txchaser

I use a lot of sunscreen and I'm a bit paranoid about getting it on the baits, so megastrike as at least a cover-up helps me feel better about it. I'll often just put it on my hands when I get in the boat. Helps the bait move through weeds a little I think, and it lights up under a blacklight, so I assume there's either a bunch of organics or some UV coating in there.

Sufix Advance is notable for being low-stretch. It appears that they put braid fibers into the extruder. It says HMPE on the label, but no one knows what that is. Same stuff as dyneema and spectra. Two things to be aware of 1) it is sized like big game, pay attention to diameter. 2) For some odd reason, the fish-n-fool/improved uni has far more impact strength than a SDJ knot on this line. Feels like about 50% difference. It has become my general purpose line. Still use tatsu for light presentations - hard to beat tatsu for that or open water.

@GlennAn actual podcast would probably get some additional interest - listen in the car on the way to wherever. Podcasts and video fill a different spot for me.

Oh forgot about this one. +++

Ip Man

If I have a decent idea where the specific "best" cover or structure is, I'm going to be all over it, or trying to find it. Still don't really have a good vibe for big weed edges and how to prioritize my time there though. I'll abandon all of it for a big pile of topwater bites though, especially on a frog. The PITA to figure out how to get portable sidescan has paid off for sure - there's lots of stuff that's not immediately obvious and so gets very little pressure. I play a mental game, assuming that bigger bass are lazy bullies, and they can and will take the best spots from smaller bass. Where am I, and what am I doing right now?

+1 It sure would be cool if there was a single thread where BR members could post new episodes. Would keep it in a nice tidy place, not be commercial, and still remind me that there are new episodes out.

Owner colorado underspin is interesting on darker days, lower vis water, and in bluegill presentations. Little more thump, little less flash. Great for followups on areas with active fish that are biting a chatterbait - seems like there are often a few more I can coax out with it.

https://www.tacklewarehouse.com/catpage-NRTHLTT.html?from=basres These might help with soft plastics in the weeds. There's enough forward weight to get a nose-down fall vs a swimbait hook. But enough of the weight distributed on the hook shank that it won't nose-in to the weeds.

Bladeforums is the best place to ask.

Trashmaster Jig makes for a interesting in-between - jig presentation but the hook is buried like a t-rig so less snaggy in the nasty stuff.

I stopped fishing them and I don't know why! Probably got distracted with some other shiny thing. Mostly fished them weightless T-rig and did well with them... low and painfully slow. Occassionally would put on a weighted hook so they'd fall a little more horizontal. Biggest fish on one is mid-sevens in the fall, sitting on the bottom while I was fiddling with the TM battery. Had pulled a few fish out of that spot, but the big one was having none of it. What I haven't done is any testing to see if I can pull a fish when a regular senko has been through there - ie does it really do anything different enough to matter on a weightless presentation. Partly on my mind is has a keitech fat replaced this as a better bait for a swimming presentation.

I catch fewer but noticeably larger fish on a buzzbait. I mostly fish it around great cover or other high-percentage spots. Last decent-sized topwater bite was a buzzbait, after having worked the same spot with a paddletail frog and a WP, and caught fish. But the big one wasn't getting out of bed until the buzzbait came by.

I really appreciate everyone weighing in. I learned a bunch. It sounds like the inserts aren't as much of a deal as the frame supporting it. Here's what's on my mind - I move my rods around a lot, and it has caused me some challenges with guides, including a busted AGS guide, and a knocked out single-footed alconite. I think for my next rod I'd like one of the x-ray blanks, especially since they just went on sale and surely a builder somewhere around here picked up a few. Am I stuck on that particular blank - no... but the other NFC-blank rods I have are very clearly different in a good way than my other rods. So embedded in the question was can I get tougher guides without ruining the point of the nice blank in the first place? But maybe the torzite ones are super-tough anyway? For a bottom contact rod I'm really not liking where the trigger is on the fuji reel seat now that I'm in the habit of touching the line. Whatever they call the not quite a micro but still small guides are fine. Is a really nice bottom contact rod that doesn't need to be babied a thing? There are nice shotguns that should probably never see the field, and nice shotguns that are happy in the slop. Truth be told I'm sure I don't need another rod, but I kind of want one, and I can, so there's that. Story I'm telling myself is I can't have a frog, a punch rig or big worm, and a swim jig all on at the same time... but that's summer in Texas. I've made do by putting braid on a MH for the swim jig and making sure I don't have a gaffe-sized hook.

Castaic baits fluke Gantarel in Carp. I don't see that greenish tint in person.

The nasty stuff floating on top and piling up on the downwind end of the lake creates cover. No different than a lillypad, except for the police tape . Chuck a fat ika or something else compact through it that has a slow fall. Then try something with a fast fall. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that presentation in that part of the lake is pretty rare. Yep, you are punching the trash in the lake. There. I said it.

If you are patient, put this book on your amazon price watch. Eventually one will pop up for a non-crazy price. For me, I just take books like this as an interesting starting point. Maybe they help me ask new questions, or notice things in a different light. Build your own hypothesis, and test it for a while. I don't recall if it is the same study @WRB mentioned (BTW please post a link if you have it), but there was one where a big fish they were tracking would always scatter at the sound of a motor. And then you start noticing guys with big big fish talking about long casts or multiple anchors, etc. Gee maybe I should get off this TM or spot lock on a really high-percentage spot?? Only my personal experience, which isn't that much... but the % of the > 5lb fish I catch at least 15 minutes after anchoring are something like 75-80%. Of course my PB breaks the pattern, as I was on spot lock. But it was also a 30-40mph wind, so probably masked a good bit. Lots and lots of clues and patterns and possibilities, but today is a special snowflake with new clues too.

Jackhammer in Bluegill. Just don't throw it near wood, it has a special magnet in it that helps it stick to any wood.

I'm looking for feedback from someone who's fished rods that are the same in all ways but for the guides... How much difference, really between some middling alconite and titanium/torzite/alconite/space-ninja stuff. I'm starting to kick around the idea of getting a rod built to see what that path looks like. It is hard to see from here how a half a gram can make a difference.

Chatterbait - Tatula Elite in 7.x - I don't skip them, so I'll take the extra distance from the Elite over the SV. Probably not earth-shattering, but often I'm trying to cover a lot of water/weeds with a chatterbait, so the low effort long distance is a win. Spinnerbait - SV TW (2020) in 6.x or 7.x - no strong preference, but on the margin probably a 7x as I'm moving everything to that except the crankbait rod at 6.x and the jig rod at 8.x (mostly used for pitching vs dragging) - in those cases I get some utility from the difference. And like mentioned above, the SV spool is nice in the wind with big blades or on smaller/lighter baits. On everything else I prefer the consistency of retrieve no matter what I pick up. And even still if I had to rebuy everything I'd probably just do a 7.x and be done with it.

This won't answer your question but may give you some ideas on what to try while you are on the water. IMO the hookset on braid (no stretch), heavy flouro (some stretch), and mid weight flouro (good bit of stretch) are all very different approaches. The heavy flouro stretches less at the same level of force than midweight, before we have the flouro doesn't stretch fight. Fishing it on mono was just like flouro but made worse by being very tough for me to feel what was going on with the bait. Having some give somewhere is nice, and alledgedly the right combo of it will pop it out of the weeds with just the right accelleration. Cover seems to matter a lot for me - mid-weight flouro on a bendy rod makes me crazy because I have to haul off too hard to snap it out of the weeds. I'm still searching for just the right mix, latest try is heavy flouro on daiwa's MH mod-fast they call a 'regular'. It's ok. I'm sure I don't want a crankbait-style parabolic bend. I'm sure I don't want it on a pool cue. I think by the time I'm all the way done it'll be a 50/50 shot of braid with a MH mod-fast or heavy flouro on a heavy mod-fast. And on the heavy I need enough bend during retrieve that I'm halfway (that's a guess) into the hitting backbone. I want to be able to hard wrist flick out of the weeds. My point is this - try throwing it across combos of flexibility of rod and stretchyness of line. PS: I might try my frog rod with it this weekend if the CB bite is on. Tip is just a smidge stiff, but compared to the other H rod it's really limber.

Look on the fishbrain app. You'll see catches and lakes and often what they were fishing with. Maybe enough to get you on track.

x3 Also, I assume your rod tip is down, but if it isn't, do that too.

(Well, this turned out to be longer than I expected. Many of the behaviors I talk about below I saw in the more experienced and skilled anglers here at BR, so thanks in advance. I hope someone else gets some benefit from this giant wall of text.) I don't think I'm great at it. But I think I know what gives me a shot at being great at it: 1) willingness and desire to learn, sometimes very very far down the rabbit hole. Some of it is just useless data, much of it conflicts, but every now and then I find some new information that really matters. Why do bass eat red in the spring? Turns out no one seems to know. Just guesses. But they do. Testing knots with my specific brand of line, the way I tie them, because a better knot is worth at least a size down in line. 2) I never blame the fish. "They aren't biting" is angler-speak for "I'm not good enough to figure out what will get them to bite right now" 3) Details matter. @plawren53202 says above "what detail like wind or sunlight or weather am I not thinking of. "The water is full of little details like this and they all add up. Sometimes it is the tiniest clue that changes everything. All the information you need to catch fish is there (assuming you have the basics down like what season it is.) So I'm constantly asking what detail did I miss. Did I look in the throats of anything I caught, or see if there was crunch in the belly? Did I put out a craw trap to see the color of the craws? Last trip on new water I got out the beetlespin to catch a gill, because coloring can be very different in different places or bodies of water. This water had really yellow gills, which seems rare in these parts. Or on a weedbed where any cast angle less than 45 degrees wouldn't get a bite, but the same lure and presentation with more than 45 would get bit a lot. 4) as @Catt says, eliminate unproductive water and duplicate productive water. 5) Big fish don't do little fish things. I'm willing to get off average fish to get on bigger fish. Conversely, if I'm on a big fish spot and caught a fish, it's really hard to pry me off of it, unless it is so small that it probably only holds a single fish. Was frog fishing recently, caught two nice fish in a channel in the weeds that opened up on to a small ledge to deep water. No more bites on the frog. But a WP is different so I threw that, and caught another. I knew they were willing to bite on top, so it's worth a shot right? And last but not least, put on a buzzbait. Sure enough, that buzzbait called out the biggest fish I've caught in this lake. Right in the same spot. Dumb luck? Maybe. But there was an active bite on a great spot. Only fish I caught all day on the buzzbait. 6) After action reviews - every time I fish, on the way home I'm running an after action review - what worked/went as expected? what didn't work or go as expected? what tools helped? what should or should not be repeated? and perhaps most important, with the benefit of hindsight, are there any key learnings or "aha's" like a presentation I didn't try, or a type/place I ignored, or I got stuck on where the fish should have been instead of where they were. 7) there's been a lot of discussion of structure and cover, I'm often obsessing about where is the best of the best, assuming bigger fish get the best spots. Knowing how to read a topo map makes a difference. 8) Similar to number one, I try really hard to be willing to be wrong about something and/or have an open mind. As an example the last two people I fished with are great anglers, and they both fish 20lb flouro almost exclusively. Seems crazy to me - that's giant line. On the other hand, we are in Texas so heavy cover is more common than sparse cover in many places. 9) I'm absolutely willing to try new things, especially new or different baits. Sure did read a lot of stories of people ignoring the senko/ned/chatterbait/etc. There's a shadow side to this though, mostly that I carry my body weight in tackle and could spend more time covering water and less time fiddling. 10) Not sure if this helps or hurts, but I'm willing to experiment on the water. Two out of four of the last fishing trips the absence or presence of flake was the difference between bite on and bite off, even across both bottom and mid-column presentation. One was no flake, one was must have flake. No flake was a sunny day, must have flake was a cloudy day. Seems backwards. Without that change they were probably a one or two fish day. 10.5) Willingness to experiment to build a hypothesis. Kind of like #10, if I find something that works I'll often stop fishing it. Crazy I know. But I want to know if it is presentation, depth, color, pace etc. because that might be a new clue to a bigger pattern. 11) Willingness to do what others won't to get a result that I want. It is really dang hot in Texas right now. Like "son, what's wrong with you" hot. Don't care, going to fish through it. Usually pays off. Or this: my PB was in 40mph wind. Didn't care, that's big fish weather. This Saturday had a four-handle on the wake-up time. But maybe the pre-sunrise bite was going to be on today. 12) I found bass resource! 13) I often get the chance to teach other people, and getting them on more or bigger fish than they have ever caught brings me a lot of joy. And I have to understand it well enough to explain it. 14) I'm stubborn enough to believe I'll always be able to figure something out. Might not be this trip or the next, but I'll get there. 13) Perhaps most importantly, I'm "hooked." Badum-tiss.... Things I'm wrestling with right now: 1) the "what is tied on already" inertia. Sometimes slow to change when I need to change, especially if it is a confidence bait tied on. My solution for fixing it is if I get the hunch or urge to do something different, I'm just going to do it right then. I think it'll break the habit. 2) I'm still struggling mightily with slowing down a presentation. That changes when it works, but when confidence is low and the presentation is slow, I'm losing my mind. 3) I'm in the performance trough of I got a lot better really fast, and then I got a bit of info overload, so I'm having to re-learn some stuff or get used to holding two conflicting ideas in my head at the same time. It is part of the process where I get worse at something for a while in the middle, but if I keep at it I'll probably get through it.

Baits and presentations: Might try some Fat Ikas as mentioned in this post. Also notice how the article talks about how little the bait is being moved and at what pace. I agree with the wacky rig option. Try a 4 inch senko. Places: Try casting out a little deeper too. Depending on where you are they might not be close to the shore. Learning how to fish growing up we deliberately stayed away from grass, trees, stumps, rocks, etc and mostly cast to open water. Learning how to fish on bass resource, it is exactly the opposite. It's ok to get hung up, it means you are casting where the fish are. Idling your boat to a spot and dropping an anchor will work fine, but you'll have to figure out where to take the boat to in the first place. Look for differences - different bank like where sand meets rock. An isolated tree or stick or weeds. A point where the land sticks out. A spot where the water goes from shallow to deep very quickly.