PhishLI

Had to miss the better part of the past two weeks and was surprised to find weeds topping out this early which is unusual for early May, but great! Lord, give me salad. Found some nice bites before the rain came in and spotted my first bullfrog.

Right, but you've been fishing Daiwas for quite some time and are well calibrated to them. The OP needs to do the same, walk before he runs, and even more so with braid mainline. I spend plenty of my time ripping max power casts using braid for max distance due to how I'm forced to fish most of the time, but I figured out the subtle nuances to avoid problems and calibrated my stroke accordingly. Whether you figured it out consciously or not, it's slightly different than ripping casts with friction braked reels. Those minor adjustments throughout the entire casting cycle make all the difference with straight braid. When using plastic mainline, I can set my brakes on the redline where it'll fluff and recover on bomb casts, but you can't do that with braid as you know. Throw up one loop early in the cast and it'll lock the spool which might even shear the knot on 50lb braid.

99% of the time, drag slippage is just your braid slipping on the spool. You're addressing the wrong problem. You need to develop a feel for these faster spool Daiwas. You'll get better distance with less effort and less problems when you do. Your snap offs are coming right after the beginning of the cast during the ascent, yes? Basically, an insta-lash that snaps off the lure. Just an opinion, but a short-ish XF rod and whipping casts isn't what that reel likes, especially at the lower dial settings you're using. If distance is your priority with this reel, slow down your stroke and let the rod load and release. You might be surprised with the results. Or, step up to a true fast MH at 7'3' or better yet 7'6" for the baits you've mentioned. Take the snap out of your cast and use the length of the longer rod for a power sweep cast and it'll send your baits flying without things getting wonky. If you continue to cast it like it's a spinning setup you'll continue to have these issues, especially with the tip of an XF. If circumstances are such that you have to keep what you're using, try something like 15lb mono instead. It'll often fluff and recover instead of locking up the spool like braid does.

Misc stuff.

Yep. Try Amazon:

I used the Owner Bullet head until I found this Decoy below which quite similar but specifically different in that the hook's point points slightly downward. This increases weedlessness without affecting hookups. Decoy VJ-36 Decibo Darter Offset Jig Head | Tackle Warehouse

Try odorless mineral spirits on a cloth rag to see if it wipes off.

I don't necessarily disagree, but there are certain realities I have to deal with like heavy weeds. I trust 15lb here but not any less than that. Leaving a fish with a bait stuck in its face disturbs me. Aside from that, I'm really fishing the upper end, or BFS+.

Did you load the entire spool with braid? I reckon you could get about 300' of 15lb PP on that spool, which isn't really practical as you'll rarely throw anything other than a transfer weighted hard bait much farther than 100'-110' on a standard issue shorter BFS rod. BFS plastics, quite a bit less. With that, I opted for 110' of 15lb PP SS braid mainline to 6' fluoro leader. Got a few hard charging pickeral so far, and with no dig in. I got the SLX BFS specifically because I wanted to use straight fluoro, but found it troublesome at the time, so I switched over to braid and I'm much happier. However, the air temps were much colder then, so that might have made the fluoro not as well behaved as it might be. I'll try it again once the nighttime temps stop dipping below 60.

Algae blooms and the effect they have on water bodies is a strange thing. There are two lakes we like to hit that are less than a ½ mile apart from one another with each draining directly into a salt bay via dams. One month ago, the western lake we fished already had pads popping up everywhere along with flourishes of almost fluorescent green bushy weeds emerging in the middle. However, the eastern sister lake which is nearly its carbon copy with regard to depth and shape is murky, practically pad less, and seems to have no new weed growth. Only filamentous algae laced zombie weeds still standing from last year were found. In past years, and at this point in the season, this place was nearly topped out with a carpet of weeds from shore to shore and had sporadic but dense pad fields. Both lakes have a good flow from inlet to outlet, so it's odd how one has been affected and the other hasn't. Kettle lakes usually don't fare well against an algae bloom, but dammed mill ponds seem to overcome them because they have flow, but not this one. Still, they were bitey until un forecasted rain and a chilling wind drove us out after two hours. My brother caught a huge pickerel that nearly swallowed his Tiny Tum. Just a nightmare to unhook it, but no blood, so it darted away with vigor. He shook off one buck bass at the boat, so his skunk was off. I got a buck pitching into zombie cat tails with a Zman ProcrawZ, then a nice chunk swimming a Berkley Grass Pig out in the middle in a patch of zombie weeds. Not bad for one of the few spots we can back right up to and dump the boat in and leave just as easily. Too bad we had to stop on a good bite, but it was miserable getting soaked and spun all over the place by wind. A win is a win.

Not if you use these Cut proof. I've dragged in sunken logs with 30lb braid wrapped around my hand.

I'd rather scrub a gas station toilet bowl with a toothbrush than fish under a full moon, however, the forecast called for clouds by 10 pm, so! A "real feel" of 28* was unappealing, but I wanted to try out a black 6th Sense square bill before the clouds came in. I just had a feeling. It actually worked. Nabbed a scrappy 16"er, but that's when I found out I took the wrong shoulder bag which did not contain my fish grippers, scale with grippers, and my needle nose pliers. Even worse, my safety glasses were left home too in the wrong bag. Getting impaled last year by crank bait trebles with a bass flailing on the other end of it is still all too fresh in my mind, so thankfully I did have my forceps. They're pretty sucky, so it took way too long to free the fish, but I spent some time making sure he was on his way in good shape. That was the first and last treble bait I was willing to throw. Lost a Hazedong shad immediately afterward to a Pickeral. Didn't even get a chance to put tension on the line. It just cut right through, but that was straight 15lb braid. Clipped on a Miyagi Swimmer to 50lb braid and it got crushed on the second cast. Pure horsepower, so I was thinking new PB bass. Dark clouds had blocked out the moon by that point, so I didn't see that it was a monster Pickeral until I reached down to lip it. Had no choice but to swing it up on the bank in order to hold it down to unhook it. No way I was getting cut to the bone by this thrashing freak. My wading boot measures 13", so that sucka was 27"-28". I've already lost a ton of baits to these gators this year, so I've really had my fill of them, but the fight is off the charts when they're this big and while the water is still quite cool.

Info sharing caught on camera. Must be OK with BASS. Scroll to 1:14:20 if it doesn't auto-start there.

Same general idea as Fuze*It. Glue that's waterproof and compliant instead of brittle like CA glue(s), even gel types.

Yup. Father time is undefeated. That said, he does have 2 AOY titles, and he tied for 2nd With Palaniuk in the last Fork event that Lee Livesay won. Run through the stats of the Elite field and you'll find out how few of them have even sniffed a 2nd place finish. It's hard to win and easy to bomb. Fujita just placed dead last at St. Johns. After the end of last year's season and after winning this year's 1st event that would seem to have been impossible, but it happened. Florida ended his shot at AOY which is something he was gunning for. Just holding your spot on the Elites is tough.

This is a much better idea: Liquid Nails Fuze*It - All Purpose Adhesive Clean both surfaces with alcohol first. Have patience and give it a few days to cure and the bond will be awesome and remains flexible. Use mineral spirits for cleanup.

So, you have no idea what you're talking about other than some vague notion of something from 20 years ago. I rest my case on that matter. I have a Tat 80. It's nice but it's a niche reel. Forced to choose one over the other for general purpose bass fishing I'd take the S3 over it without a second thought. BTW, My Curado K has been mothballed since I got the S3 four years ago. Anything else?

I only talk about things I own and have fished. How about you? You'd be in the minority on the board if you own this reel and haven't found it to be an overachiever. They got it right with this one.

Personally, I prefer it over anything in the SLX line, the Fuego/Tat CT, and definitely any Curado variant with the exception of the 150 MGL, but I'd still take the S3 over that reel. I'm talking about casting performance and ease of dialing in and consistency. It's on par with the Tat 150 in some ways performance wise, but that reel is a standout in the Tatula line, IMO. If you have the latest BB1 Pro, you could think of them both as similar in performance with the S3 being smaller and having superior ergos and better with lighter baits. The Zillion is at a much higher price point, so comparisons are pretty pointless.

Think again. This reel is superior to most reels at the $200 price point.

It's worth it at full price. Fantastic reel, and a steal at 50 off. Yup.

Hit a local spot super early for a change of pace. High winds and cold overnights have really chilled the shallows since last I was out, so it was no surprise that Pickeral were still on a rampage. Thought I hooked into a lunker bass when a big one nailed my fluke and fought like crazy. Its head was the size of my fist, and somehow its razor teeth didn't slice through my braid. Just after daybreak and just before I had to go, I landed a nice chunk, so I was able to go to work with a bounce in my step.

DEC officers here are all active NY state troopers who transferred into the position. Troopers here are notoriously unmerciful if you get pulled over on the road. These DEC officers are all pretty cool and have been willing to share their personal cell #s in service of catching bad guys. Too bad they're spread so thin with saltwater being the priority around here. Drop a dime on some poachers and they might show up in an hour or two or not at all.

Like I said, it's a small group making these noises across platforms which has nothing to do with the tens of millions of people with freshwater fishing licenses who simply buy what they buy for whatever reason. Brand familiarity, nostalgia, etc. Less than a microscopic proportion of those would even know when the launch date of the plastic Chronarch occurred. The rest of them could care less, so "long in the tooth" or "dated" is just a goofy metric. Perhaps not for the gear enthusiast, but remarkably few fishermen are gear enthusiasts, even if they buy a lot of gear.

Are you basing this idea on fishing forums? If so, I wouldn't go by that. I've yet to come across a fisherman face to face in the wild who engages on forums. They tend go on FB pages if anything, and even that's rare. Other than a few handfuls of enthusiasts who cross post on several different boards like BR, TT, and others, there isn't really a consensus on anything. Say JDM to most people in the real world and their eyes glaze over. In one ear and out the other. Assume that if they're still making it, it sells, and that's all that really matters in the end. I have no particular love for my Chronarch because of its ergos, but it's a dang cool looking reel which is probably enough for most people inclined to buy one. I was disappointed when I first took mine apart. Coarse threads into plastic. Uhg. Same with the Curado K. I have Banax builds with machine-screw threaded inserts molded into the plastic.