PhishLI

The rest of the world isn't a Cali mountain lake, Tom. We have weeds out in the boonies, and when a bass plows into them with a big treble swimbait I want all the horsepower I can get to pull it out. Those trebles often snag a mop of grass which increases the load. A little headroom doesn't hurt in this quite common scenario. I know for a fact that I would've lost fish and my bait with .015 diameter anything in the past.

Yes. I did already on the previous page.

These aren't slack line presentations with single hooks. Other than glides where there are moments of slack, you mostly remain connected to the bait, yes? Many of my friends are also dedicated yak swim-baiters and have zero issues hooksetting treble baits with 7' 1/2" to 8' rods on the end of an average cast. Neither do I.

Line diameter is meaningless on a 200k where him, me, or you are casting from a seated position in a kayak. If he's 6'4', athletic with an 80" wingspan, perhaps he'll chuck the baits he's listed 120' max. Probably a bit less on average. More like 90'-100'.

Yes. Maybe drop in a 6 spd gear set. Easy.

Just go with 20lb Big Game or 20lb in this : Izorline XXX Super Co-Polymer Clear 300yd spool - Tackle Warehouse

Now there's a cool memory! Friends, laughs, and photographs. Very nice! I can usually suck it up on cold days, especially when I have "that" feeling, but some winter days up here are just a bridge too far. Just let my pooch out for her morning squirt. She made it out about 5 feet from the door when an arctic blast stopped her cold in her tracks. She did a cartoonish four-paw-skid then nearly hyperextended my knee barreling back through the partially opened sliders. Just checked the forecast. I was gonna...I really was... but NFW! In the meantime, I'll have to live vicariously through your vidya. Thankee!

Will you be casting and retrieving from a seated position? If so, you may find the 21"-23" handles found on many typical swimbait rods unwieldy. I went with an iRod Genesis III Jr Swimbait for my yak because of its conventional length handle. It's perfect for the treble baits you've mentioned, and you can chuck a 1/2oz chatterbait/trailer with it, no problem. If you can work with 7'8", it may work for you. It's also quite light.

Just to follow up-I've done 2 orders with them after I started this thread. The recent BF sale's rod and stuff shipped in 3 days. Not going to cry about that. The Christmas sale stuff, about the same. Fine. I couldn't find the rod anywhere else, so that worked. Their other sale stuff was competitive price-wise, so. The upside here is that I was compelled to branch out and consider other places where I wouldn't have looked otherwise. Midway ships the same day and has some great sales, as do several unmentionables. The tumult happened, but in the end I'm better off for it. I turned a few of my friends on to what I'd found, and they cleaned up. too. Choices are good, and even better when you didn't even know you had them beforehand.

When I move from spot to spot, I put my reels covers back on. Takes several seconds for each reel. Habits are painless after a while, and I don't see the point of my reels getting marked up by clattering against each other.

It's a SS spool shaft, and no way it'll be sub-7ozs with a brass crankshaft.

I wouldn't think once about night fishing with dragons swimming around. Nope! I draw the line at gargantuan snapping turtles.

This one. Shallow spool version.

Sure. Gimme a boost then I'll drag you over.

I was sorting through my hooks looking to find something with the proper length to fit the lower side-hook slot when something occurred to me. This bait will flatten horizontally when it gets bit and when compressed the hook's point will land in either the roof of the mouth or the tongue. 50-50 chance, I reckon. Am I mistaken? Any user input? I'm not down with tongue hooking bass if I can help it. It's often a death sentence.

First thing is to dump the gammy springlock and replace it with an Owner CPS keeper. They're sold separately. While I use a lot of Owner CPS type hooks, they rust very quickly in typical salted plastics, so I use them in my far less salted JDM plastics. Gamakatsu uses much heartier plating which is very rust resistant, so I use them on baits known to eat the Owners. Otherwise, what MN said.

If there's anything that made me love freshwater bass fishing even more than I do, it was my hate for that type of chaos. Rude, mouth breathing thick skulls being their worst selves who I'm not allowed to beat up 'cause I'm a guest combined with huffing in huge hits of diesel exhaust...Nah. It's like volunteering to jump into a cement mixer.

Both. Why? Because you never know. What you do know about the alewife spot is that they're well fed. Alewives feed into freshwater bodies from the salt in massive numbers. Being there to witness the shorelines erupting with them is something to see. The places here that have natural feeder steams allowing them access in and out tend to grow whopper Bass and Pickerel. That said, my luck throwing a slew of dead nutz alewife imitators, including anything Lucky Craft in American Shad, has been pathetic. They'll gobble perch pattern baits though. They'll gobble big ribbon tail worms as eels use the same route from the sea the alewives do. I knock 'em dead with a Dark Shad 3" Dark Sleeper. Catfish imitator? Perch pattern spinnerbaits work. A green pumpkin football jig with a blue trailer feels like cheating. I've caught solid bass there with alewife tails sticking out of their throats, but no dice trying to trick them with anything Alewife-esque. Just bought a 6" 6th Sense Trace to try out. I'll never give up. Hard to say what your 500 acre bog holds. Is it in balance or, is it a stunted bass factory? Who knows? I'd fish it hard for several months until I had an answer. If it has long runs of reeds, lily pads, and dense weeds, it's probably not a dink factory. Plenty of hide-y places for baitfish. With its lack of traffic it could be a gem if you're willing to put the time in. Around here some of the toughest nuts to crack hold the biggest fish, so don't give up if you're not slinging them over the rail like bluefish on day one.

This one; Diesel 723C MHEF It's more medium than MH. Diesel Casting Rods - Powell Rods (powellco.com)

You'll be well into May if you wait for it to hit 50 first. The best of the prespawn bite will be over just-like-that once it gets past that temp. Happens fast up here. Get on them as quickly as you can while keeping your personal safety in mind. An ultralight(foam) outrigger system would be a real difference maker.

The quote is a bit bombastic, and people see things differently. Taking in nature and its surroundings has little to do with how I typically fish, which is at night. Everything about it automatically puts me into high gear, even after I've dragged my tired ass off the couch to do it after a long workday. My brain is crackling with anticipation, and I have tunnel vision. Far more time is spent immersed in the second-to-second visualization of what my bait is doing than actually catching a fish, so good for me, I love that part. There's nothing relaxing about it, I'm constantly rev'd up which is why I do this, so perhaps it would be better said that I love the energy of the entire process. Catching a fish is the holeshot, then the blast down the track. I have responsibilities now, and really can't do that anymore, but night fishing gives me that rush. Even the quieter parts of it.

Sales were pretty good. Mostly back-up stuff just because. The Azuma wakes are new to me. Hat tip to @The Bassman Grabbed an old Lexa 100 out of the used section from somewhere unmentionable..."Good condition" can mean anything. In this case it meant about the worst geariness imaginable. The gearset was nearly impossible to track down, but I scored. Needed to scramble for a few more parts and had to make a new bushing, but it's tight again. Neat.

I'm not going to dig for the stats, but I recall the Lake Cayuga event last year produced very solid bass from both species. Enough so that I'd definitely like to spend a straight week there.

Just a word of advice for this particular reel on that rod; Definitely start him out with mono. Backlashes from an overloaded cast with braid tend to happen fast when a loop wraps around the spool causing a hard stop. This hard-stop doesn't happen with mono. Here, as you know, the spool will typically fluff up and slow-stop, and the mono stretches where braid doesn't. A new user will probably overload a medium rod a number of times in the beginning. Regardless of how braked this reel is, on lower brake settings as well as higher settings it can be touchy and sensitive when using a lighter rod with braid when throwing a bait near the rod's upper limit. This is common for a M rod. A weakness in this reel is where the SV inductor ramp is dogged into the spool by two small 1/8" plastic lugs. Hard stop backlashes with braid can shear them off. This happened on mine, but it was 35 degrees at the time and the bait was on the heavy side, so those two elements of cold and extra shock combined to do the trick. But this also happened on two other reels from guys in my circle under less extreme circumstances. The remedy is a new spool for $50 as Daiwa doesn't sell the ramp parts separately for this spool, or at least they didn't at the time I needed them. Not a common issue, but it happens, and enough so that The Tackle Trap gave me the same info instantly over the phone. While you may be able to rustle them up from an overseas source, there's still a process involved. I'm not looking to sour you on the reel at all. It's really good. Just saying to stick with mono until he finds his swing, then make the switch to braid if you like.

Looks like a single foot guide from here. Watch the vid. Order a similar guide from the same place, or find the correct Batson/Alps SS guide. Have your homie install it if you trust that he has a clue after you've watched guide installation vids on the same YT channel. If he doesn't, find someone who does.