txchaser

Turnover is hard. Tight to cover or bottom, won't move far. Get loud or accurate or both. This last weekend I had to cover 2x the amount of water I usually cover and caught half the fish.

Daiwa's 7'2" MH-R [not the -g] action will get you what you need here for bladed jig, spinnerbait, medium wire swim jig. Fine with a senko/poop bait/etc. It wouldn't be my first choice for dragging a jig. My pb is on the Tatula Elite non-AGS rod with small buzzbait (stanley frog trailer). Point being you can do a lot with the rod, and it would absolutely make a "you can only take 3 or five rods with you" list for me. I bet you can find a good deal on the older model silver tat elite. Might also exist in the tatula or tatula xt line. I know they made it in fuego but IDK if that rod still exists.

It is about time to respool a couple of spinning reels and I'm thinking about sinking braid for strolling and neko rods. Worth it? If so, who has the best stuff? And while we are at it, it seems like the target line size moves around a lot - last time I spooled these 20lb was pretty standard, and then for a while I heard about guys going as low as six. But on the leader a bunch of the pros are off the 6-8lb stuff and on 12lb. In texas, not so much wood, lots of grass.

Oh man I didn't catch you were braid to leader too. Yeah you are going to like that rod being floppier (technical term) on braid to leader. I fished chatterbaits on braid/leader for a long time. Hooks aren't that thick, you do not need to jack the fish - should be able to set with a wrist-flick unless it is coming right for you.

I bought one of these and liked it enough to buy another. The hyperdrive gears are just so smooth. Using them for a-rig, and 1oz-4oz swimbaits.

https://www.tacklewarehouse.com/search-tackle.html?start=0&count=20&searchtext=fluke+hook I think Gamakatsu makes one too.

Following up here, apparently the angle really isn't fixed, the computer does a bunch of stuff to figure out how to get the bottom of the screen flat to the bottom of the lake. It is fixed now - if you ever have this problem just calibrate compass and then set it back where it's supposed to be set. It'll jank around for a few seconds and the image will stabilize and look just right.

I lose far fewer fish bladed jig fish with a mod-fast rod than a F rod. I got lazy this year on an outing and grabbed what was handy, a MHF, and hooked into a monster that was waddling around on the surface. I lost her. I might have lost her no matter what, but it gave me no margin for error. I have two "favorite" bladed jig rods at the moment - the brett hite super combat stick and the kistler nitranium. Both are not something I'd want to fish bottom contact, too floppy. Perfect for medium open hook like many swimjigs and any flavor of bladed jig.

Tatula Elites are $185-ish on Amazon.

Might check out SeaMarks and OpenCPN, ran across them today looking for something to be able to view maps/waypoints on desktop with garmin.

The flambeau boxes come with rust-inhibiting inserts, many more than you need for the box. So I took the extras and cut them in half and scattered them about the tackle boxes that aren't Edge, which have their own silica gel packet. As to the original question, waterproof for terminal boxes, kinda mixed otherwise. Probably my favorite non-waterproof is the plano CDS, but I think it is out of production. I wouldn't use a waterproof box without either some of the anti-rust tabs or a silica gel packet though.

Ones I have noticed so far, most of which have been mentioned: 1) sometimes the presence of orange or red in a bait makes a difference 2) flake/no flake can be important, and whether or not it is sunny doesn't correspond. I've seen shiny flake absolute turn fish off, and on. No data on black/muted flake. 3) blade color on spinnerbait/bladed jig can matter a lot 4) chart dipped tail (or chin, depending on the bait) Each of these have made the difference between "where are the fish" and "get the net" more than once, and across multiple lakes in Texas.

would love to see your prompt, and choice of models...

Braid mainline/mono leader for me. Much better hookset on a long cast, super sensitive, etc. But I'm fishing relatively clear bottoms.

Sufix advance is a decent compromise. Mono but with some HDPE fibers - notably less stress.

booyah one-knocker in 3/4 is also a big texas fish bait. it's too bad my fish won't eat any sort of rattletrap, there's grass everywhere, it makes no sense.

One thing to be aware of is that "AI" isn't one thing, much like "jerkbait" isn't really one thing. Free AI is cool, but it's kinda like the plussino jerkbait. Yeah it's a jerkbait and it might work sometimes. Paid AI is much different, and spans a range from LC 110 to a Vision 110, and each of them work in a little different way, and some are very much better than others. These systems are a lot further along than most realize. I don't know where this ends but it is going to be an interesting ride. ---------------- Anyway I had a 30 minute audio conversation with Grok on the way home Saturday, trying to troubleshoot some fish I saw that I couldn't get to bite. It was a useful conversation. Not perfect, but kinda like jamming on an issue with another angler. No fish deeper than 10-12 feet would eat, even when they were on shad. It was even asking me about behavior of the shad that were deeper vs shallower, thermocline, etc. I don't know if I would like using it before going to the lake, at least for waypoints and such. But much like I use BassForecast, getting some thoughts on where to start (AND WHY) could be helpful.

Thanks for having the transcripts on these. Always very helpful.

The Slayer rods are $40 - retail is $120. Spro is pretty reputable and the $120 rod is a very competitive price point, so if you need to fill out your arsenal this is probably a smokin good deal. 24 ton, seaguide axis guides TT has a review up and they didn't hate it.

reel/sweep set. but I do that for just about everything now

Ripping it up a few feet then dropping it has helped me this summer when just speeding a presentation up wouldn't do much. But I probably had the wrong presentation in the first place.

Starlink is absolutely outstanding. Three years in now. Feel free to post or dm questions.

A while back I put my Garmin LVS-34 in perspective. When I moved it back to forward, the screen looked really wrong. I fiddled with it for a while and finally tried one click 'up' from the white line. Then everything looked fine and I've been using it since. But I'm seeing some things elsewhere about transducers going bad and this solving the issue; some people just calling garmin and they got new transducers. Anyone have experience with this?

Mustad grip-pin have worked great for me with the giant TRD.

Wait for the day when they are biting your texas rigs on the way down or on the first contact with the bottom and try it then. Last time I saw this this wacky bite was way way better than the t-rig bite. Fish picking up or tracking the lure down means they are probably feeding up and I think thats where it might shine for you.