txchaser

If you are going to buy a hangover, get the fast sink. It's got the widest speed range.

When are you chosing that over the regular 5" or a 6"? I bought some because yamamoto gets the benefit of the doubt on soft plastics from me, but I haven't really seen the time/place where get the urge to throw it.

The more time that goes by the more I regret not keeping logs, especially in unique situations where the fish were super picky.

Thanks for this post, I was feeling like I was hauling around too many jerkbaits. Now I realize I'm nowhere near too many.

6th Sense, Jackall, Duel, assuming jerkbaits aren't included. Mostly for shallow, mid, and deep respectively. Adding jerkbaits, LC and Shimano.

Owner slim was apparently made for elaztech.

There's a model of these on amazon, I think listed as mini bolt cutters. I know they work because I had to cut a heavy hook out of my hand. So I ended up with "wow that was unpleasant, deep EWG's can't be pulled with braid" instead of "wow that was unpleasant, and expensive at the ER too". I have only my non-dominant hand free, and the other hand is hooked. Maybe even a flopping fish on the other treble. I'm alone. Now what?

North texas winter (call it sub 50 degree water) the Jackall Rhythm Wave and 6th Sense Divine are great tighter wiggle and slimmer baits. https://www.tacklewarehouse.com/Jackall_Rhythm_Wave_Swimbaits/descpage-JRWS.html https://www.tacklewarehouse.com/6th_Sense_Divine_Swimbaits/descpage-6DIS.html I don't love jackall's whitish colors, but they have a natural (blue pearl shad) that's a dead on match for the shad in one of places I fish. IMO the 6th sense is a tighter action.

Much of the yamamoto and rage lines are on sale, and it's deep. Worth looking in clearance too. Usually I find clearance to be uninteresting baits or colors. This feels more like overstock; lots of popular baits and colors in there.

FYI The prices on the overview page aren't always right, you have to click into the item page. There's some interesting daiwa and shimano stuff in there, like Tat AGS rods for $150.

Just watched an excerpt of the texas bass study where they moved fish to see if they could find their way back to the bed. The ones that had smell blocked were more lost than the ones with vision or magnetic blocking. My dog prefers the baitfuel infused netbait, by a lot. I catch some bigguns soaking the trickworm, but no heads up test so no data. For whatever reason I'm convinced the maxxscent stuff works. But I also think you have to be willing to fish slow or make the same cast twice. Megastrike goes on most things that don't have scent. As much for the weeds and scent coverup as who knows if it really gets them to hang on longer in any meaningful way. I noticed I'm pretty ticked off about cutting the tube size down by half and not changing the price at all. And most sites didn't change the picture so I was extra grumpy about it. At least the lid is better now? Regular powerbait is just so foul unless I had serious proof there's no way I'd pick that over an unscented bait. Material is weird too.

I sent him a letter about a year ago and didn't hear back. Band of anglers/patrick sebile is making a twin brushguard jig that has some similarities, although it uses fiber for the guards. Pretty sure I recall him talking about the head rotating up in this vid.

If budget constrained a used 5" 2d/DI hummingbird (g3 or g4 if you can) used off ebay would be a great way to start. You'll get a feel for how much you use it, when/why/etc. And it'll do the most important things you need, and do them just fine. And the DI is even an optional thing but shouldn't cost much more. You should care more about mapping than DI. Things you might care about in the future: 1) SI so you can find boulders/brushpiles/gill spawn areas/fish that are out away from the bank. 2) custom mapping, if the maps for your waters are poor or low resolution or non existent I have the 7" version of this (+SI) and I like it. I bought it for the SI and the custom mapping. If I could do it again I would have gone 8" or 9" - the SI is hard to see fish when it's that small, and I notice I just don't use it that much because of it. With all that said, 99% of the time I'm using it for one of a few things 1) how deep is the bait or most of the fish 2) how deep am I right now 3) where am I/what do the contours look like around me. IMO brand is personal preference, and each of them have different advantages, but it is a very competitive market so none of them are bad. I know a lot of guys running three different brands at once to get the best of each of them. Don't overthink this part of it. I just upgraded to a 9" garmin (for ffs).

Sitting Dockside is good because most of the talk is about forage and bass behavior. Heavy on the biology side, light on the talk radio chatter.

One thing about patterns, my experience is that big fish and little fish are sometimes on the same deal, but more often than not, they aren't. So I have this rule - don't take advice from little fish (in particular, dinks) unless that's what you are trying to catch. It was my #1 way to get on a pattern that caught numbers and no size. Sometimes a hint on what's up with the bigger ones, often in a different depth. Plus dinks are like puppies and pretty indiscriminate on what they want to eat. Question - I'm kind of thinking that bigger fish are more spot than pattern. Crazy or does that fit with your experience?

I'll give you an alternative that is 80% of the benefit of flouro with 20% of the drama. And it's forgiving to nicks and to your wallet. Sufix Advance copoly. It's pretty low stretch, pretty cheap, pretty sensitive. Just be aware that like big game mono or yo-zuri it's big for it's rated size. 8 or 10 lb is more like 12 or 15 in something like invisx flouro. I don't fish braid to leader anymore except in very specific applications, if I had a single baitcaster that's exactly what I'd do though. Very versatile, and you can play with the leader size and type. And you don't have to cutoff 30 yards of stretched flouro in a breakoff. Flouro really doesn't like to be stretched to breaking, it may damage the whole line.

LC500 Lipless produced for me this weekend in 42 degree water, cloudy. That's cold water for these parts. Some muddy, some not. Windblown outside weed edges or where the outside used to be, 8-10 feet deep. Downwind was 1 degree warmer than upwind. I think the rain was warmer than the water. Sometimes steady slow retrieve, sometimes reel and pause. Tried a lot of other stuff except a big colorado blade spinnerbait, none of it worked. Basically I was fishing where I thought they'd be hunkered down. These were gill eaters not shad eaters that were offshore. I was marking offshore fish at 13ft and 25ft. I didn't really push on them because it seemed like a good opportunity to try pushing the 'fish it like prespawn even though it's coooooold water' game and it paid off in some confidence. A couple of the BR vids have clued me in on not waiting till prespawn for red. Yep yep, red's a winter color in texas now too. Red/orange in low vis water/cloudy/etc. Only color they'd bite. If I had exposed wood where I fish I probably would have chucked a jig and a free rig at the wood all day, and it might have worked. If the sun was out a chatterbait and a keitech up shallow. Probably gold blades, but no idea if that actually matters.

Big boss gets on the elevator first. And gets off the elevator first. Lots of shuffling around. A lot of 'position' driven by little social boss queues, and some of them are opposite - like in the west you can signal by deliberately going last, being extra polite, etc etc. Some of that can backfire because you are signalling lower status. But no one will mistake you for a local so you'll get some grace on all of it. Be your fun self. Prepare your liver, if they are showing you a good time. Oh one other I forgot about - when I was there almost nowhere had paper towels in the bathroom so everyone carried a white hanky. Probably gone by now, but can't hurt to grab them if you have some.

Lipless in the weeds and little stuff out deep on a spinning rod.

I can't figure out why the rattles are so different in the different depts. Deep ones sound like a traditional rattle, although some of that could just be back and forth weight transfer vs side to side. Part of what IMO makes the 75x so good is the really faint rattle. Anyone know how to tell what it's going to sound like reeling vs shaking it around?

I use a tat 150 for a-rigs and magdraft size baits, generally anything up to 2oz. It's fine, I have a tat 300 on the big rod for 4+oz, but I really dont feel like the 150 is under-done for the entry-level weights. Said another way fish whatever you have for a while, it's not going to just break all of the sudden. You'll be much better informed when you decide to buy something.

Flashy swimmer in 5/0 or 6/0. 10 seconds to take the blade off if you decide that's not the deal for the day.

6th sense cranks are good enough for my waters that they get the benefit of the doubt on new releases. They just release a 'pressure' series - flatsides from 4FOW to 16FOW. Got a box full of them, and some of the 97x provokes in regular, DD, and silent.

I have both poison adrena and kistler helium in heavy. I have a preference for the kistler, IMO the tip (softer, just my preference) and the locking nut (PA is terrible if you are trying to choke up and feel the line) are far better. I just don't see a way to get in the sensitivity range of the helium at $250, unless maybe you can get a St Croix legend X at 40% off. I have one of those too, but it's a mod/f that I use for mid and deep cranks. From experience with it on that application I'd be willing to bet the fast is a really nice rod.