PhishLI

T knob. I'm fine with it. Great reel. Zero issues after 4 years.

What's the lightest total weight you'll be throwing? The newest Bantam has a conical line guide placed farther away from the spool than the '18 which will help reduce friction. MGL spools at 12-14 grams are light enough to deal with most typical baits without issue. The real question is what are your expectations? Bomb casting from shore isn't the same as plinking 50-80 foot casts from a boat. Tuned for max distance with high arc casts a Met or Bantam will launch a lure, but expect to be on your toes. Either reel is not forgiving when brakes are set low near the redline, and they require a fair amount of consistent user input to control them, especially if any wind whatsoever is in the equation. That's just the nature of SVS Infinity braking.

I got some pretty good deals at Midway USA. 6" & 7" GY Senkos for $5.42. Jackall Gantarel Jr. for $25.58, and others. 15% off is automatic on sale items, but apply code OFFER66666 if dropped prices aren't highlighted in red. Free shipping with $49 order. P.S. My order shipped an hour an half after placing it this morning.

Open water, or lots of lily pads and weeds?

When I'm wading at certain lakes having large flats allowing me to to get offshore a few hundred feet I bring one rig spooled with 30lb braid terminated with a VMC Touch Lok snap. Baits rigged on hooks that have eyes too small to allow the snap's clasp to pass through get rigged on a short fluoro or mono leader and terminated with a very small Spro 80lb swivel. So, Braid to snap to swivel to leader to bait. This works just fine as far as I'm concerned. I believe @throttleplate rigs up the same setup. Do fish care? All I can say is that the fish I've caught don't seem to care. I can't speak to the rest. I don't fish deep, clear, reservoirs though. Quite the opposite. Maybe they'd hate it there? I doubt it though. Test it out yourself by alternating two setups with identical baits.

Agreed, especially with light plastics. Not too much of a difference between 30 and 50 regarding distance with a heavy casting jig, crank, and especially a lipless, but 40 and 50 choke off distance too much with baits weighted like 5" senkos and a bit lighter.

They work. No glue. Here's another version.

I manage most driving annoyances well, except for tailgaters. Can't have that at all. I'll make them get off my azz every time.

Daiwa makes bait casters named "PE Special". Some have faster than usual level winds which lay line in somewhat of a criss-cross pattern. Basically they're built to avoid friction and dig in by line being neatly stacked side by side.

No shoes on. Just socks. Full stride. Clipped a leg of the coffee table. Couldn't make a sound, or so I thought...My wife called down and asked if I heard a baby crying.

Possibly. Highly unlikely. 2 months or more isn't out of the question, and you won't get an answer to that question. It'll just show up one day.

Yup. No further need to speculate about this phenomenon, or to become more unraveled than usual. I stopped into the best place around here for gear. They have everything on display. There was a Hypermag on sale, so I fiddled with it. I decided to browse the instructions and found the insert pictured below. So that's that.

With the upcoming TW sale the price would be nice for an unflappable battleship of a reel with a good spool cap for 65lb braid, and which is very capable of dealing with snakeheads or whatever easily.

Like anyone else I could list several of my loser baits, call them junk, but I know better. I've had runs on baits I should've given up on following several seasons of busts, but didn't. When that's happened I assess why, connect the dots, then the baits find their place. Often those baits become a Hail Mary pass on a bad day, and often I score throwing them. This has happened too many times for me to ignore.

Daiwa Zillion TW HD https://www.tacklewarehouse.com/catpage-DAIWARELLS.html?from=basres

Good advice. Unfortunately I've broken my line at the dowel more than once losing a ton of line and leaving behind a hazard for birds and props. Don't do this. I'm batty, so I do. While fishing my brother and I wear or always keep gloves with us made for safe handling of expanded metal wire lath, which is very sharp stuff. I can safely grab braided line at anytime during a catch if I need to whether it's a fish wrapped in the pads, baits caught in bushes, to pull knots tightly, etc. For hard snags I make two or three wraps around my mitt and pull in whatever's stuck on the end of the line. It either breaks at the knot or the hooks bend out. The line never breaks at my hand or away from the knot. Even 50lb.

I have 30lb J8 on 4 reels, and 40lb J8 on 2. I always have at least 2 reels spooled with 30lb with me, and they get a LOT of fishing time. I never ever pull out hard snags using a reel. I haven't had a hard backlash on a cast in a very long time with 30lb. When it did happen I reeled in the bait, then pitched the next cast down to the dig in, then pulled out the dig in. No big deal if it happens again. So dig in can happen in this rare scenario, but knowing what to do afterward will save you from casting off a bait on the very next cast. The lightest bait I throw on any of the 30lb rigs is a 8 gram when rigged Hazedong Shad. Not a resistance bait by any measure, so it isn't tightening the line much at all, and no issues with dig in after plenty of solid fish pulled through junk, pad fields, and with mounds of weeds in tow. Maybe the Daiwa J8 is really good at not digging in? I have no desire to switch.

Beyond the finer details of gear, one of the most important things stressed by Swindle is keeping your eye on the target, and even more important, IMO, which was talked about in the Evers/Montgomery vid, is getting your entry point as close to the target as possible. Lure drop from the tip is situational as far as I'm concerned, and while there may be an ideal rod type, that won't matter much once skipping becomes second nature. By then you'll have downloaded what matters and make adjustments for the rod type automatically when you feel it loaded by the bait you're using.

Phil, The OP is going to do what's good for him and that's great, but your response greatly overblows what I said. Even if I allow in this instance that I might've communicated poorly, I'm not sure we're on the same planet here. Simply for comparison, and I did not advocate this to either the OP or you whatsoever, I made the point that big swim bait rods on yaks are not an issue for many people. Therefore, a normal length 5 power heavy bass rod that's capable of throwing quite small 4 3/4" 1-1.5oz baits, which you've somehow dreamed up to 3-4 ozs baits, is easily doable, and isn't much of a stretch from a cookie cutter MH of the same length. And the kooky chasing trophy bass thing? Huh? That's wonderful. I saw a guy catch a 6 1/2 pounder on a 4 1/2 ft child's rod with a crappie jig. My obvious point was that the baits I showed in pictures, and other typical conventional types outside of the range of an average MH, are better thrown on a non-specialized standard H bass rod. It has nothing to do with the size of bass you've divined that he's not interested in catching, which in itself is baffling. You've contorted what I said. It's fine with me that you don't see the point of a standard 5 power rod in a yak, but your attempt at policing one point in a rather reasonable gear suggestion by me to a poster who isn't you strikes me as a tad odd. Oh, and good luck not getting eaten by crocodiles. That would really spoil your retirement.

Gobbled my lure with an Alwife in process.

@bulldog1935's rod is a OG2(Omen Green 2).Take a closer look the badge.

Really? Have you fished in Florida much? I have a place down there, but I'm in NY and I wouldn't want to be without one when it's green here. Besides that, guys like my brother and his crew are out on yaks with 6 or more 8'-9' swim baits rods in a yak crate and chucking 2-10 oz swim baits without a second thought. Those sticks make a 7'3" H look like toy.

I've had my eye on the 7'7" M for quite some time. 1/8-3/8. I have some light stuff I'd like to get into spots that are hard to reach with shorter rods.

There are just so many great big bass baits that are outside of the wheelhouse of a typical medium heavy, yet are within the wheelhouse of a Heavy fast rated to 1 1/2 ozs. Stuff like this:

I wasn't talking about you, and definitely not myself. My point was you can do everything you really need to do with the range of gear I listed. My point was that there're are things you're not supposed to do yet in realty you can definitely do, especially when you're taking an economical approach with just 3 setups. And I'll stick with my rec of at least one Heavy Fast in the mix.