txchaser

At least in Texas, 55 degree water is going to be early respawn, 57 it's definitely on. IMO for big fish it starts earlier than most people realize.

I had some amazing titanium pliers, I threw them in the water instead of the fish. No more of those, I'm on either the tackle warehouse 3.99 special, or 6th sense for long nose pliers. Rapala for the fish gripper. Plastic, $10, works great. I do keep threatening to get a boga grip with scale though.

bladed jig for me. Can pitch it at targets, swim it, hop it. Fishes from 1' to 20' of water. Shows up great on FFS. Year-round bait.. 40 degree water? Like a blade bait or a swinghead.

The air seats in the Vexus are really nice in rough water.

Lot of Rage stuff on sale, and some missile baits.

17lb tatsu fits this situation perfectly. Same drill for me, grass is primary cover. for OP: 20 lb invisx is your best of the options you gave. The bait is pretty forgiving though, so anything 15-20lb will work just fine. Note that the 15lb p-line is probably the size of the 20lb flouro. Of course, open water is a different deal and you could go a bit lighter like the 15lb mentioned above. I know in our grass I'd be constantly replacing 15lb line getting ragged out from hooksets and fish getting buried in grass. If you are mostly smallie fishing and aren't in nasty cover, @A-Jay is the man on this topic. I don't think I've even seen a smallmouth in person, much less caught one. For what it's worth, Brett Hite (y'know, the pro involved in arguably the best bladed jig) throws mostly 20lb flouro, and mostly 1/2 oz. The 3/8 is really a very shallow water bait.

By feel, but targeting 1/4-1/3 of line test. More like 1/4 on braid to leader because there's much less give in the system. And locked down on straight braid. Line size mostly in sync with hook shank diameter, and both of those are mostly in sync with cover where possible. I probably set it all a little light, but the reel-and-sweep hook set doesn't have a lot of line slack by the time I get into the serious part of the hook set.

Maybe they would have been the deal today. Most of the deep fish wouldn't eat at all, or even follow. Shallow fish were eating though. It was a wild day with the false spawn then ice confusing the fish. Big piles of fish pulled off, and out of 20 fish pulled out on a flat maybe a couple would eat a c-rig. Spread out not schooling. Straight out ignoring almost everything I threw at them, must be time for a new bait!

Always end up falling into one of two categories: 1) Reel-and-sweep - any straight line presentation like all braid or all flouro. 2) Reel-and-wrist - braid to leader, mostly on spinning. Intensity of both based mostly on the hook thickness. More likely to over-do it than under-do it. I guess there's a third for vertical fishing with braid when punching, which looks more like a social media hookset. But I'm still reeling while I'm sweeping up.

Thanks @JIGMAN I'll DM you.

Thanks @RRocket Saw someone fishing it weighted, but moving like a jerk bait too. Do you find a particular time when they work better than other soft plastic options?

I think the whole setup is kinda finicky with all the magnetic fields and electric motors, and that's pushed everyone to just 'turn it up to 11' - Livescope is janky on a lead acid battery that's running three screens and dropping below 12v by the end of the day? Gimme 16v lithium and that problem never happens again. Would have been solved by a lithium in the first place didn't really need the extra voltage, but 'more is better'. Same thing for wires - bunch of ways to get it wrong or use undersized stuff, that combined with the dropping voltage in lead-acid and all the interference potential, just overkill it and the problem goes way. Someday someone will post a before and after picture with 12v (really 13+) lithium and a 16v lithium and an actual better picture when the battery is on its last 20%. But until then I'll just keep thinking it was just overkill.

1) a couple of silent or very very light rattle - 6th sense 75x for 4-6ft, maybe jackall digle 3m+ and 4m+ because of the coffin bill and light rattle they will be different than most of the other cranks coming through. Try really slow like just picking through the rocks. 2) chatter bait in 1/2 and 3/4 oz. 1/2 will run 6-7' if you reel it slow - can fish on the bottom or mid-column. This bait can do a lot more than just get wound back. so that's five, for a sixth I'd pick a t-rig/soft plastic setup. If the rocks are really snaggy you can get a football head weight instead of the normal bullet shape. Lot of versatility here. I think if you took all the lists together you're getting about 30 baits from the monkey.

After a solid year on the livescope (75% or so of my time on the water) I finally get why people put zero degree mounts on. The offset means I'm always trying to cast left to hit the target in the correct spot, and further left the further out the fish is. And if I'm fishing with a buddy up front, he's already at a weird angle so it is even harder for him to hit the spot. And the way the weeds grow in our lake, I really haven't wanted to put it in perspective mode often anyway. So time to bite the bullet. Who did you pick and why? Would you buy the same one again? Any complaints about the one you have?

When I had a hummingbird on a small lake the self made mapping was -great-. 100% worth it kind of purchase, and some real advantage because I had really precise mapping. I got the computer software too. Played around with it a bit. But never really used it in a way that made a difference. I think if I was willing to sidescan the whole lake and let it do the sidescan stitching it would hav been cool. But I kept deciding to fish instead. Wasn't worth it for me. Be aware that the map recording is heavy on the battery to the point run time is really noticeable.

Advice? Lost a couple of big fish this year on a-rig breakage. Trying to figure out how often to replace or how to know it is time. I've had a few where they were just bent up so bad it was obvious, but more often than not I'm clearly using it too long. Not boat-flipping them on the a-rig. Made it a little better by hitting the back bait with a lil chartreuse - still mostly bottom of the rig bites, but sometimes the followers eat that one instead, which is straight vs bent. On the extreme end, I'm fishing for big fish so I could just choke it down and get another one every day they are on em hard or put a cap on the # of fish. $15 if I use the 6th sense, $20 for the rest of them. Or maybe $10 for new arms on one of the Shane's baits rigs (my current favorite anyway). storage - I've tried a couple of things (Plano a-rig box, TW tube) and they just seem to bend it all back down so much it is stressing the metal, so I've started just flopping it in an open compartment so it doesn't get flexed at all. Maybe there's something in the middle? Or maybe if I'm serious about it I shouldn't be reusing them unless I only had a few bites. Some learnings: On the good news side, now that I use screw lock style jig heads the baits last nearly as long as the a-rig. I'll never go back to superglue and frustration. I don't sweat color much, just use ghost ice. Mostly I'm fishing more than 2x deeper than the water vis, if they aren't biting the a-rig I probably need to change presentations or go from bladed to no blades, big blades, or 8 blades more than I need to change to a more natural color. But my water is never more than 4' viz. You know to always keep it above the fish or they won't bite it, but I've learned one situation where that's maybe not true - if you have a follower and a reel snap/flare doesn't trigger a bite, they are going to get spooky when they see the boat anyway. So stopping it dead and letting it drop a few feet (not more) and then ripping it up above their head again can sometimes trigger them. Often enough to try it anyway. Probably better to just get it away from them before they could see the boat and try again, but that's not always how it plays out. If it is really -on- that day and the big fish are wolf packing, it is worth having two rigs on deck. They maul it extra hard when they are competing/cooperating, and I want to get right back in them before the pack swims off. No time to straighten so just pick up the other rod. You don't have to see fish to throw the a-rig. Really good at pulling them off the bottom, but even better at pulling them out of a brushpile or a weed clump. It's a lot going by and often they will come out and check it out, so even if they don't bite it you now know there's a fish in there. If you are trying to get a double (it's fun) you can just let the fish swim around with it for 10 secs or so - if they are in a school the others will get stirred up too. Not a game I'd play with bigs, but fun on a bunch of 2-4lb fish.

I'm starting to see these getting fished a good bit in Texas, but I haven't tried them yet. Any tips? These are pretty good sized, about 1/2 oz.

Finding the juice faster - less 'what' and more 'where' - I try too hard to make average situations/spots work and figure them out instead of just moving on. Still in the small water to big water transition.

14' Jon boat with only TM in high wind and 3' swells, in the winter. It was the sketchiest fishing day ever. I couldn't even launch (shore launch no dock) without timing the waves and jumping in and hammering the TM to get some momentum and not get blasted back into the shore. I think as soon as I got a pattern I headed home. No exciting fish, but certainly an exciting day. Oh and first DD was on a day so windy it ran three batteries (36v) trolling motor completely dry by 1pm. Was difficult to even stand, had to grab the pedestal a bunch to not get swept off the deck. Submarined my 21' bass boat by not hitting the throttle soon enough coming over some big swells when running downwind in, yet again, high winds. Noobie move, but it sure was refreshing. Scared the bejeezus out of me. It's windy in Texas!

Shoot video/weigh, back in the water with a thank you.

Friend of mine shot video of fresh beds last week. 5" of snow coming Sunday. Fish will be as confused as I am.

Thanks for the review. I have been curious about these boxes.

If you aren't fishing any bigger soft swimbaits, the 6th Sense Super Sweep swimbait. It fishes "bigger" than a similar sized 5" swimbait, probably about 6 1/2. But very fishable on a heavy rod, so no specialized gear. Shad and gill colors depending on your forage. I prefer an underspin usually - 7/0 works best so it's trokar or 6th sense as the beast hooks don't fit quite right. Dinks won't eat but anything 2lbs and over will. Fishes well in grass and trees/laydowns, can fish reasonably deep because the body is thin and has very little lift. Doesn't blow out at speed. It is a significantly larger bait than 95% of what's going by them.

Nice find! Seaguar JDM R18 Hard is half price too.

Thank you!