Mbirdsley

In Michigan we can use any non game fish for bait including any suckers , pan fish, rock bass, and perch. I believe it has to be caught in the same body of water. One Thing is though is it counts against your daily limit. So after you put your blue gill on the hook and only now have 24 gills in your bucket the one on the hook is still counted in your possession. A person couldn’t catch another blue gill and throw it in the bucket because, now you would have 26 blue gill in your possession (25 in bucket +1 being used as bait). Some guys have gotten nailed this way by being one over bass and pike love a perch or blue gill under a bobber. minnows if bought at a bait shop can’t be dumped in any body of water they must be kept for later or killed

I’d agree with this. Generally speaking ( always exceptions) The slower the rod the the less stretchy you want the line to be IE using flouro, co polymer, or braid ( I don’t like braid for cranking but, some people do). on the opposite side the faster the rod the more stretchy you want the line to be to absorb the shock of the fish IE using mono. My okuma evx is a moderate action graphite crank rod and it seems to like flouro and mono equally.

Yes you can work them by just retrieving them. That is how I fish the jointed j-7 and regular size 7 rapala’s in the rivers. However, I believe certain jerk baits are better for this than others. Mainly the ones with a little bit rounder bill IE all of rapala’s, bomber long A, smith wick rogues. We troll for various species in the Great Lakes with the above mention lures. Bandits, rapala’s, and rapala husky jerks are the cold water trolling lure of choice when the water is 35-66 degrees of water pic is a river smallie I caught on straight retrieve

I love my evx for cranks

1 Berkley or bass pro ribbon tail worm t-rigged. Bass pro ones seem like they are a little more fragile. 2 Berkley general worm either sight fishing wacky style or t-rigged. Kinda fragile when t-rigged 3 Any other stick worm including senko, yum dingers, what ever strike king calls theirs. I do well t-rigging stick worms in the spring. Senko’s I’ll wacky rig too 4 zoom magnum pumpkin swamp crawler wacky rig or t-rig. (I have caught a lot of fish on these ) 5 4 inch yum dingers for mojo rig 6 zman Ted for ned rig plan on getting into shakey head fishing so the list will change by this time next year

Getting stir crazy so decided to do some ice fishing. First time I’ve fished on the Saginaw bay and solo boot. Went out of the east side. Started in 3 fow and Spuded out to 8 fow. There was 4-6 inches of ice and I probably ended up a 1-1.5 miles out. No fish and didn’t even mark any on the flasher. Nice day though. Ran tip ups and fished for perch. After the shanty left I was the only out. Didn’t die so that’s good. About 2-3 more months I could be possibly pulling bass from this area

I’ve been watching a lot of tactical bassin videos lately. Like a lot of tacticalbassin. Kinda forgot about spinner baits last year. So after watching some videos. I decided to pick up some finessier spinner baits and bolder white blades for the dirtier titabawassee river. Couple war eagles and screaming eagles ( on order not hear yet). Also, found this mega bass sv-3 in the color gill that looks kinda cool along with some Berkley general worms and a chatter bait. Basically last month worth of buying a little here and there

#5 shad rap all you need. I have some size 7’s 9’s, and a 10. However, in all honesty I’ve only used the #5’s. The 9’s and 10 can be thrown on a bait caster with some success

I just put 2 rubber bobber/bait stop on each side of the weight.

Tail down. I dunno it just looks better I guess. I usually use them as trailers

I like bandito bug. Them not so much

I never knew a reel stand was a thing but, I could see how it could stop your mid or higher end spinning reel from getting scratched when being laid down.

Upgrading and gettingmy cranking set ups done . First photo is the abu pro rocket 5500 cs 5:3:1 I picked up last month brand new for 90 bucks shipped off of Facebook. First photo on the right is my brand new diawa tatula 150p 5.5 ratio I picked up for $110 shipped from American fishing legacy via eBay. I’ll use the abu rocket on my soon to be built deep cranking rod and the tatula on my shallow to medium cranking rod 2nd picture is my new tatula 150p next to the 1st tatula sv tw 7:3:1 I bought 2 summers ago for heavy pitching and punching my rod and reel taste keep getting more and more expensive from just 4 summers ago. When I bought my first black max combo and my lighting rod combo with a accurist on it

That’s all I do is switch out the hooks. Your right. almost all of the lakes in the state now have 4 inches of ice on them. Might go out ice fishing this next week but, it’s not the same. Plan on going to the Grand Rapids fishing expo in march. Other than though it’s going to be a long almost 2.5-3 months

I was watching those vids a couple weeks ago. Couple years ago I was watching vids on you tube. Came across someone( can’t remember who) high up in the bass world was going as far as drilling into them and adding weight or subtracting weight. I’d think that would be a bit extreme

I was just following how the rest of guides were wrapped on my both rods. Everything I have read says you want to be 1/4 inch past the guide foot.

Apparently I forgot photos. Kinda useless with out photos

This is a bad attempt at a bad joke there is always upgrades that need to be made. Now that I’m building rods it will probably only accelerate. There’s always another jig mold to buy.

I swap out the stock hooks to the 1x short 1x strong kvd triple grip #6 hooks

Very true I could see as The guides get bent over time and are no longer as straight as they could be

I was including the bearing work too. Single axle trailer your going to be about $250

This is how I started at age 31 and caught a lot of fish out of my 14 ft tin boat. Family and student loans make it hard to justify a sparkly bass boat at the moment but, I’m working on it . Bonus is that you can get into places on lakes and rivers that the bigger boats can’t get into. I’d try to get 12-15 hp motor though. I did do some mild customizing the road runner. i picked up a 2nd hand 40hp stern mount minnkota trolling motor for 50 bucks, mounted verticals rod holders along the bench seats, and added a garmin striker 4. First and last pictures middle pictures is the boat I traded my tin can to my grandpa for. It was a bow riding ski boat. I turned into a bass boat. Took the seats out up front and added a deck and trolling motor. Last winter I tore the old carpet and old floor out and installed a new floor with tough coat. Cool thing is most of the older aluminum boats that size usually only have 40-60hp motors. When I fire that 2 stroke tower of power 90 hp up people turn their heads. That’s after the cloud disappears Haha. just kidding the 2 stroke fig is not that bad also it’s easier to learn how to maintain a smaller boat. Especially the simple pm stuff. You either have to re-pack or replace bearings every year, trailer lights always need maintaince, learn how to drain lower end oil every year, learn how to fire it up on muffs either for the season or to summarize it after the winter. If you had a dealer or mechanic do those simple things you would get hit with $500 bill or more per season. nothing wrong with taking a loan out for a boat just make sure it’s not going to put you in a bind financially. Right now I’m enjoying the benefits of no boat loan.

So starting off on my rod building journey I decided to first repair 3 guides on 2 separate poles. Glad I did this as it helped get rid of some of the unknowns for my self personally in rod building. Also replaced a tip top on one of my trolling rods. so first off is my okuma esx bait casting crank rod. Learned a good lesson in how to measure rod guides. I had to replace 2 of the bottom guides which I ordered online. Well, they were probably a size or two to big and a little taller than the original guides. Little nervous but, they came out pretty good. I actually like the bigger profile guides and they don’t look out of place. I’m actually thinking about stripping off a couple more guides and replacing them with the ones I bought. My wraps were ok. Even copied the silver metallic highlight thread on the bottom guide like the original had. I didn’t notice I had a couple gaps in the thread until the epoxy dried. However, the rods functional again 2nd rod I had to replace the bottom guide on my 7ft4 heavy bass-x rod. The wraps on this one was much better and it’s actually spinning in the rod dryer right now. Only issues was is I should have wrapped down further on the top foot. Only reason I didn't is that I put my loop to pull the tread through a little early and I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to pull it through. Still looks good not perfect but, again rod is functional again. getting ready to order my first kit. Trying to keep it fairly cheaper for my first rod. So far I’m leaning towards the R7020 Batson Rod Kit RX6 Bass Mag Cast 7'0'' 12-20 Lb. 1pc. which, is RainShadow RX6 MB844 rod. I want this to be a heavier jig/t-rig rod for weights 1/2-3/4oz wanted one of the crb colored rod kits from mud hole which are a little cheaper but, they only have them in mh mod/fast action or a heavy action rod. They have the blanks but, not in the kit. If prefer kit as the first rod

So starting off on my rod building journey I decided to first repair 3 guides on 2 separate poles. Glad I did this as it helped get rid of some of the unknowns for my self personally in rod building. Also replaced a tip top on one of my trolling rods. so first off is my okuma esx bait casting crank rod. Learned a good lesson in how to measure rod guides. I had to replace 2 of the bottom guides which I ordered online. Well, they were probably a size or two to big and a little taller than the original guides. Little nervous but, they came out pretty good. I actually like the bigger profile guides and they don’t look out of place. I’m actually thinking about stripping off a couple more guides and replacing them with the ones I bought. My wraps were ok. Even copied the silver metallic highlight thread on the bottom guide like the original had. I didn’t notice I had a couple gaps in the thread until the epoxy dried. However, the rods functional again 2nd rod I had to replace the bottom guide on my 7ft4 heavy bass-x rod. The wraps on this one was much better and it’s actually spinning in the rod dryer right now. Only issues was is I should have wrapped down further on the top foot. Only reason I didn't is that I put my loop to pull the tread through a little early and I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to pull it through. Still looks good not perfect but, again rod is functional again. getting ready to order my first kit. Trying to keep it fairly cheaper for my first rod. So far I’m leaning towards the R7020 Batson Rod Kit RX6 Bass Mag Cast 7'0'' 12-20 Lb. 1pc. which, is RainShadow RX6 MB844 rod. I want this to be a heavier jig/t-rig rod for weights 1/2-3/4oz wanted one of the crb colored rod kits from mud hole which are a little cheaper but, they only have them in mh mod/fast action or a heavy action rod. They have the blanks but, not in the kit. If prefer kit as the first rod

I mentioned this on a Facebook thread after I received my crb rod kit. Basically that alcohol burner just looks like an Improved Molotov cocktail. I’ve tried using it while repairing my rods and the thing just looks dangerous. first rod repair I used it but, ended up using a lighter. 2nd rod guide repair I didn’t use any heat to get air bubbles out. I think the big thing in getting rid of the air bubbles is making a tiny aluminum bowl out of aluminum foil and pour the epoxy in it after it is mixed up. Seems the aluminum absorbs some of the heat from the epoxy being mixed up and spreads the epoxy out which helps to get rid of the bubbles