Westcoast

I just picked up a pack of the new megabass curly tail worm/grub bait. Looks like it’s gonna be a great trailer.

I gotta second this. The slammers are my go to drop shot bait. The smallmouth here love them. Also the finesse craw makes a great small jig trailer. And they are made in Canada!! I gotta second this. The slammers are my go to drop shot bait. The smallmouth here love them. Also the finesse craw makes a great small jig trailer. And they are made in Canada!!

For fluoro leaders, I’ve found to really like the seaguar steelhead/trout leader material to be excellent. It’s semi stiff, abrasion resistant and fairl inexpensive. For mono leaders nothing has yet to beat maxima ultragreen for my use. The more different monos and copolys I’ve used the more I’ve found how good maxima really is.

The alpha ctsv 70 is my smaller crank and squarebill reel. It’s mounted on a kistler feel n reel 6’9” medium rod. The soft tip makes for excellent casting and fish holding abilities, yet has back bone to pull them away from cover. For the true tiny bfs cranks, I have the alphas air on a triza aello.

I like the net bait tiny paca chunks, zman trd craws, the reins 2.5” craw and the zoom creepy crawler double tails. Tons of great options out there depending on the action you want to create. One thing I’ve noticed is with the rage products, the lighter jigs don’t fall fast enough to activate the bait, so I only use them on larger jigs.

I tried it, as I was lured by the ‘less stretch’ claims. It’s diameters were large, it tended to have a bunch of memory and I really didn’t notice the lack of stretch. So for my copoly needs I’m back to maxima ultragreen. If it ain’t broke don’t fix it....

I prefer a spinning rod for drop shotting deep water with 10-15gram weights, the brigand is excellent for this. Also does well with dark sleepers and small under-spins in deep water. I like the way spinning rods feed slack to facilitate getting down deep faster vs a baitcaster.

I too use the nrx 803s for skipping 5” senkos into cover. In lighter cover with lighter line I’ll use a megabass brigand.

They sure have some out of whack power ratings. The 1 power dropshot is listed as way less powerful than the new 0 power. Same with the sj736 and sj725, the 6 is lighter powered in the ratings. Nice blanks and a great deal for $80 though.

Pretty much all the X-ray blanks have the “ squiggly” lines on them. It’s raw I sanded graphite so you get the marks and colour differences from the manufacturing process.

Pitching into cover it’s always the ragebug on. It’s definitely a confidence bait.

I second this recommendation. This rod really surprised me with how light and sensitive it is.

I built a rainshadow immortal 6’8” medium which I thought would be a Jerkbait rod but haven’t really liked it for that. But I found that it tosses and fishes a 5” senko very well. That blank has more of a mh action vs medium. My other choice would be the nfc X-ray mb736. But I find I skip better with the 6’8” though.

3/8oz definitely my top end and like you 1/4 plus trailer is the sweet spot. The 853 fishes definitely on the medium side of medium heavy. What I do like the 853c for mostly is throwing weightless flukes on 12lb. I have the glx852c and it is my finesse 1/8oz jig on 8 or 10lb rod.

I like the ease of the carbon handles. My favourite is the nfc one. It has a slightly softer grip and grippier feel to it. But looks very similar to the American Tackle one. I’ve used the cfx on a couple rods but to me it just has an unfinished look to it. So now I’m in the process of trying an epoxy coating on one to see how that feels. My go to real seats now days are the AT ccf seats with the razor being my preferred.

853 or 893 would be my choices up to 3/8th jigs. I use an 873 for 1/2 jigs. The 894 is supposed to be the be all of jig rods though, but I’ve yet to try it.

I started using the Gamakatsu B-10s hooks this year. I have found them to have an excellent bite to hookup and hookup to land ration. It’s sticky sharp, nice wide gap and thin wire so it goes in and stays there.

Really like your products but with shipping costs of $37.40us to Canada makes it not affordable anymore. Anyone know any custom jig makers in Canada?

I use Fuji kt 4 or 4.5 on pretty all my builds and don’t ever even have to think about the knot going through the guides.

I bet if you send an email to nfc they will be more than willing to help. I had a broken blank and a damaged tip in one order and they sent out replacements the next day.

Depending on the weight of the baits you’d be tossing on the spinning rod. I don’t think you can go wrong with an option from megabass or loomis. I use a megabass brigand for throwing my underspins, small jigs and heavy dropshots. An 852 loomis would fill this bill as well.Then I use a loomis dropshot blank only for really light dropshots and tiny finesse Swimbaits on 4# line.

I have a two klx, two reelnfeel , one helium and one zbone. I do like them and still feel at these sale prices are worth it. The helium 3 I have is very sensitive and is always used for bottom contact. The klx and fnr make great moving bait rods. The x Ray is very light and with its modified fast action makes it a very versatile rod.

The sj703 turned out to be a lot lighter in action than the specs suggested. Definitely not a high end weight range of 3/4oz, I’d say 3/8oz would be more appropriate. The two 736’s were exactly as the specs suggest. The sj736 making a really nice light bottom contact rod for up to 1/2oz jigs. Somewhat similar to the loomis nrx ccr733 in action.

Im mostly braid to leader on all my outfits. But I do have a few reels with fluoro that I use for moving baits. Most of my leaders are mono as I like the way it ties knots and has that bit of stretch and I don’t think my fish care if they can see it or not.

I’ll often use maxima ultra green as a leader material with braid. It gives that bit of shock absorption, has great abrasion resistance and the best knot strength.