Boomstick

You're going to get a lot of different answers whenever you ask for the best of anything but the majority of them are going to be Daiwa or Shimano and that's largely for a reason. They make their own reels and they aren't basically Doyo reels with another name slapped on it and their entire lineup is solid. I largely like the Tatula SV myself. I own a Patriarch too, unfortunately they do not make them anymore. It's like a Curado K with dual brakes and that's 2-3 ounces lighter - no idea if it will hold up as long though.

Last few times I got hung in a tree, it was an fairly expensive lure and one time it was a jig, not too expensive but given that jigs were sold out everywhere last summer, I'm getting it back. A couple of times I was out with the kids so my oldest son went over and retrieved it for me. One time he parked his kayak on the shore and had to walk along the shore to get it. In both cases due to the way the branches were, it was almost a two person job.

Good luck! I generally avoid ordering from overseas because most of the time when I do, I never receive what I paid for so at this point I move on.

While I don't have any Megabass jerkabaits, I do have a few Rapalas. For the most part I use the Berkley Cutters and Lucky Craft a lot more and have some pretty good success with them.

You're welcome. I looked up your two favorite lakes, one I couldn't find a lot on but I found that one of them had a lot of wood, so I grabbed a bunch of stuff that's produced around wood. The Dirty Jigs Go To color is basically what it says, if I could only have one color jig that's the one I'd have as it works anywhere and with that hook you can pull limbs of fallen trees. That spinnerbait is a willow bladed spinnerbait but don't let that fool you, it's a thin wire and they put off a ton of vibration - and tend to get hammered pretty well when they deflect of wood even in clear water.

Well it looks like mine is finally getting delivered tomorrow if there are no further delays.

Both rods are fairly similar. It should work well as a jerkbait rod, but there's a lot of different things you could do with each rod.

Yup, one time it showed my path into the deep water as going alongside railroad tracks. Funny thing is someone else with the same unit said he didn't have the same problem in the same lake, so I'm hoping WAAS/EGNOS will fix that. I'll be spending a good amount of time at that lake next year for sure, small lake, tons of structure and got my largest two fish there.

When I first learned to make my own fish fry, I would make my own beer batter. This recipe is fantastic and sometimes I experiment with my own seasoning and various forms of beer. My favorites have been mildly hoppy pale ales and Stone's Arrogant wretched ale. This comes out quite excellent. So fast forward a bit. I bought a few things of Louisiana fish fry mix to take camping. My fiancée saw that and when she was shopping at BJs she bought a 5lb jar of Zatarains seasoned fish fry mix (yellow label) and I gotta say that stuff is really good. It's world's ahead of the Louisiana fish fry mix. I've used it on cod, haddock, catfish, shrimp and scallops. One other fish fry recipe worth noting is with catfish. Take your catfish and a wing sauce of your liking - Melinda's Habanero wing sauce (white jar). Stick it in a freezer bag with the catfish for a couple of hours. Then throw the catfish in bread and fry. Absolutely delicious! As far as fish fry condiments, I will either use tartar sauce or a Louisiana style hot sauce with a little less vinegar and more peppers. Moore's Habanero hot sauce is absolutely perfect in this regards. A local store used to sell it, but they never restock their shelves but it's worth ordering online. Just the right amount of heat - that said I used to eat challenge food like it's going out of style.

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For whatever reason it keeps hiding my post.

A few years ago, I was seriously shopping for used bass boats. Life happened, my bass boat fund disappeared and I'm not getting any younger so I ended up getting kayaks for myself and the kids instead. What I did learn was that the first option should be to look at the newest and best maintained boat that you can afford. Just like buying a used car when you have a long commute to and from work, you don't want to get it on the water and get left stranded and have pricey repairs. As far as fiberglass vs aluminum, I decided that an aluminum boat would be better suited for my needs as I fish in a lot of smaller lakes, but if a suitable fiberglass boat popped up, that wouldn't be a deal breaker to me either. One catch with aluminum boats for me is that many of the older aluminum boats did not have a very good deck layout and the rod lockers would often not accommodate often even a 7' rod, and I found many more fiberglass boats for sale, which are often a bit more expensive. Being a couple of years later, you should have better luck finding something like a Ranger RT188 or Lund Renegade 1875 or even a Lund Pro-V Bass (basically my dream boat) used, which I personally consider to be boats with nice layouts and decent storage. The final thing I can mention is what I just touched upon which is the layout of the boat. You have to be happy with the boat's layout and storage and the rod locker absolutely must hold the proper lengths of rods that you use. For me, at least7'6" would be passable due to some longer rods that I own, but 8' would be ideal. There was a number of boats that were in great shape, the price was right, but the storage and/or layouts just did not work for me. I mean if you can't go stand on the deck, put down a couple of rods and find yourself comfortable, then what's the point. And I would probably avoid an Evinrude motor as well. Since they no longer make them, finding parts could be difficult. And I gather there was a whole slew of potential issues at the end as well. Hope something here was of use.

As an admitted Daiwa fanboy, I'm going to be biased and say the Tatula SV would be a good choice. While I have zero experience with the Curado DC, I can't really say much about it. What I can say that might be useful should you go with the Tatula SV, I don't think you will be disappointed in the SV's ability to cast and skip lures without a backlash. You would be better off with several Shimano reels or a Daiwa Tatula Elite if max casting distance is your goal though. One thing to note with the DC reels is people really seem to love them or hate them.

I prefer braid because it completely solves the occasional line twist issues. The line that I opt to go with is Sunline SX1 12#, which is as thick as most 15# braided line. It's been quite abrasion resistant for a lighter line. For a leader, if I am going to be fishing a ned rig for most of the day I will use Seaguar Blue Label 6# but I have a spool of Berkley Trilene FC XL 6lb that I use a lot in situations where I may not be throwing it a lot or where I am less serious, perhaps shore fishing and just trying to get anything for example. What braid does do is increase your hookset power. If you opt to go with a medium light rod, the reduced stretches keeps hooksets pretty effortless. Other than that, I agree with you completely. I don't know how many times I've lost my hook or sometimes my leader entirely when I've snagged a weed or a rock.

The Sienna 2000 will be fine for bass. Given that you are looking at medium and medium light rods to pair it with and are likely using it for smaller baits and lighter line, you should be fine to step down to the 1000 really. 7 pounds of drag should be more than enough.

This is the exact unit I have on my kayak. It's all around a solid unit, very user friendly, once you get it setup you don't have to adjust it too much lake to lake and pretty solid imaging. The downside that I experienced was sometimes the GPS is a little bit off in my location. I had the latest update at the time. I have since turned WAAS/EGNOS on, but haven't been to the lakes where I had the problem since so time will tell if that fixes it, but likely it will. Pretty solid price.

It should be a solid rod for frogs, heavier jigs, flipping and punching rigs.

I'm seeing a lot of people saying the 28th will work, so let's plan for 8pm EST on 12/28 for those who can make it. I'll setup the call later when I get use of my desktop computer.

Oh, so one step away then. I popped the question earlier this year, after a slew of mishaps, and it never happened. I didn't want to do it during the pandemic, and we probably won't get married until 2022 but I didn't want to wait any longer. Good luck with everything.

You too! Grats on getting married! Hard to plan a wedding in a pandemic though - I'm in the same boat.

Would the 28th work for anyone? That should be much calmer for me.... less to wrap, less shopping, less rush to find someone to fix my roof which just started leaking, etc. I always post the link here a few minutes before launch time. I'll send out an email reminder as well if you want to PM me your email

Nope. I was going to do something around tonight or tomorrow night, but I've been insanely busy.

I took my oldest son out to lunch, ate in the truck by the now frozen lake and when I came home, I received my fishmas box today. Thank you so much @jbsoonerfan there is definitely some great stuff in here, and as it stands pretty much everything I did not buy a lot of this year as well. The first thing I pulled out was the Berkley Cutter 90+ - I'm not sure if you read some of my posts, but I have a couple (in a blue, perch and silver I believe) and it's been my most productive jerkbait.

Their plain old tshirts are quite thick cotton - a little too hot for the summer. They're a little more solid than the Carhartts, which are far thicker than than most. They hold up well in the wash as well and don't shrink too badly. The only bad thing I can say is they seem to stain easier than most shirts for whatever reason. I know I have a few other things from them as well, but I can't remember what at the moment.