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Toxic Baits Wade Froglet. 1.6 ozs rigged with a 6/0 1/4 oz Beast Hook.

Slide type and spring retained against a standard brake drum No flying arms.

LOL. PM me when you get it and I'll give you some pointers and easy prep details.

Wednesday was like a cold hurricane all day long. Temps dropped to 34 over night. Stayed in because the wind gusts were impossible to deal with. Real feel temps were 34 last night when I got there, and the all day long winds died nearly completely. The swarms of gnats went where ever gnats go during a cold snap which meant there were no bats flying around eating them. Not a single bait fish popped on the surface to eat them either. Dead as a doornail. A single crappie on a small wake saved me from the walk of shame. Saturday night should be a banger here though. Two days of stable temps, cloudy, S winds, and rain coming in late. Perfect. My brother was able to switch days, so we'll get out on the boat. This spring has only allowed that once so far. Stoked.

Yup. Pay the 15 bux and they get it right out. Past two shipments have gone that way for me.

Then you might be missing out. Personally I'd put the actual fishing performance of the 2020 Tournament Pro LFS above any reel at the retail price point, and I have them all. It's a special reel. Super versatile over a wide range of bait weights, and it's still smooth after a season and a bunch of good fish.

The Q2 doesn't have the P2 pinion according to the posted schematic. Otherwise casting performance should be very close.

Hookups are fine with an Owner Beast 6/0 i/4 oz weighted hook. Model # 5130W-046

Do you prefer a reel with an anti reverse switch?

It's basically a Tournament MP. I've fished with it recently. The Tournament Pro LFS is a superior reel with a superior braking system and can be easily found for nearly the same price if you look around. Even if you pay a few more $ it's very much worth it. Check out the place that outfits sportsmen.

A pristine Chronarch 200E7 and a Chronarch CI4+. Dude bought the 200E7 NOS at the same time he bought the CI4+ brand new at a local Tackle shop. Got frustrated quickly trying to reel righty and sold them both to me for $50 each. Bingo! New JDM Daiwa Catalina. $159 with applied discounts for a $359 reel. Nice. I put a 7'MF Tatula XT spinning rod in my Amazon cart then never clicked buy, so there it sat for months. One day I logged on and saw a message saying that the price had decreased to $37. Free shipping with prime. Click! Sweet.

Perhaps that's true in some places, or many places, but not everywhere. Most lakes and ponds closest to me are very similar. They're weed choked and they're all tree or brush lined with a beaten path outside of the foliage, and no floating devices allowed. There're periodic cuts down to the water that are the only option for shore anglers to cast from. Apart from the bluegill spawn when they're driven to make a bed anywhere, the water near those cuts is devoid of baitfish during daylight hours. Call it fishing pressure, or fishing presence, but the bait is gone during the day and so are the bass it would seem. Maybe it's a billion baits hitting the water. Maybe it's the endless footfalls. Maybe it's the shadows anglers cast, but It's unusual for anyone daytime fishing from these cuts to catch a bass. I have a good vantage point from the unpressured spots I wade and catch from. The stuck-on-the-shore guys get relentlessly skunked during the day. I talk to most of them when I'm circling. They get their butts kicked brutally, including the more sophisticated ones that I've fished with elsewhere and who've had good success otherwise. Here's the big BUT. But at night, when I fish more than any other time, those very same cuts are loaded with bait. We've caught a ton of bass when fishing from those very same well hammered shoreline cuts. I can't tell you how many times we were striking out at our prime hard to reach wading zones only to go to the shore cuts to throw a Hail Mary at the end of the night and struck gold. Numbers and size. This doesn't always happen, but it happens a lot. It's possible that a more complete assessment or better descriptor exists for what I've observed here, but for my purposes I'll call it pressure.

Oh no. Don't tell me. Creamed raccoon?

I doubt the #1 Touch-Lok weighs much more than a split ring. It's light. Its rated to 68lbs.

I'm using VMC Touch Lok snaps for just about everything except light fluoro leader baits, Wacky or Neko rigs, Bitsy Bugs, and drop shots. Even big single hook Beast Hook baits get clipped. Frogs too. I've never broken one jacking a fish or tearing a bait from a snag. However, they do have a cycle life. Metal fatigue will set in eventually, especially if you've bent them out a number of times in order get them clipped onto certain smaller billed baits. I try to avoid doing that, but after I have a few times they get retired. Obviously they save line, but they're a huge time saver too. Also I haven't dropped my spectacles into the drink once while wading since I started using them. I need my readers for tying a knot at night, or in low light, but not for these. They're worth their weight in gold, IMO.

Lily pad fields that were well defined by this time last year are barely showing themselves, if at all. Very few weeds are up except in areas with good flow. The cold snaps have put us way behind. I have zero catches on topwater up to this point. Last year they were "the thing" starting in early March. Tonight we're getting 35* and 20mph NW winds with 25mph gusts which will definitely shock the shallow spawning flats and send them back out again with a case of lockjaw. Bass fishing closes for the spawn here beginning on May 1st. Hoping for one last rally once over night temps stabilize.

Sun tea and raccoon sandwiches. Those were the days...

....full on apocalypse with Zombies....

Are you pointing your rod directly at the fish?

In my slow witted Brooklynese Italiano/Shanty Irish imagination just about anything might end up in a hillbilly casserole. I stand corrected. Grazie!

It's rare when I come across anything furry and larger than a muskrat around here, so this cute guy was a surprise. It was a cool one-with-nature moment for me, so please refrain from commenting about how tasty they are roasted with hot sauce and cilantro. Thank you.

They're still here, but not like it was. The days of blindly catching 15-20 bass in a morning is over unless you're fishing an east end residents-only lake. The residents are sharp, and bad times ahead if a constable catches you. Court date. Fines. You've gotta put in the work everywhere else. Some of the poachers who sell to certain NYC restaurants sneak in at night to our C&R lakes and tie livelines to trees. Sneaky IceWholes! They take everything that bites their hook. Could be a 2" bluegill or a 6 pound bass. No mercy. I cut and pull in their rigs all the time in Nassau. Oh, that's such a shame. We'll miss you?

I think it's hard to know what someone else's opinion about a reel or rod actually adds up to. My brother eats black olives from a jar. I get queasy just looking at them. You could choose to believe either him or me, but you'll never know until you try them for yourself. Then there're over the top proclamations. For instance, I've read here on these pages that the new Metanium blows the Chronarch MGL away. Does it, or is that statement hyperbolic? Is it actually true, or is it only true to the person who wrote it? What about polar opposite opinions stated as fact about a particular reel's performance? That has happened too. It's also obvious that one negative experience with a maker's product can color the opinion of some people for eternity. Lew's makes multiple platforms that are quite different in use, but the guy that had a bad time with a $59 plastic Lew's reel may be convinced they're all trash, and say so over and over again. It's not valid pegging Lew's or any other maker's reels like that, but it happens often enough. Some makers have a few cherries in their lineups, but they're not cherries to everyone. In theory, a person that has the means to buy a ton of reels across maker's lines, and then fish them all extensively, might be the person to listen to more closely. But that's not really true either. I've trained lots of people over the years. They're all different, even with the same body type. The "why" behind one 6' 175 pound man's straight punch being more powerful than another man's with a comparable build comes down to several innate factors. The point is that people have quite different casting mechanics which will influence their preference in both reels and rods. If you purchase a product and use it long enough to form a solid opinion, it's just that, your opinion. Some will agree loudly, and others may disagree. One man's upgrade is another's downgrade. It keeps the classified section humming though.