txchaser

green mirror. great in very bright light, pretty good in low light/cloudy I bought their low light/amber, for dusk/dawn, but I never wear them I did get some blue mirrors for being on the ocean and they are a better fit in that kind of light.

Did the tape it came with not work for you? Might need to hit the paint on the TM with a little sandpaper.

Kistler Helium HF, 7'1" $297 right now and you can get another 10% with the new customer signup. The blank is much better than my poison adrena. Just bought a St Croix Legend X to see what the 450 price point looks like, and I got it for 40% off. We'll see on that. But Kistler heliums are getting added to the pile at a rate faster than any other brand. IMO It's probably hard to buy a bad rod in the ~350 range. And it is a noticable upgrade from the 200-250 price point. Or you can bite the bullet and try out one of the Trika rods with Titanium guides that's selling for $299. The guys that make it came out of the bow industry, and it is really tempting to give them a shot.

What did they charge? I've got a rod sitting in the corner with a busted AGS.

I don't recall the name and it's not on TW anymore. It looked like a chatterbait with a really long and bent blade.

I have a couple of places like that, and eventually they paid off. I consider it to be technical fishing, in that the fish get very very picky but if you can get enough clues, it turns from comically hard to comically big. And one beautiful place to fish that really doesn't have many big fish to speak of, but it's like fishing in a photo. An example - regular gill color or light gill color baits get mostly ignored. But black or a very dark green pumpkin immediately started catching monster. Gills are very dark there. Water isn't super clear so it's not supposed to be a big deal, but they appear to be sight feeders. Same place I had a similar result with a small change to a crankbait color. Another one - you could catch them on a t-rig one day, but they weren't biting right... fish were too small, and sort of lethargic on the pickup. They were suspending about 1 ft off the bottom. Tried a crank at that depth, it was a little better, told me that slightly off the bottom was going to help. Bubba shot and a lipless fished like a blade bait gave me immediate big fish and they were smoking it. Often I'll fish these by going to the very best spot I can think of, especially if I get access to multiple kinds of spots without moving the boat. Like I can fish shallow, deep, and down a point, all from the same spot... and I might not move for four hours.

Just checking, you do have the spool tension backed off enough to have a tiny bit of side to side play? It should click a little when you try to move the spool back and forth.

Jackall's topwater chatter/wakebait. It'll run right for about ten feet of the retrieve.

Food is different for everyone, but restriction usually doesn't work over time. I make the trade of no /low carbs but as much protein and fat as I want. I'd give up pringles to be able to eat bacon or steak all day long. And I lost a bunch of weight and kept it off. Nuts, steak, sausage, bacon, any green veggies, cheese, etc... doesn't really feel like a diet. But I have friends who don't feel good when they eat that way, and they are in the grilled salmon and rice /potatoes crowd, and probably never eat a steak. Turns out if you eat like a diabetic, many of us feel better and stay lean.

Helium Light MH/F or Heavy MH/F. They sit in a range that is hard to find elsewhere, they are about 1/2 notch above or below the MH. The HMH is my current favorite chatterbait/swimjig rod, and I'm probably five rods deep trying to find the perfect rod for that presentation. LMH is amazing on unweighted senkos or light t-rigs. I have one z-bone, and it's nicer than the heliums but IMO the helium maxxes out on the price performance curve. Irod magic stick for a frog rod Anything in Daiwa's "Regular" action - super versatile - spinnerbaits, mid-depth cranks and squarebills, etc. I wish I could find a better blank than the tat elite since I use it a lot, but the higher end stuff has the CF guides which are too fragile for me. (Cue the haters) I was gifted a googan black series in the XL (2-4oz) model. It's great for big soft swimbaits and is dramatically more sensitive than my Irod. ~$239 on the karl's site

Not data, but interesting... as I was sorting some tackle I showed the old ones to the dog, which was totally uninterested. Showed him one of the new ones and he immediately chomped it. Too bad he's not a bass. Oh and they changed the flake color from blue to green in the texas craw t-mac. Probably won't matter but grrr, it is my highest confidence color for a trick worm on a bubba shot.

Finally got to fish the normal and deep versions this weekend. East texas timber, east texas water color. Caught three over six lbs on the two world boost jerkbaits, and nothing of any size on vision 110 (all depths) or lucky craft. They would move to come eat it. I figured it was just profile or color so immediately started running through other stuff. Nope. It was these specific ones. It's nice that the hooks are sufficient for heavy cover too.

IMO just a plain sling back or inexpensive backpack will do the job. Eventually the bait monkey will show up and you'll start using 3600 or 3700 boxes, and by then you'll know what you really want in a pack.

Anyone used the new 'infused' netbait soft plastics? The pre-baitfuel t-macs were my favorite 6" straight tail worm, but I'm curious if they are different now that they are in the american baitworks packaging and have the baitfuel in them.

I have a 7MSI, not going to be able to see much on 100' - that's 200 total feet so probably 4" per horizontal pixel. If you need to get out that far you can have it show just one side on the screen.

A couple of things to consider - 1) you may find that that shallow (6-12ft) you don't want the crank grinding the bottom because there's still weed growth there. If that's the case, slowing down a bunch has worked for me for bigger bites. 2) I fish a lot of places with heavy weed cover and the idea of 12lb line is terrifying. I started with 20lb tatsu and over time moved most of my rods to 17 lb. With a good knot, un-knicked, sometimes I have to tie it to a cleat to break it at 17lb. Anyway I feel comfy with it when a fish is buried up in the weeds. 3) Sometimes the bite is sitting in the weeds casting out deeper and running the crank straight towards the weeds. It's a PITA because most casts end in slop, but I don't think they see it that way much. Jackall Digle 4+ and a 6th Flat 75x have been my best two for this technique. And it's worked for me across multiple bodies of water. I found it by accident, it was in my hand so I threw it behind my buddy and pulled two big fish out of used water. /shrug Anyway all three of these are "wrong" but given my specific lots-of-grass reality they work.

I put a new tip on a daiwa regular action and now it is a fast. It wasn't a great bottom contact rod and now it's perfect. Same deal, about two inches lost. It'll be shorter and stiffer, but there's likely a place for it in your boat.

GP jig of some sort, outside weed edge

Tell me more?

Unfortunately that's where I started, albeit the grip-pin version. It was the only place I used that style of hook and I thought maybe that was the problem. Biggest hook I can get into a rage craw (don't recall if it was 3/0 or 4/0), and on the lizard I was using a 5/0. Wasn't snelled though. Interesting, now that I think about it I use flipping hooks (owner cps) on an almost identical setup for punching grass and I have no hookup problems. Easy to test, should have way more bite. Might as well tie the skirt on with some braid too. Thanks yall! I'll let you know what I learn.

The last few weekends the far and away best bait has been a slither rig or some sort of jig with a rage craw, tossed at outside weed edges. Looks like a gill focus to me, and works better around gill spawning areas. Swimjig in similar coloring worked about as well. The primary/most bite is a few seconds or more after first contact with the bottom. Secondary bite is first drag. Next is the occassional bite on the way down. No bites at all fishing it along the bottom. Are these fish positioned up in the water column, in the weeds facing out? I figured if they were some sort of swimbait or chatterbait would draw a bite, but very little. Senko falling on that same spot would occassionally get a bit on the way down, but they were smallish. What else should I have tried? Am I right about how they were positioned?

I'm having a tough time with slither rig hookups. Same problem on EWG or regular worm hooks. Rage craws, magnum lizards, doesn't matter. Basically I go to swing, there's some connect but then nothing. When I bring the bait back in, the skirt is pulled off the weight, and there's been no hook penetration or release. I could superglue the skirt but it seems like that is a symptom not the root cause. Dinks? Blowing the mouth open? Or something else entirely? The slithers are so good in nasty cover, but I'll have to move away from them if this isn't fixable.