Mbirdsley

So exciting news. Yesterday I went to a local fishing store and Clio and purchased a new bait caster. I had about a hundred bucks so I decided on a Accurist PT with 7 ball bearings with. 7ish gear ratio ( exact ratio and bearings escapes me because I’m at ). I will put it on my recently purchased Berkley lighting rod( the orange one). Spooled with 30 lbs of power pro braid. This will be my punching/heavy pitching/heavy T-Rig rod. i have a Accurist spinning reel pti? that I have used since 2012 which, so far it has been my favorite reel. Of the reels I checked out the this shop this one this Accurist bait caster seemed like the best bang for my dollar. I’m excited to try it Sunday. I’ll get a pic later

Do-it makes a jig mold called the Midwest finesse jig mold. Basically, just a knock off of the zman jig hook for trd. So as long as you are using the zman plastic the Midwest jig hook would act just like mushroom head jig from zman? I’ve been interested in the mold but, I wasn’t sure if it would act the same way as the original.

I would try a local fishing or sportsmen forums IE Michigan sportsman. I got my asking price within a day. Craig’s list is full of low ballers. That are just trying to flip stuff for profit rather than people looking for a decent deal on used equipment. I don’t mind negotiating but, if it is to low a offer I’d rather just keep it.

Okuma basically owns the market in the lower to medium end line counter/non line counter trolling reels. The convectors are where it is at in my opinion if you don’t want to mortagage the house for Gear. With that said, I wouldn’t go any cheaper than okuma. The Shakespeare reels suck everything is made of plastic Honestly for trolling rods they don’t have to be all that special. They don’t have to be sensitive. Any Okuma,diawa, whoppin stick, ugly sticks etc. We are still running grandpas Diawa sealine reels and rods from mid 80’s when he was chartering out of Frankfort on Lake Michigan. He had a couple st.croix I think he was running for high lines for mr. Steelie. They do not make parts for the sealines any more so as they fail on us they are getting replaced by convectors. dipsie rods will probably be longer and more stout than trolling rods. the lead core and copper rods will be longer than the trolling and dipsie rods. the trolling game is so much more advanced than what it once was. when grandpa was doing it there was no such things as lead core and copper which, has basically changed the game. When he was doing it you ran 2 dipsies and 5 down riggers with the lure 5-10 feet off the ball. Now you might run three down riggers with the lure 30-50 from the ball. running A high diver with a low diver the rest of the rod holders being used for lead core or copper attached to boards

I would like to get to this point. baitcaster abu Garcia black mac medium 6’6 for cranks 10 lbs mono ( allready have) Spinning MH fast action Berkley tactix rod with a Quintom Accurist reel.this my favorite rod and reel combo by far ( I know Berkley gets a bum rap sometimes but, I really like the rod and reel I’ve had it since 2012) 7’0 8 lbs spider wire stealth bread with 10lbs stern Fluor for leader. Eventually I want this for just a senko and or other finesse applications MH 7’0 foot fast action Berkley lighting shock rod going to buy a reel for this week. I want 30lbs braid on it. This will be my jig/ heavy Texas rigging rod/ punching rod. next I want top water rod I’m not sure what I want in that yet other than I a high gear ratio reel. Finally a jerkbait rod and I think I’d have everything covered for this summer. next summer I want a dedicated drop shot rig.

You only need maybe a 5 count of heat with the lighter to get it unstock. Take a pair of plyers and as you heating it up pull on the tip top carfully ( you don’t need a lot of force to do this).

I currently reside in the chesaning/brant area which, is in Saginaw county. Grew up in Owosso and fishing the shiawassee river. I am in Frankfort area all the time. In Frankfort my brother and I have a salmon boat. Second summer with my 14 ft mirror craft that was a wedding gift from Grandpa. I have been exploring a lot of lakes in the mid Michigan area as of late.

Easy fix your self. All you need is a new tip top, lighter, and either hot glue or actually rod building epoxy. Plenty of you tube videos.

Made it out today to fish Sanford lake which, if you don’t know is the last resivour on the tittabawassee river system before merging with shiawassee to form the saginaw. it was windy but, not horrible. Wish I could have fished for longer than 3 hrs. I’m not fond of launch on the south end in the park. The launch is very shallow. I don’t know how the bigger boats do it. Is there another launch anywhere on the lake? A massive cold front came through on Friday dropping temps from 90 to 60 degrees yesterday. Water was clear with a little tanic tint to it. I wish I could have held position in the main lake as I marked a lot of suspended fish in the 7-15ft range. But, it was tough trying to throw cranks in my 14 ft mirror craft. Finally found one of the creeks to settle into too. I missed 2 really nice ones on a tube. I’m pretty sure the 2nd one was a bowfin i thought I could see neon green by the anal fin. The bowfin May have been a Michigan master angler. I got the bowfin to about 5 feet from the boat and he came off. That is what I get for Texas rigging a tube instead of using a jig. Finally got a nice smallie on my new 1oz spoon. That smallie crushed that 3 inch spoon.

Worms. Doesn’t matter if it’s senkos or the curly tail variety. In 2012 when I got back into fishing and I started fishing the river again in town. I killed them on a weightless Texas riged Gulp crawler by just twitching the rod reel fast and realing in slack. Caught tons of big smallies. We had drought conditions most the summer and the river was the lowest it’s ever been. Since that time period I have barley had zero hits on a worm.

I was thinking about that the other day. A person could clamp the split shot right on the hook just below the eye. Boom red neck weighted wacky rig. Just like the expensive ones.

I’m pretty sure this resivour i will be fishing tommrow will be chocolate milk or atleast very stained. I felt this would be appropriate. Bought it at cabelas in Saginaw

This is why I chose big game for the trolling rods. I have a very small boat so any little advantage to get me deeper I was going to take it no matter how small the advantage was. Big game was just a buck or two cheaper for 1500 yard spool. The big game 10lbs test line was .010 in dia and xt 10lbs I think was either .012 or .013 in dia

If it is of any consequence to you. XT is very popular on the great lakes trolling for walleye, trout, and salmon in Michigan. For that application it excels very well. I had xt spooled on my pike spinning rod and also have it spooled up on my old river bottom junker fishing rods ( for suckers and catfish). I have always been a very big fan of XL. Any spinning rig I have set up for mono I will use xl as the main line as it is very easy to work with, cast very well, and is fairly tough stuff. If I wouldn't have bought 1500 yards of big game for 8 dollars to spool my okuma trolling rods. I would have put that instead of the big game on my crankbait and spoon bait caster. So far I haven't had any memory issues with the big game and I am happy with it.

how far do you go? to the point of taking the gears and everything else out? This last time the rod and reel went right to the bottom luckily the sand only got to the handle/drag area. I ran all of that under the faucet than like I said re oiled the bearing and re greased the gears. All of the grittiness went away after that.

I guess, If you are going to take the side plates of you might as we’ll throw some grease in the gears. You are that far already. I noticed after taking my accurist apart this year that the bearings were starting to rust.

How do you flush your reels? Do you take anything apart or just run the whole thing in the faucet?

I guess this is Probally more aimed at the river guys who wade for bass. How anal are you guys in stripping your reel down greasing and oiling it. I took my bait caster on the river last Thursday and when I parked the canoe. the spot I chose to get out of was a 4 foot hole on the bank. Rod went to bottom of river. I found it luckily however, it did have sand in the reel. got it home tore it down and re grease everything. I only took the side plate off. I didn’t remove any gears except the bearings that are on the handle. It took me about 6 times of taking my black max apart and than back together to get it right I usually make it a point every spring take to take the spool and all of the side plates off of my spinning gear to get oil and grease in the gears and bearings. Is this sufficient or if they get submerged I need to take apart and re-grease everything?

Two months ago I bought my first bait caster and it was a black maxx combo from Walmart for 69.99. For casting cranks and spoons it is in my mind the best bang for your buck. my combo came with a 6'6ft medium weight what I think is a medium action rod. it was worked very well for me and so far no complaints.

I just did this today. I sold two of my spin casting setups and two cheaper baitcasting reels that I have picked up over the years. basically they have been collecting dust since I received my boat last year. The one was used for river fishing that I haven't really done in a year and the other spinning rod was kind of redundant set up. I want a new bait casting set up. I could have afforded it with out selling the stuff but, I just cleaned out the garage and didn't want more stuff sitting around. I could have saved them for when my buddies come but, I'm kind of getting tired of supply the ride, boat, rod, and tackle. If they want to fish they need to start supplying there own stuff. mostly they just don't want to spend they money on it or their wifes wont let them. It gets old so now I have an excuse I sold my extra stuff and your not touching the bait casters.

To day I sold some excess equipment to fund another bait caster set up. After meeting up with the guy I headed to Millington , MI to drop my wife and daughter off at the inlaws house. I headed to lake that I had never fished before called Murphy lake which, is about 10 minutes east of Millington. I finally put the boat in the water at about 1pm. The boat launch was interesting to say the least, just a gravel drop off the side of the road. My hopes were not that high as it was already 88 degrees at 1 pm and clear blue sky. However, I was able to pound out 6 fat large mouth from 14-17 inches plus a bonus northern. The large mouth all came on a Zman crawdad-Z greenpumkin with orange claws texas rigged with I think a 1/4 oz weight. These were also the first fish that I have caught while Texas-rigging plastic with a weight. Cool thing with crawdadz is I was able to use the same craw all day ( I did have to flip it over once as it was sliding down th shank way to easy after while). Basically, I was either casting to shore, casting to shore with some sort of shade or drop offs. Most of the time they were hitting it on the drop or after the first two drags across the bottom. Some of the drop offs may have only went from 2ft- 5 ft but, it must been enough of a change in depth for them. 2 of the 6 came from well protected coves with weeds. The northern came on a black and purple bomber crankbait. I think the bass are done spawning as I didn't see any beds. The water temp on the surface was 80 degrees. I definitely gained some confidence in t-rigged plastics to day. For casting the crank I used my recently purchased abu Garcia black maxx medium bait caster combo ( for the money I like this set up for chucking spoons or cranks) with 10 lbs berkly big game. For throwing the Texas-rig I was using my old reliable spinning rod a MH Berkley tactic 7ft rod with Quantom accurist spinning reel. For line I was using 8lbs spider wire stealth-braid with a stren 10lbs fluoro leader. I think for a dedicated texes rig bait caster rod I am going to buy a Berkley lighting rod. They seem pretty powerful and sensitive for 50 bucks. I don't know what kind of bait casting reel I am going to put on it though. I want something with a 7ish gear ratio and a budget around 100ish bucks.

For tubes I actually do not prefer a strong hook. Usually if I am using a tube I am fishing medium sized rivers with a lot of snags m. Lighter hooks will bend out on snags and I just use the plyers to bend them back. The last tube jigs I bought from cabelas in Saginaw. They were cabelas brand and it was like 25 of them for 5 bucks or somthing. I bought 90 degree 1/8 and 1/4 oz. only issue with 1/8 was it was a smaller hook than I usually like. I prefer tube hooks to be 1/0-2/0

I’m sitting here replacing a bent hook on my jitterbug. While using the sizing chart I have printed up to match up the right size hook. On the chart it has treble hook sizes and right below That it has round bend treble hooks. What is the difference between the two? I mean just from looking at the diagram obviously the round bend has a larger radius at the bend than regular treble hooks. Is the larger radius the only difference? Is there one situation where you would use one and not the other?

For my inline spinners I use nothing but, eagle claws. Never had a problem as far as bass and trout are concerned (plus made in America). I like eagle claw trebles, the worm hooks are another story. The worm hooks are the only hook I’ve ever used that rusts after one time ( not talking Trokar ) I use size 4 trebles with # 4 blades and #6 trebles with #2 blades. I have landed big pike and bass with no problems on #4’s. I also pinch the barb down on them.

Here is my latest purchase a 1oz spoon in sunfish. It is a small run of spoons from one of the oldest tackle makers in the country. When this spoon runs out. They will introduce another one. They are only making a couple hundred of each spoon. Even sent a sticker. For give me in this seems advertisement. I don’t have a pic withbout the sticker. I’m hoping mr. Northern or Ms. bass likes it. Obviously you like that fluoro. The shop not to far from me carries it. I’m looking at getting a jig rod shortly. Any negatives to it you don’t like?