roadwarrior

The Avid AVC66MF will cover all the applications you listed plus jerkbaits and medium weight crankbaits. St. Croix Medium Power is comparable to MH in some other brands. Although the action is rated fast, the tip is soft. I would not recommend this rod for soft plastics and jigs, but for your stated needs, this rod will be a workhorse! For me the AVC66MF is my dedicated jerkbait rod. I have it matched with a JDM Scorpion and #12 Yo-Zuri Hybrid. The length is perfect for working Pointers, X-Raps, Spooks and Sammy's. 8-)

If you are looking for something new, pick up a bag of the MegaStrike MegaBug: http://www.megastrikefishingproducts.com/shop/Mega-Bug./ (Green Pumpkin/Purple/Copper Flake) 8-)

You're a stand-up guy. Let's move on. Good night Irene. -Kent a.k.a. roadwarrior Global Moderator

Well, this might be a regional argument we're not proud to win, but while you're at Bristol, you need to visit a Southern Wal Mart. You ain't seen nothin' 'til you run into 58GGG/65/85 in 34" Spandex, tube top and stilettos.

I'm anxious to read your review. ;D ;D ;D p.s. Put your GLX up on our Flea Market. If the price is reasonable, they will sell quickly.

Well, she's a GREAT fish no matter what she weighs!

Hmm...Can't find a listing on the internet. You will have to try the Rage Tail line-up: Baby Craws, Craws and Lobsters. I think you will be surprised, all craws are not created equal! 8-)

Personal preference... I have both the Revo STX and Curado 200E7. I prefer Shimano. 8-)

Change your line "as needed".

Nice fish! I'm not sure your clothing ensemble matches well with the fishing gear and boat. Maybe it's just the colors or pattern... : ;D ;D ;D p.s. Are you fishing any of your Christmas presents?

You're going to like the MegaBug, it's versatile and VERY effective. A few observations: Weightless for flipping, shallow water or slow drop along walls T-rigged C-rigged, perhaps the best presentation http://www.megastrikefishingproducts.com/shop/Mega-Bug./ 8-)

New from MegaStrike: Here is a pic of the first Megastrike Fat Shad (THE Fat Bass Dit) It is only 4 inches long but replicates the most popular bait fish size. I wanted it to displace a lot of water so I made the body fat. Unlike streamline swimbaits , it has a fatter body section and a big thumper tail. It has a very unique body roll. I will have videos of it soon -attached to a 1/4 and 3/8 Pro Model Shak-E2 Head. It is designed to be slow rolled on the surface and crawled along the bottom. The other day I was flipping it into mats of grass when I could find a hole and gottum.Double click on the image to enlarge. Almost has a goby type profile http://lineart.redshad.com/MegaStrike/ ;D ;D ;D

Looking forward to throwing this guy in front of some Tennessee River smallies! 8-)

Congratulations! 8-)

I have two CTE200GT and a super tuned CTE100GT. One of the 200GT is ten years old and has been the only reel used on my dedicated striper rig. The reel has been serviced regularly, but has never required any parts replacement. The reel is smoother today than the day it was taken from the box! Rating: Dead solid 10. 8-)

Be patient and keep your eye on our Flea Market. You should be able to pick up an Avid for $100-$125. Here are a couple of specific suggestions: AVS68MXF, AVS 70MF or AVS70MHF. 8-)

Edited...Thanks. :-[

Bagley BII, Bomber Square A or Norman Fat Boy. All three have square bills and a wide wobble. Tak won the '04 Classic with the BII; I caught my PB with a Fat Boy. I think you'll like all three lures! 8-)

Copolymer: Yo-Zuri Hybrid #12 for baitcasting; #6 Hybrid Ultra Soft for spinning tackle Fluorocarbon: #12 Seaguar AbrazX for baitcasting; #8 InvizX for spinning tackle For your jig rod: Braid 50/12, no leader 8-)

You made some guys around here VERY HAPPY! Those sale prices were an absolute steal. Good for you...I hope you enjoy experimenting with the new gear. 8-)

Drag, lift or hop...you never know from day to day. 8-)

ALWAYS lower your rod tip while reeling down QUICKLY. Snap your wrists to raise your rod tip without moving the position of your hands relative to your body. When fishing a T-Rig, a delayed hook-set is NEVER the right choice! 8-)

GYCB Swim Senko 8-)

I did not mean to insult you, the people of New Orleans or Louisiana. Coastal erosion is a HUGE issue which no one in government has addressed. The solution, from a purely ecological standpoint, would be to restore the delta hydraulics. Economically, that would destroy the region. There is no simple solution. This is a op-ed from Bloomberg News: BP Spill's Gulf Threat May Fade as Farms Pollute, Wetlands Sink By Peter Coy Aug. 13 (Bloomberg) -- Visit the Gulf of Mexico today and you'd hardly recognize it as the scene of what President Barack Obama called “the worst environmental disaster America has ever faced.” It's as if scientists had conducted an insane experiment -- dumping about 4.9 million barrels of oil into the water -- and discovered its effect was in certain ways negligible. Some 21 years after the Exxon Valdez disaster, globs of oil can still be found in Alaska's Prince William Sound. Yet the Gulf may be scrubbing itself from the BP Plc spill: Sunshine is evaporating the oil, and bacteria are rapidly digesting it, Bloomberg Businessweek reports in its Aug. 16 edition. Less crude has infiltrated vulnerable wetlands than was predicted. Documented fish and bird kills have been small, and most Gulf beaches remain pristine. While concerns remain about the spill's long-term impact on coastal wetlands and deepwater creatures, the short-term trend is positive: On Aug. 10 the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced it was opening an additional 5,000 square miles of the Gulf to fishing, leaving 22 percent of federal waters still closed. Harlon Pearce, who runs a wholesale seafood business in Kenner, Louisiana, said that with more fish and shellfish passing rigorous smell tests and chemical assays, “I really feel good that we're going to be getting into large production this September, October, and November.” Morgan Stanley said on Aug. 3 that while the spill is a “significant shock to the regional economy,” there will be “essentially no impact” on U.S. economic input this year or next. Not Biggest Threat That the Gulf is recovering doesn't mean all is well because the disaster that transfixed the nation isn't the biggest threat to the Gulf's health. Environmental scientists point to more serious and persistent (albeit less telegenic) dangers, including the continued loss of wetlands, the impact of global climate change, and the supercharging of the Gulf with fertilizer that flows down the Mississippi River from Midwestern farms. “The spill is minor compared to those threats,” said Larry McKinney, director of the Harte Research Institute at the Corpus Christi campus of Texas A&M University. It's as if a gunshot victim recovered from a wound, then had to battle metastatic cancer. The patient has a fighting chance. Thanks to favorable winds and human intervention, little oil from the BP spill reached the estuaries where it can do serious damage. The light, sweet crude that stayed at sea is being disposed of rapidly by bacteria that have evolved to feed off the oil and methane that naturally seep from the seafloor. ‘Drainage Ditch' “In a year or two we can forget this ever happened,” said Roger Sassen, an adjunct professor of geology and geophysics at Texas A&M. “The fact that the Mississippi is the drainage ditch for the fertilizers and nasty agricultural chemicals of the entire central U.S. is much worse than this transient spill.” Even experts who are less sanguine see the oil spill as an added burden rather than a knockout blow. Jane Lubchenco, the marine ecologist who heads NOAA, said the Gulf's waters and coasts “have been undergoing a series of changes over the years that have progressively compromised the health of more and more of the system. Speaking to reporters by phone on Aug. 10 while traveling in the region, she said, “Each of these changes doesn't happen in isolation. This spill interacts with, and is on top of, the other changes in the Gulf.” Iowa Corn Farmer The Gulf's long-term nemeses can't be capped like a runaway oil well. Although slower-acting, they will have profound economic as well as environmental impacts, and responsibility for them can't be easily assigned. The Iowa corn farmer whose excessive use of fertilizer contributes to choking off oxygen in the Gulf is harder to blame than, say, Tony Hayward, BP's outgoing chief executive officer. The spill could do its worst damage by exacerbating existing threats. Harm to the bluefin tuna, prized both as a gamefish and as a culinary delicacy retailing for $100 a pound, is the premier example. It ranges the Atlantic Ocean but spawns just once a year -- precisely where and when the BP spill occurred. The floating beds of brown seaweed that shelter bluefin larvae and fingerlings soak up oil like a sponge. Ocean biologists worry that the spill might have wiped out most of the 2010 generation of Gulf bluefins. Overfishing Bluefins Ordinarily, the loss of a year's worth of fish might be tolerable. The problem: Severe overfishing in international waters of the Atlantic has already endangered the Gulf-spawning population of bluefins, down by 80 percent since 1970. U.S. fishermen landed a little less than 800 tons of bluefins in the West Atlantic in 2008, while other nations' fleets landed about 1,200 tons, according to the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas. The spill could push the bluefin population into outright collapse, said Robert L. Shipp, chairman of the Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council as well as the marine sciences department at the University of South Alabama in Mobile. The only other population of the species, which spawns in the Mediterranean Sea, is also threatened. The single biggest challenge to the Gulf's ecosystem may be the ongoing loss of wetlands, estimated at 25 to 30 square miles' worth per year. Estuaries and marshes provide shelter for commercially important crabs and shrimp. They also buffer humans from the impact of hurricanes and soak up the nitrogenous compounds from fertilizer and manure runoff that are borne down the Mississippi. Seasonal ‘Dead Zone' Nitrogen that the wetlands don't capture feeds algal blooms. Bacteria that feed on the algae use up oxygen in the depths of the Gulf, creating a seasonal “dead zone” that's hospitable only to jellyfish, bacteria, and some worms. This month the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium said the low- oxygen zone extended for 7,722 square miles, the fifth-biggest on record. What's unknown is whether oil from the spill will significantly accelerate the destruction of the wetlands. The wetlands are sinking because levees along the Mississippi's ship channel prevent silt from replenishing them. Pipeline channels have diced up the wetlands, further weakening them. When an area of wetlands finally sinks beneath the waves, it exposes an adjoining area to the waves' action, speeding up losses. “If the rate of loss accelerates to 35 or 40 square miles a year, it will give us less time to come up with a restoration plan,” McKinney said. Global Warming Global warming subtly worsens many of the Gulf's problems. Warmer Gulf waters are conducive to the spread of the voracious lionfish, a tropical Pacific fish with poisonous spokes that displaces native species, and the equally aggressive Chinese tallow tree, which has infested Gulf marshes. Plus, the shores of the Gulf lie so low that a sea level rise of just inches can inundate huge swaths of fertile coastline. Seas have risen 8 inches in the past century, NOAA says. The BP spill could give more of a toehold to invasive species by weakening native ones, McKinney said. Scientists studying the Gulf's health emphasize that all damage assessments are strictly preliminary, so the bad news might not be over. A female crab lays about 3 million eggs, and a handful grow up to be crabs. Many of the rest are eaten by fish and other crabs. So when oil droplets and chemical dispersant showed up in the larvae of blue crabs, it was a danger sign for the whole food chain. Judy Haner, marine program director for the Nature Conservancy in Mobile, Alabama, said damage to fish populations could take three to four years to manifest itself. Menhaden, Sardines Another stubborn unknown is the impact of the spill on small fish, such as menhaden, sardines, small jacks and anchovies, that are food for creatures higher up the chain. Anchovies and menhaden are filter feeders that swim with their mouths agape, catching tiny food particles in their gill filaments. The tiny oil droplets suspended in subsea clouds could kill the fishes' food source, the near-microscopic crustaceans called copepods. The droplets could also clog the fishes' gills. At the same time, oil-eating bacteria could exhaust oxygen supplies in deep waters. Next unknown: If fish in the plumes die, will others occupy their niche as the pollution clears and oxygen increases? Shipp, of the University of South Alabama, said he thinks the spill should continue to be regarded as Public Enemy No. 1 for the Gulf until such questions are answered. $500 Million From BP BP has agreed to set aside $500 million for environmental study in the Gulf, many times the normal level of spending. “If BP has put the money aside like they say and they don't renege on their promises and the government doesn't strip the money for other purposes -- and those are big ifs -- there should be money for studies of this spill,” said Edward Overton, an environmental chemist and professor emeritus at Louisiana State University. After that, the far greater challenge will be to apply the newfound knowledge to helping the resilient Gulf survive its many man-made wounds.

I fish the Live Magic Shad and Slug-Go on a #4 Gamakatsu Octopus Circle Hook, nose hooked. 8-)