Manifestgtr

I have all the reels pictured above. The SLX MGL feels great to cast and genuinely feels like an “upgrade” from the SLX. I would expect to buy an extra pinion, though. Mine has gone a tiiiinyyyy bit grindy on the retrieve after about a season’s worth of hard use....been keeping an eye on it.

Balance is always my number one. Bad balance wears me out much quicker than a slightly higher weight. Im kind of in your nrx boat but for different reasons. There are rods I like more but there are also certain things I feel like it still hasn’t been convincingly bested at...pure bottom contact being one of those things. I think the thing you have to ask yourself is if you really want an nrx and are just trying to get a rod in before August or if you wanna get into a new line/model, see what’s out there. That would be my major deciding factor.

I feel your pain, guys who fish in a lot of weeds. I couldn’t use the wacky rig at all until I went with the weedless gammies. What’s worked for me is to really bend, twist and work the weed guard like crazy until it has almost no more stiffness to it. It’ll still keep a lot of the junk off but it doesn’t foil your hookup percentage near as badly. A stiff weedguard on your wacky rig is no good...

Im pretty specific about my swim jig trailers. I throw 1/4 oz swim jigs exclusively because they’re the easiest to get a nice wobble out of on the straight retrieve. I use a rage tail if I’m going to be letting it fall or if I want more of a “back, forth, back, forth” kick. Otherwise, it’s a sawed off swimmin caffeine shad. 4” for a tighter, more “manually controlled” action. 5” for autopilot mode. I stumbled upon that by accident one day when I was out of rage swimmers and immediately loved them. I think they’re a bit softer or something? Whatever it is, they have a great kick to them.

Man, rods look really disturbing after a strike. Like a big ball of demonic hair...

I might be about to get a lecture but hey... I always leave my trailers on. The fewer I go through, the fewer I have to buy. I haven’t really noticed any rust from that particular practice. I always give my baits a good shake before putting them away. I don’t really like thought of water in my boxes regardless of hooks and rust. The only thing you might notice is that some of the colors might bleed a little bit into eachother...especially the whites and ghosts. I try to keep those away from the other stuff

One of my favorite swimjig retrieves is a straight retrieve but every once in a while you give the handle of your reel a little tap...maybe with your index finger. It breaks your cadence slightly for a split second and flairs the skirt without killing your retrieve completely. I feel like bass see a lot of “stop and go” retrieves so having one in your back pocket that’s just a little bit different and less extreme can be a big help. Swim it by a piece of cover, “tap”, keep swimming normally, halfway back, “tap” and a lot of times that’s where you’ll get hit. You got their interest on the way by and that last little quirk tricks their brain into smashing it.

Ugh...I love the kittery trading post. I’ve been going to that place since I was a little kid

Had to resurrect this thread...I got my first order in today. The brush head is exactly what I thought it would be and the guntersville craw pattern is extremely well done. I don’t know if it’s a “prepackaged” skirt color or picked out but either way, it’s beautiful. The color transitions look incredibly natural when wet and it paired really well with an Okeechobee rage. I kept flipping it under this one little overhang and it got picked up at least five times in a row...took two fish out of another spot, too. New confidence color, bam. At any rate, great work...I had to find this thread and pile on ?. I’ll definitely be putting in a larger order as soon as I can identify and cull the old, used up jigs from my boxes.

Nothin wrong with any of those setups, man. Fuego on Fury outperforms many combos costing twice as much.

I don’t have any exact duplicates at the moment. A lot of my setups are “fine tuned” with a slightly different spec rod or something like that. I have different versions of the same setup if that makes sense. Now please, don’t read this to mean “yeahhh, that’s right...that’s how good I am...what do you think of that”. I know how things can come across on the internet sometimes. Trust me...I’d get smoked and embarrassed by even the lowest level pro and indeed, many other amateurs. I just like to dedicate combos and try new things. A couple rigs I’d like to eventually duplicate are my cnq 844/metanium and my legend x 68mxf/aldebaran. I feel like those combos are the pinnacle for their intended purposes. Nothing throws a jig like the 844 and nothing works a fluke like the tip on the mxf...at least not that I’ve found. Those are rigs I’d duplicate in a heartbeat if I came across the right deal.

I’ve had that happen too. I don’t know if they think it’s a little moving “island” that they can hitch a ride on or something...but they always seem to speed up as they get closer. I’ve never had one make it aboard though. They tend to swim away once they realize that the “island” is already occupied by a human.

Upon further research, I discovered this: case closed, as far as I’m concerned...

With any jig fish, including chatters, I really try to keep the tension at every moment. Something you should be doing anyway, yeah...but jig heads are easily thrown. I lost a really good finesse jig fish this morning. Sometimes it just happens, unfortunately. Cost of doing business.

Shimano 50-70 on almost all of my rods. 99% of my fishing happens less than 100 feet out so I just don’t need more. Plus, I like the advantages offered by smaller spools and smaller frames. i do keep one or two 150-200s around though. They come in handy here and there.

I’m sure there are some wild stories people have around here but I had two interesting incidents this morning. 1.) I saw a little frog hopping along a mud puddle and wanted to get a look at his underbelly color...so I went to give him a little nudge with my senko. He hauled around in a split second, chomped down on my wacky rigged senko like a savage (it was about twice his size) and made a REAL effort to eat it as I was trying to shake him loose. Luckily he didn’t get the hook. Frogs are nutty little creatures sometimes...lesson learned... 2.) There was a woodpecker unlike any woodpecker I’ve ever heard in my life. It sounded like a pterodactyl. In place of the normal, taptaptap woodpecker sound, there was a deep, 3/4 speed, TAP TAP TAP high up in the trees. I don’t know if it was a normal woodpecker working on a large, hollow branch or if there’s some enormous species of Dusty Rhodes woodpeckers around here that I’m just not aware of. Crazy morning on the water....

You’ll hear terms like “stretch”, “sensitivity” and “visibility” a lot when people discuss lines but braid is purely a matter of convenience for me. I fish in heavily, HEAVILY structured water...often from shore. I finally reached a point where I got tired of constantly respooling the chewed up line in my half-filled reels and gave braid/leader a shot starting last season. Still have the same braid in several of my reels and now I just swap out leaders for the most part. The leaders act as my “sacrificial line” more than anything else. If they help reduce visibility as well, great...I’ll take it. It’s been a really welcome change...and I’ve found that I don’t miss line memory at all. I’m a line watcher so having the shortest, straightest possible connection to my bait has helped my confidence a lot and we all know how important that is... I can’t really speak on guides all that much, though. All of my rods are relatively new...the oldest one I throw regularly is an early nrx. The rod builders and vintage rod fans can help out in that dept. EDIT: The only reason I changed was because it felt practical. If you’re having an issue with mono, braid or fluoro and you think you can do better with something else, give it a shot. Going with the crowd isn’t necessarily the reason to change. There’s wisdom to be found in the crowd but there’s also a lot of bandwagoning and irrational thinking. If something isn’t working for you and you see a lot of opinions on something that might help out, go for it. But if you’re catching fish with mono, trouble free...you prooobably won’t notice much of an “uptick” by switching to something else.

Yeah...this is the first I’m hearing of this, myself. The k is a great reel but I’ve owned a bunch of 70s and 70 “variations” and beyond swapping a spent gear set out in one of them, have never had an issue with reliability. And I run those reels HARD. They’re my frogging, toad and spinnerbait reels...

I think they just provide a good contrast in the water...plus, there are a lot of dark colored critters down there. Or who knows, maybe that color scheme just sets off something in certain bass...like when I drive past a Taco Bell. Black and blue variations (black, blue and purple is my favorite), bluegill and straight pumpkin are all I throw. I’ve never needed to branch out.

Is he a reputable builder in the area? Thats always my number one when it comes to deals and buying stuff like this. Guy who’s new to the area with a bunch of gray sticks in the back of his ‘95 f-150? Builder with a shop and hundreds of satisfied customers, including pros and tourney cats? The answer to that question can tell you much of what you need to know right off the bat

Bingo...it’s the same with the curado e and the scorpion xt. a curado e in good condition goes for well over $200, no question. A scorpion xt in good condition can easily be found around the $100 mark

Also, were they THIS big? For the record, I totally believe you. It’s just a funny story is all

Oooo, oooo! You should report on that legend xtreme hf when it comes in. I’ve been searching around for opinions and so far haven’t really found many that paint much of a picture beyond the conquest-tinged “they’re too expensive” rap from dudes who don’t own one.

Wow, your swim jig choices are precisely identical to mine. Down to the size, colors and trailer choices. That’s eerie... At any rate, onto the question at hand...it’s almost an exact split for me 844 conquest/metanium, braid to leader with the EXACT 6th sense jig setup described above or 68mxf legend x/aldebaran 50hg, braid to leader with zoom sungill flukes

If you’re lookin for all around value, I’d say anything jdm shimano around the time of the e series...cheap, Japanese built tanks that don’t feel too “out of place” among more modern reels. models: scorpion xt 1000 and xt 1500 aldebaran mg metanium mg Some reels that are “newer” but starting to become legacy reels are the tatula ct type r and the shimano 13 metanium. Both are a lot of reel for the price of admission.