Mbirdsley

It really comes down to buy what you can afford. If i could afford to buy a tackle box full of mega bass you bet you butt i’d do it!!!! I do have a couple mega bass jerk baits and usually, i save those for situations like gin clear water when the bite is tough. These baits are worth the price that are asked for them. Your paying for the quality and getting fish to bite in tough conditions ( if you do your part ) due to not only better action but, also more consistent action from lure to lure and cast to cast and i’d say more realistic paint jobs. When you pull a vision 110 out you know how it’s going to act in the water. I’ve realized that i live in the strike king, 6th sense, LC, rapala, and spro ( splurging) price point. Not as good the very top tier but, it’s all very serviceable stuff with the exception of strike king you could fish those baits right out of the box. I also have smithwick, Norman (becoming one of my favs) bandits, lunker hunt etc etc which, is fine except, you are take the chance of pulling out a lure that won’t run right and all the hardware should be changed out. These lures will still catch a lot of fish though. There’s nothing wrong with fishing the lower end stuff or the top tier. However, you’re not going to be able to fish the lower end stuff like the higher end lures. As long as you take the time to learn how to use your lures. your good to go no matter the price point. Luckily the bait MFG are starting to up date the paint jobs on the lower end hard baits IE uncle Franks bait jobs on the rogue FX’s. I havnt bought any of the FX rogues yet. but, your not getting a better paint job on $7 jerk bait.

i’m kinda excited about these. First my jig making business has been outstanding this spring. I originally wasn’t going to make jigs to sell this spring due to my wife being pregnant with twins. but, due to very mild winter every ones been walleye fishing. i started getting texts mid february with people looking for jigs. anyhow the point of this post. here is pro-tech matte black and matte water melon. Along with the do-it gamakatsu ball head mold. i now can pretty much replicate the jig heads that great lakes finnesse are selling. These matte powder colors are going to do a number on the smallies up here in our ultra clear water. in this picture are matte coated poison tail jigs. ready for weed guard and skirts. here some of the walleye jigs in the 4th photo is blue flash. it’s a very cool color. every one should try that color. my photo does not do it justice. 5th photo is what i call Saginaw Special.

yeah, i’ve always used Lucas red n tacky on my boat trailers. The exception was last year as I had to buy whatever red axle grease ( i think it was wolfs head) the local part store had. As every one was out of lucas red N tacky. relatively speaking for as cheap as axle grease is a tube. it’s hard not to pay the extra 2-3 bucks and get the best. I tear down inspect, clean, and re-pack the hubs on my trailer ever year before the start of the season. Gives me something to do in the winter.

received my 2 packages river rock helgrapede’s. left color is texas tea w/copper and the right is chocolate mint. I’m impressed by the quality with these helgripedes. They are salt impregnated so they should sink but, i’ve not tested that yet. They are 3.5 inches long and come in a 8 pack. The trend right now in bass fishing is for smaller profile baits. if a smaller profile is what your after these could be simply cut in half; as both sides look the Identical IE no head or tail just 2 heads. Which, would than give you 16 1.5 inch helgripedes in a pack to fish with. As long as the smallies like them i will buy some more. originally, i was thinking more of using them on a small gamakatsu ball head that i pour or wacky rigged for river fishing. These would work very well on a split shot/ mojo rigged, light carolina rigged or a small t-rig fishing in a lake. i’ll probably use them on a mojo rig while, lake fishing.

my jigging rod is done. it came out really nice. it is a rainshadow rx6 722. can’t wait to get it out walleye fishing. so i used crb ssr high framed match guides. after using the fugi high framed guides on my mhx rod i can see why fuji guides are the gold standard. I intended this to be a lighter and cheaper build so the ssr guides arnt a big deal. the ssr’s work fine however, just the feel and more prep needed rather than the Fuji's makes a big difference. Any thing above a M/L i would definitely use the Fuji guides. UL, L, M/L i’d use the SSR’s.

went walleye fishing on the saginaw river today. River was high, fast and dirty after the rains we had last week. I tried vertical jigging at the confluence. current was ripping and i had trouble keeping a 1/2 oz jig vertical. so i decided to see if the smallies were in that same spot as last time as i brought some boot tails and jerk baits. i tied on a 1/4 oz gamakatsu ball head jig that i pour and threaded on a blue and black strike king boot tail. i’m shallow out of the current at this point in 3-5 ft of water. i toss my boot tail into a creek lagune that empties into the river. boot tail gets hit as im working it like a slow lift jig retrieve. 2nd cast boom get something on water is so dirty though that it got off at the boat and i never saw it. I keep moving up stream ( trolling motor at run 7 ) 12-15 minutes later i throw up into 3 foot of water and nail this nice 21 inch walleye. walleye of that size actually fight. that was a nice walleye. left the cooler at home so i let it go. 10 minutes later i caught this 14 inch smallie which, it put a good fight for its size. same boot tail swim bait. i moved down to the first turning basin in the shipping channel and nailed a 22 inch channel cat. it was very windy and called it a day around 5pm. im really getting the itch to switch over entirely to bass. However, i picked up my first bait store and i have sold a decent amount of walleye jigs. I might keep on the walleye untill april. we will see how it goes.

you sold me on the helgrapede. I bought a pack of texas tea and chocolate mint. both 3.5 inch. were still about 2 months away from fishing them in my local rivers but, i’ll have them. i see that they also make tubes. have you used the tube bait that they sell ?

i saw those at cabelas last time i was there. they looked decent. are they made out of elaztech type material? that would make the price better. probably help drift on small jig also

What’s your favorite soft plastic Hellgramite? i know Hellgramites are candy to river small mouth and are native to Michigan. the Neko Hellgramite looks pretty good but, seems expensive $7-$8 for four of them. how do they hold up. I think Yum, linker city, and others have hellgramites. I probably would fish them one of two ways. either with a small jig head or wacky rigged and than let drift down stream. so it seems like some decent action would be needed.

so i took the SJ 843 out vertical jigging for walleye today. it worked very well. i may be looking into building a MH 6’6 version for jigging the detroit river. after playing with it today i’d say it’s more of an extra fast rod than fast rod which, is fine for what what i want it for. caught all my walleye and a couple smallies on it. i did put U2 epoxy on the cork. which, in be been hesitant to put U2 on previous builds because , i thought it would change the cork feel. It dosent.

so it’s been unseasonably warm up here in mid-michigan. a lot of years we would still be ice fishing. i’ve been walleye fishing the saginaw river for the last month from my boat. How we fish for walleyes in the saginaw river is by using a 1/4-1/2 oz walleye jig either tipped with a live minnow ( always emerald shiners)or split tail like a fin-s or other brands. this is a vertical presentation where we keep the jig 6-8 inches off the bottom and than basically jig up and than let the jig slam off the river bottom. there were 100’s of boats on the river today walleye fishing. I should have brought some smithwicks. I did catch 2 walleye but, the talk of the river was all of the small mouth. Apparently the smallies were hungry. there were a couple 4-5 pounders caught. just sucks that where all the small mouth were caught that section of the river will shut down due due to the walleye spawn at 12:00 am march 15th. it will not open again untill the last saturday in april.

i use the bass pro shop offset round bend hooks. i pick up a 15-20 pack for $3.99 at cabelas. they are black nickle hooks and sharp. for the money they are the best hooks around. i probably should give EC another chance.

i’m kinda interested in the small lead wire he has on that front treble. could it just be solder or what would that kind of lead be called ?

in the water though especially dirty water pink worms look similar to the color of a real worm floating through the water. the same with the color pumpkin. i have killed it in the past with gulp crawlers and zoom swamp crawlers in pumpkin color. pink is a close enough color also also work. i’ve used both in clear and muddy water.

so i have one question. I do sharpen my own hooks. what about needle points like the KVD need points tg78-np-nb. so i’ve an actually stopped buying the needle points and started just using the regular BN version. if we sharpen a needle point when it needs to be sharpened wouldn’t we be wiping out the needle point ? turning it basically into a regular triple grip BN hook? i guess the same question for chemically sharpened hooks. i guess are we better just to swap these hooks out rather than sharpening them since we are paying a premium for needle points or chemically sharpened hooks i have had a round bend worm hook be dull out of the package and it did cost me fish.

it is very dangerous you can rack up $100 really fast.

this is probably the last jerk baits that i’ll purchase for the year. Bought these from my favorite ebay vendor. 2 sets of LC lighting pointers in zebra ms ghost minnow and chartreuse shad both DD. also won a set of chartreuse shad 95 pointers.

best thing about working nights and a rotating schedule is on my off days i get time work on projects. i have the handle completed on my jigging rod. to make this bass related. i think this will make a good small stream smallie rod also. something shorter i can take in my canoe. while, i float from spot to spot.

so here are the parts for my jigging rod build. top ssr match high gram spinning guide kit. right delt handle from lure parts. Fuji DPSSD reel seat size 17. for grip cork from piscari. ProWrap Fusion Variegated black and grey i guess thread wrap and 1 rubber winding check. Im kinda disappointed in that cork grip from lure parts. i’ve had it for a while looking for a shorter rod to build as it’s only a 7 inch grip. i start sanding it down to size and holes just start appearing every where on it. i was able to fill most of the holes with pro-paste and than re-sanded the grip. from now on im building my own handles from cork discs. oh, i’ll be using a fuji fazalight tip top in polished steel color. i bought the forgrip from piscari. which, is the same color from the sj843 build. i was going to use it on the last build untill i decided to use the vssm reel seat. so ill use it in this build. trying to keep things simple again with this build. so nothing too blingy. i’ll use the reel seat as a up locking one. i’ve been eyeing those ssr match guides for a while. i like the minimalist look. this should be a very nice looking a feeling walleye rod.

my sj843 is done. this is definitely my most complete build yet. i used fuji alconite Kl-H high frame guides. i really like the look of the high frames. the green on the cross wrap and on the guide wrap is actually the same color which, is pro wrap nylon cool mint. only difference is that i put color preserver on the cross wrap. the epoxy on the guides and the sticker is perfect which, i did in 3 thin coats instead of 1 heavy coat. preatty pumped about it and a actually excited to show people it. zero footballs any where. binging on the mud hole live videos really helped. my next build is going to be a vertical walleye jigging rod. for the blank im using a 6ft rainshadow medium 1/4-5/8 fast rx6. so far it feels very similar to my 7ft ml st. croix premier that i have been using to jig walleye with. i’m getting ready to put the seat and grips on tonight. for the ex build i am trying out the high SSR match guides from mudhole.

i run triple grips on every hard bait unless the hard bait already comes equipped with good hooks IE spro uses gama’s . in the last 5 years i’ve lost very little fish on the triple grips. since changing out my cranking rod. only thing i can think of if they are bombing a crank out there with a really whippy rod. when i was using a skeet reese crank rod i lost fish all the time to due the rod being so whippy and not getting a good hook set on long casts. my hard baits at the time still had triple grips. i like graphite cranking rods for small to medium cranks.

I need more cranks like a hole in the head but, for $2.99 with mustad triple grips i’ll buy them. everything from the right are from the local surplus store 2 cliff banger 70’s and a 60. top is disco shad middle greenie, and bottom day old guac. the right side is what i found at the St.johns walmart which, has a really good fishing section. I usually stop there after work at 6 am. walmart has had some good clearance sales. top #7 shad rap in black and silver middle zoom GP 4 inch tube. bottom rat-l-trap in black and silver which, was almost half off.

generally i like to throw tight wobbling cranks untill the water hits 60 degrees. between 60-68 it’s kinda touch and go either tight wobble or wider wobble will work depending on the mood of the fish. Under 50 degrees of water temp if i’m throwing crank it will be a shad rap. once the water temp hits above 50 i’ll start throwing the other tighter wobbling cranks.

makes perfect sense

these are my top 6 and what i will reach for and use 90 % of the time spro strike king KVD’s rapala usually. early season Norman lucky craft 6th sense i also own mega bass, berkley, and others. however, those 6 are what i gravitate to using and buying. the DD 22’s are slowly negating a reason to buy the deep diving mega bass. be got twins in the way and can’t be buying $20-$25 cranks.