Aaron_H

Duckett is about the only brand I actively try to avoid. I've got one of their BD Shad swimbaits, but I found it on the bank so I excuse it. I'm not the biggest fan of Johnny Morris's practices, either, but I do religiously use the BPS Stik-O as my Yamamoto alternative.

My first reel back in the early 90s was the "Rhino Tough" Zebco 33 that was this style, seeing that brought up a lot of good memories. The newer 33s use a plastic rod to attach the handle to the reel, can't count the number of them I've seen break though normal/light usage.

You're not my real dad, you can't tell me what to do!

I've thrown the Trokar TK130 flipping hook quite a bit, but I've retired them. As others said, they seem to leave a much larger hole/wound in the fish and I never really saw a marked increase in hook/land ratio. YMMV.

It's heat shrink tubing, so just a lighter held near it for a couple of seconds will shrink it. I find the best way to get a tight fit is to stretch the senko a little bit as I'm applying the heat so it shrinks to a smaller diameter. The 3/8" tube diameter is perfectly sized to slide over a senko.

I've been using 3/8" clear heat shrink tubing for years on my wacky rigged senkos. Extremely cost effective, matches any color worm, hugs flush to the bait, and the durability is phenomenal. I paid $15 for 50 feet of it back in 2017 and I'm not even close to the end of the spool. No special pliers needed!

Nice! I've culled a couple hundred of these in the last few years. My best year for them was 2022 with just over 100 of them culled. I overwhelmingly get them on lipless cranks and jerkbaits, but I've caught them on topwater, senkos, jigs, chatterbaits, etc. I still have people who don't believe me when I talk about how aggressive they can be and how hard the big ones fight, a lot of guys think you can only get them by pestering their beds or by bowfishing. You might have a cardiac event if I posted a picture with my hair down

It's the newer H2OX version, the eye insert is a dead giveaway. Color is "clear silver insert": https://www.academy.com/p/h2ox-model-tws-topwater-special-bait?sku=clear-silver-insert

Positively obese. Nice one.

I bet I could throw a crankbait over them mountains.... I've got 30lb PowerPro on one of my SLX MGL 70s, holds way more than enough for a bomb cast.

Agreed. The Mustad KVD short shank EWGs are 90% of what I swap to these days, but quite a few of my baits still have Gamakatsu EWGs on them which are pretty solid hooks, as well. I haven't tried the Zowires. As for round bend vs EWG, I'll take every little advantage I can get to keep those big fish pinned.

Ahh I'm terrible at this game. Spro Aruku Shad? I also swap out the hooks on the RES for higher quality EWGs, it is one of the few baits I trust the split rings on, and I like that it comes standard with an oval line tie. I have caught some nice fish on the stock hooks, though, including this (at the time PB) 8lb 9oz. She jumped quite a few times and had some strong runs, but the stock hardware kept her pinned, just don't care for round bends much these days.

I have two 6'10" medium/extra-fast casting rods in my lineup. They are excellent jerkbait and weightless senko rods, I also throw 1/2 oz poppers and walking baits on them. I have 12lb mono on one and 30lb braid to 12lb mono leader on the other. Don't let the extra-fast action fool you into thinking it won't work with trebles, the medium power has a lot of bend to it and will load pretty deep. Especially with St Croix, who are known to be a bit softer in action than some other companies.

Got rained out, managed to last about 90 minutes before I called it, but I did get 6 bass and culled 2 tilapia. Biggest bass went 5lb 4oz, on a Shadow Rap Shad. I was picking apart a cove where the wind was blowing pretty hard and corralling bait up towards the banks. Bass weren't feeding super hard but they were biting. Was really nice to get into a sizeable bass, they've been stingy lately and it made dealing with the crappy weather worth it. She nipped the back of the bait on a long pause right as I was hovering over a sandy point during a brief respite from the rain and before it got much worse. She never came up, stayed down and dogged me the whole fight. Which was a relief because I barely had her hooked. I've had guys ask me why I spent so much time/money tinkering with this setup (still very much a budget setup though), and this is why. If I was still throwing these on braid-to-leader or a stouter rod like when I first started out with the technique, 100% I'd have lost this fish.

I throw quite a few different lipless cranks for different purposes. Like others said, the main split is between horizontal retrieve and yo-yoing/stroking. After that it's for different sound profiles. Booyah One Knocker gets a lot of time in the water since that single rattle gives you more of a "clicking" sound in the water and tends to work better for me in the fall when they are hammering shad schools. I tend to work this with a yo yo retrive. Rat-L-Trap hasn't gotten much use lately, but it's undeniably the king for horizontal retreive and burning/ripping over grass. I'd love to try out the new Hammertrap here soon, we'll see. Rattlin' Rapala is another great one for horizontal retrieve that has a softer sound profile. Red-Eyed Shad is designed for that stroking retrieve and the shimmy on the fall along with the extremely aggressive vibration on the lift really triggers some great bites. If I could only have one it would be a tough call between this and the Booyah One Knocker. The Thunderhawk Sergeant gets a lot of play time for me, also. Great shimmy on the fall, slightly less aggressive vibration than the RES and sits perfectly nose down on the bottom like the TN does. It's a fantastic lipless that also comes in a silent version which I also throw quite a bit when the fish are more pressured or spooked by the loud rattles. Free-rotating hook hangers on it as well which is a feature I 100% believe should be on more lipless cranks. Berkley Warpig is solid, runs super nose down and seems to come over snags a bit better than other lipless cranks I throw, and the sound profile is very deep and subdued for a multi-rattle bait, it's *almost* one knocker in how it sounds. Used to get a lot of cold-weather use from me but not so much these days with the Booyah primarily replacing it. Been playing around with the H2OX 5/8oz RT "medium profile lipless" which has been doing pretty well. Great vibration and a very high pitched rattle. Throwing it shallow and yoyoing it through shad schools in warmer water has been effective.

Decent bite yesterday, but nothing of note size-wise. Did hook into something on the lipless right at dark that instantly had me hunkered over and was peeling drag, but I never got a look at it before the hook pulled. Most likely a big tilapia. Managed 15 bass, dinkfest with the biggest two being just over 2lb each. Lipless and jerkbait did the work as they're corralling schools of small shad up shallow. This one t-boned the lipless perfectly. Managed to cull two tilapia as well, both on the jerkbait. One was decked out in spawning colors.

Lots of killer suggestions, especially in the upper- and mid-priced tiers, so I'm just gonna throw out this budget jerkbait and say you shouldn't sleep on it: https://www.academy.com/p/h2ox-ultimate-jerk-shad-bait?sku=crackle It gets big bites.

I grew up bottom fishing offshore for big snapper and grouper. It's what we did most weekends (weather permitting), and every single family vacation a couple of times per year centered around staying on the water in St Pete, Fort Pierce, or the Keys in order to fish. As much as I still love that pull of a big fish, eventually I kind of burned out on it and I didn't fish for quite a few years. Summer of 2016 and my Dad and youngest brother picked up bass fishing in some of our local canals and invited me out a handful of times. I was hooked on it pretty quickly, and in September I caught my then-PB of 7lb 5oz (fish in my profile pic) and it really reignited that fire in me. I bass fish around 100 days per year on average these days, and though it can be a slog and a grind, I don't see me stopping anytime soon.

The only thing I use mine for is chucking a lipless.

I should be so lucky. Couldn't pass up the 50% off lifetime license our FWC was running, my typical yearly license for fresh/salt is ~55 bucks, so I'm fishing for free in 10 years.

I never bank fish when I'm in saltwater, but there's just something about the accessibility and ease of beating the banks of some local ponds after work. Sometimes I get lucky, too.

I paid $501.50 for my fishing license this year in FL. Thankfully, it's good for the next 200 years.

Fair enough! haha Can't see the logo on the belly from the angle of that picture, wasn't sure if it was rubbed off or something. For a store brand, they're solid baits (though I do upgrade the hardware on the ones I use).

That's an H2OX squarebill from Academy.

I don't want to derail the thread, but it's been a bit frustrating to get dialed in, to say the least. I don't have enough time with it yet to make a verdict so we'll see how it goes. Ergonomics definitely a step up from the spincast reel I had on my panfish setup, and it's cool to be able to cast a 1/16 oz jighead on a baitcaster for under 60 bucks, but I'm not casting consistently without backlashes, and my casts are not nearly as accurate as with the spincast reel on the same rod. It's like the lighter spool has my thumb allll out of whack.