a broomstick and will be a little more versatile as it will be better for things like casting a jig, carolina rig, frogs, etc. The 735C is meant more for flipping, but you can still flip with a 705C.

The 6'10" MH would be able to throw a frog in lighter cover just fine using braid, or walk a frog in open water. For throwing a frog in thick lily pads, you'll be challenged to pull a big bass out before it does a figure 8 around every lily pad, so if you're looking to throw a frog into heavy cover, you'll want to step up to a heavy rod. I would use 40# braid, it'll pair well with other things you'll throw like T-Rigs and jigs up to 1/2oz. You can also throw things like larger chatterbaits and spinnerbaits, swim jigs and 4.8" Keitechs among other things. My take is if you need heavier braid then you'll want to also step up to a heavy.

Merry Christmas to you and the rest of BR as well

In terms of shallow cranking, there aren't too many advantages to be honest. You're basically chucking and winding so the extra sink factor is going to be partially negated, and with a moving bait, the fact that it's less visible is also not going to be a huge factor either. If you're interested in trying fluorocarbon, I would try it on your T-Rig/Jig rod. With any decent fluorocarbon I generally only respool when my line runs short, I heavily abuse it on rocks (which happens to all line) or I get an unsalvageable bird's nest, which is rare but happened to me later this year fishing in heavy wind and I pulled it out over a weed and opted to change out the line for next season on that reel.

For specifically shallow cranks, I will use 10lb, 12lb or 15lb fluorocarbon and occasionally even 12lb mono, largely depending on which reel is available at any given time and how much grass and wood I'm likely to be running into. I've even used 17lb fluorocarbon before, for shallow cranking the extra diameter doesn't really matter too much About 33% more according to the stretch test found here. Sniper is one of the lowest stretch fluorocarbons and Tatsu is somewhere in the middle.

I'm not sure if I got the nailpolish right, but my fishnets definitely did.

A medium that runs on the heavy side can also be very good for a T-Rig with a 1/8oz weight or even weightless too if there's not too many weeds to worry about. I would say the ideal senko setup would be both a M/F and a MH/F - and for people with a lot more cover than I usually have, a H/F.

You mean I've been fishing a purple reel on a hot pink rod all this time for nothing? Dang, I wish someone told me sooner

I fish a lot of lakes like this. Try smaller jerkbaits and 1/4oz poppers early and late in the year, wacky rigged 4" senkos, T-Rigged powerworms and the secret weapon a nose hooked Roboworm Alive Shad on a drop shot.

That would be a cool promo! Pair up BR members with pros for charity. Let's make it happen lol As for me, I would probably pick Brett Ehrler or Aaron Martens. While I fish jigs and T-Rigs more often than drop shots, their general approach to finding fish seems to be fairly similar to mine. And it would be cool to fish with some of our forum pros like @WRB or @A-Jay as well

Welcome to the forums. And like they say the bait monkey is like a pitbull, once it bites it doesn't let go.

Well I do own a couple of similar MH/F powered rods, just so I can have them both rigged with different lures at the same time. It turns out one does handle heavier lures significantly better, but even if that wasn't the case there is definitely some benefit in that.

Before the merger, it seems that it varied a little store to store. I have 2 Cabelas and one BPS in a three hour driving radius. I haven't been to the BPS in a good year so maybe this changed, but they were by far the best of the three, at least for fishing gear. They were also in a generally higher income area, for what it's worth. The Cabela's in eastern MA was fairly small, unorganized and not well stocked before the merger. Considering this is a generally higher population and higher income area, this was surprising. I have no idea what it's like after the merger as I had no desire to go back to that store. The Cabela's in E. Hartford CT, which is generally a lower income but higher population area used to be pretty good before the merger. After the merger, the fishing department has generally been picked clean everytime I'm in there, and various items either doubled in price if they had any left even or were discontinued, such as Roboworms for example.

Well for me it's Daiwa J-Fluoro Samurai. I purchased a couple of spools already, but need to wait for the lakes to thaw before I can try it. I'm also fairly curious about the Sunline lines. I know sniper is actually a very low stretch fluorocarbon (and Shooter is supposed to be even lower stretch) and I've heard all around good things. So I bought my oldest son a spool of sniper for a stocking stuffer so he can be our test dummy.