Big Hands

A Vision 110 supposedly weighs about 1/2 oz and that is about the max I would want to throw with the SLXCX610M. I would say 1/4 to 1/2 would be the sweet spot. It is supposedly an XF action, but the medium power is maybe a tad on the light side to balance out the XF action. I think the XF action helps to quickly kill the forward momentum of a jerkbait, which you may or may not want.

The TB guys also recommend the Shimano SLXCX610M (@ 99) for a good budget jerkbait rod. I have this rod and landed a 8.5 lb bass with it using a Vision One-Ten from a fishing pier. I got to watch the fish swim over 6' in roughly 0.003 seconds +/- to slam the bait. She was staring at it sitting suspended and I gave it a small twitch and in the blink of an eye, she was on it!

Honey? Is that you?

He has a full size bass boat for when he's not fishing the lagoon. That little Alumacraft has very little freeboard and would be treacherous even on windy days on the 180 acre lagoon, not to mention the upper lake at Castaic. Also, if you watch the end of the video, you can see just how fast he can go with the electric motor he has on it. He regularly gets reported for 'using his gas powered motor' on the electric-only lagoon. When people call it in, the first question they are asked is "Is it a little black boat?" When they say "yes", they are then informed "It's OK, that's Butch Brown, and he's running an electric outboard." LOL. If, as Randy claims, Randy spent as much time hanging out with Aaron Martens as he says he did, I have a hard time believing that he hasn't heard of Butch Brown.

Here's a couple shots of how mine sits. Whatever you do, I suggest that you mock it up and go through the deploy/stow movements before deciding. I don't love that it sticks out like it does, but I like even less that if I don't hold down on the back of the pedal as I stow it, it drags on the deck. Does it just a little when I deploy it too.

Having put Minn Kota Edge trolling motors on my last two boats, I see something that you may want to look into. I see that the leading edge of the trolling motor mount (the black plastic piece) is sitting back from the edge of the bow plate. I think when you raise the trolling motor, the lower unit will need to drag on the edge of the boat before it gets to the plastic piece. On mine, even though it hangs over the edge a little, I wish I had made it stick out even a little further (maybe as much as 2" past the edge of the boat) than I did so it only hits the black plastic piece when I deploy/stow the TM.

I like to be able to have the reel in different positions at different times. I ordered my last big swimbait rod with cord wrapped (deckhand style) butt section and a turk's head knot at the top of the wrap, and a crutch tip at the butt end. May not be everyone's cup of tea, but I liked my party boat rods wrapped like that and I'm comfortable with a big swimbait rod wrapped like that. For smaller swimbaits, I could probably live with it in a fixed position, but when casting 4 to 5 or more ounces, it makes a difference to me.

If you don't see Butch first in line, he isn't going to be anywhere in the line, LOL. His little black boat is even smaller than it looks and pretty narrow. Very stealthy and all business. His knowledge of the lagoon is unparalleled. What I admire about him the most is his dedication to catching big bass. He has times when he isn't catching much, or even any, but he keeps at it until he breaks down the code, and then he hammers them. He's good people for sure. I am definitely not a subscriber to the Times, but the article popped up on my feed and I didn't need to subscribe. I read an article from them occasionally, and it will usually tell me that I have 'x' number of free articles left for the month, and then let's me read what I clicked on. If you're not able to read it, PM me and I'll send you 'something'.

A friend and I fished together one day and caught fish of many different species, so we decided to have a contest to see which one tasted best. Catfish, crappie, bluegill, trout and bass in a side-by-side taste test. Bass finished in last place. I haven't kept a bass in close to thirty years. I don't have a problem with folks that eat fish they catch as it is certainly within the law to do so. I just got to a point that I was fishing so much that if I kept the bass I caught, I would need a large dedicated freezer just for that. So, I just quit keeping them altogether. I parsed out my feelings about it and decided that I really didn't get any joy from eating them, but I do love to catch them. I do fear that if C-n-R became the law of the land, that it might open the door for further legislation to consider fishing to be harassing wildlife.

I once thought my Daiwa Procaster PT ZX 10 and PT ZX 15 reels were the cat's rear end. They cast wonderfully, so that isn't really the issue for me. The problem I have with reels from that era are that even the low profile reels from then aren't really that low in profile. If you can live with the 'low profile' from that era, they are fantastic reels that were my workhorses for many years. For me, that profile alone (compared to what we have today) was enough for me to finally sell all but one (I had four of them), and I think I'm finally ready to part with that one. I still have one ABU Royal round reel too. Maybe some day I'll become a catfisherman, LOL. I know Bulldog does some incredible things with reels of all types that are fun to see, but I have neither the time nor inclination to mess with them like that. I still have some decent pistol grip rods from back then as well. My wrists thank me each and every day I don't fish with them. I'll hopefully find someone local that I can give them to because I have no plans to ever fish with one again.

That is one heck of a sack, I don't care where you are.

I'm going to suggest that this might not be the best balance of rod, reel, line and lure. It could also be a major reason why you see a bajillion rods on the deck of many bass boats and there might be several more in the locker. Horses for courses, or at least so sez the bait monkey. A medium light spinning rod from Daiwa or Shimano would generally be rated for 4 or 5 to 10 lb mono/fluoro. Between the power (or lack thereof) of the rod and the stretch of monofilament, and that in my experience Spooks don't normally come with the stickiest/light-wire hooks, I am not super-surprised that there could be issues burying a barb or two into the jaws of bigger fish enough to keep them pinned. It's a balancing act to get it all worked out to increase the consistency of landing fish that are initially hooked. I will be the first to admit that I usually find myself on a similar learning curve with baits that I am not super familiar with. In fact, I am currently in the middle of the same thing with another bait and have been contemplating starting a thread of my own for my particular dilemma.

If you want to get your string stretched, and being you're from Illinois, I would opt for an overnight tuna/yellowtail trip out of San Diego (if the tuna are here) and recover while touring the wild animal park. The animals, just like fish, get more active the last hour or so of the day, and the line to ride the train around the perimeter isn't as crowded as it is earlier in the day. I would not fret if I didn't get there right when the gates open.

It is an odd location for a tackle/hunting store/boat yard. Might be perfect for selling leisure wear and camping gear.

Millennium makes a cable kit that fits much closer to the hinge that can either replace the 'armrest' straps or fortify the chair in addition to the straps. The cable kit costs around $17 on A. The camo versions of the Millenium B100 (there are two) come with both the cable (installed) and the straps that are not installed when you get the chair.

FB marketplace and CL have lots of scam ads for boats. Every so often, I go through FB Marketplace and report as many of them as I can find. They are pretty easy to spot most of the time. Any of them that say they won't or can't respond to messages in Messenger so you need to text to a phone, that is a big red flag. If the price is too good to be true, like between $800 and $2,200 for a boat that will cost way more than that, red flag. If the registration numbers are missing, another red flag. If it is allegedly being sold in California, and the pic looks like it couldn't be within 1,500 miles of California, red flag. If the pic(s) are distorted, backwards, have blocks of solid color on any border, they do that so you can't do a reverse image search on Google because they usually rip-off the pics from legit ads and then alter them, red flag. Selling it for a ______________ (friend, relative, soldier, anyone but for themselves). . . . red flag. If you open the ad, then scroll down and click on the sellers name and you see they have posted the same or similar ads in several different cities, run away and take your red flag with you. I will say that FB will sometimes clean them up, especially if you report them. They may come back and post them again, only more numerous than before, but at least they have to waste some of their time doing so. Craigslist OTOH, they apparently could not care less and make it very difficult to report the scam ads and they are numerous for boats, cars, pickup trucks and RV's.

. . . . of course.

I'm sure I have plenty of biases, but here's a couple of the ones I am aware of: 1) I'll probably do more harm than good by changing out hooks on a stock jerkbait. 2) Where I fish, the bass eat plastics far better than other baits. With regard to #2, every bass I caught at my local lake in 2021, I caught on plastics. But given that that what I fish with the most and have the most confidence in, there's no doubt that it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. As an angler, I can be my own worst enemy.

When you can get a new one for $30, it's hard to justify paying someone a fair price to repair it. It would also be hard to justify buying another, even for $30, if one good fight has left you with a reel that doesn't operate correctly. Cheap reels are a gamble (as are some expensive reels). Sometimes you can successfully manage the risk and come out OK. Sometimes, you just get lucky. Sometimes it doesn't go your way. Going forward, if my budget didn't allow for something more expensive, I would probably be more inclined to gamble with a nice second hand garage queen reel.

My PB was also caught on a Poe's Super Cedar Series 400 in Shad color (but it didn't have the red sides like yours. In December no less.

I have a 16' Tracker Grizzly MVX (1648 jon boat with a floor and F & R casting deck) with a 40 hp four stroke Merc) and run a 65 lb Minn Kota Edge 24v. I run it on two Group 27 Duracell AGM deep cycle batteries, with 12v tapping off of one of them for starting the outboard and running two fish finders. I had a 45 lb Edge 12v running a single Group 29 deep cycle (pull start 15 hp outboard) on a 14' Valco previous to this current rig. I much prefer the 24v trolling motor on the current rig and I can run all day. On my 19' Ranger with a 200 hp Merc BITD, I ran with only two Trojan 6v golf cart batteries for starting and running the Merc Thruster (with a mind numbing 42 lb of thrust) with no problems. It was rigged new that way by North Hollywood Marine by a guy on their pro-staff deal that got his new boat rigged that way every year. I know you'll hear that you should have a separate starting battery that isn't deep cycle, but I have not had any issues with just deep cycles. My little 40 hp four stroke takes about a whole two seconds at most to start and I carry a small jump starter just in case. I'd rather invest in other electronics than litihum batteries if I have to pick one or the other. But, I'm not going to lie and say I wouldn't like to have lithium batteries and a 24v or 36v trolling motor with spot lock.