Big Hands

Me too. The Hazedongs produce, but the Keitech (regular) SI and my new favorite finesse bait, the Keitech Sexy Impact kick butt in comparison.

LOL, I'd wager a guess that the pike was at least as bummed as you were as he does the dive of shame with a hunk of plastic pinned to his grill.

Fisherman's hell

You can also cast onto the shore, and then drag the bait into the water. . . . conditions permitting.

The Vision 110 in Ito Wakasagi is the only lure currently in my tackle box that has the teeth marks on an 8+ lbs bass. Hard to put a price on that, but I'd have to guess it's around $25.

Renting boats isn't cheap, but it will probably up your odds of finding fish considerably.

Rod blanks have a 'spine', as in a tendency to bend more/easier in one direction than any other. If your spinning rod is wrapped to the spine (bending easiest with the guides pointing down), and you fish it with the guides in the opposite direction, it may have a tendency to try to roll over to it's natural spine position (which would be guides down) when fighting a fish. Some rods have a more pronounced spine than others, and not all rods are wrapped to the spine. I think I would rather fish with a casting reel on a cheap casting rod than use a casting reel with a spinning rod.

The SD lakes have fish. Some monsters too. But, they're not especially easy to catch. Are you fishing from a boat? Barrett Lake and San Vicente would be my suggestions.

To state that jig fishing is not my forte would be a gross understatement to put it mildly, but. . . . it seems like it would be super difficult to keep a jig on a bed, and simultaneously keep the light taut enough to reliably detect a strike, no? The times I have fished beds, if I wasn't using sight to see the bass take the bait, I would have caught far fewer bass to put it mildly. For the lakes you and I fish, I have my doubts that the bass even believe it's really a crawdad or a bluegill dancing around the bed. We both know each other is there. They are able to grab the bait in a way that the hook isn't in their mouth several times and just long enough to move it off the bed and quickly spit it away from the bed. Eventually you can see their demeanor changing and getting more aggressive. Finally, they get ticked off and carelessly ingest it. Pretty sure they'd flip us the fin if they knew what it meant.

When you haven't yet caught bass on artificial baits and you're trying to catch bass on artificial baits, it's easy to have doubts and worry about getting it just right. I promise you that you could put that trailer on sideways or backwards, and it would eventually catch a bass. That said, it may not be a good choice for getting bit consistently. J Francho has some tasty looking examples shown for regular jigs. A crawdad trailer for a chatterbait probably wouldn't be my first choice, but a guy posted yesterday that he's been killin' it with a lizard on a dropshot. Maybe a Keitech Fat Swing Impact run upside down or a Yamamoto Zako would be a more conventional for a trailer for a chatterbait, but you might possibly kick butt with the Zoom Super Chunk. Bass fishing can be weird like that.

My friend that has a place on the lake there likes to say, "If you don't like the weather, stick around, cuz it's gonna change." Fork is pretty nice in the fall too. October/November can be excellent. Generally less crowded too.

And if I do happen to catch 'another species', I may or may not tend to reel them in v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y.

Throwing baits with exposed hooks from the shoreline is riskier than throwing them from a boat. At least with a boat, you can get close enough and better angles to get them unsnagged compared to what a shore angler can do. Any lure you toss into the water, you have got to accept that you may not get it back. Even on your first cast with it. I regularly re-learn this lesson. Learned it again last week with a $20 slow sinking glide bait.

Awesome! April and May are the best months to throw lizards for me historically. I just haven't tossed one recently, and honestly never considered dropshotting one. But, I could see a spawner getting torqued at one floating over their bed. Well done!

It's good to know it now has an official acronym since so many of us have been practicing it for so long.

You're dropshotting a lizard?

The Fury's are at a price point where they don't have as much competition as they would if they were and they do well for that market slot. If I was willing to spend $30 to $50 more, there would probably be other rods I would prefer more. And, if I spend $20 to $30 more than I would on other $100 rods, I think the Fury compares favorably and it's not that much more to spend for one. I'm not as impressed with the Colt series compared to what other rods can be had for $80. The Sierra and Champions have a fair amount of competition at (or close to) their price points and I think they offer a good value even if they don't necessarily stand out. I haven't checked out the Kaden series. Dobyns does seem to have a decent customer service reputation as far as I know, so if that is important to you, then that is a plus. Overall, they are good rods, and I certainly have no reason to advise anyone to steer clear of them.

I use those style baits, but I am Carolina rigging them and dragging them very slowly through our version of cover (weeds, rocks and stickups) where open hook baits seem to quickly seek a permanent underwater resting place. I have tried the Reaction Innovations 'Dipper' swimbaits. I caught some fish on them, but the Keitech Swing Impact has been much more effective for me. It's possible that since I am working them much more slowly, the tail of the Keitech swims much easier at those speeds than baits like the RI Dipper or the Megabass Hazedong Shad or the Strike King Rage Swimmer. I will say that the plastic of the RI Dippers, Rage Swimmers and Hazedong Shad (for better or worse) is much more durable . . . . which makes them stiffer. I actually welded a body & paddle tail from a Keitech onto the head of a dipper and quickly caught fish with that. The reason I tried it is because the front of the swing impact baits get tore up very easily and I wanted to see if I could get the durability of the RI dipper and the action of the swing impact . . . and I had the scraps of each sitting there staring at me while I was doing a swimbait repair session. Best Keitech colors for me are: 1) Electric Shad (easily my favorite color) 2) Silver Flash 3) Bluegill Flash 4) Pro Staff Special Other Keitech baits I have been having success with have been the Easy Shiner, and my newest favorite the 3.8" Sexy Impact in Electric Shad. It doesn't have a swimming type tail at all, so I have no idea how it will fare on a jighead, but is an excellent minnow imitation. They rig very nicely with a #2 Decoy Worm17 KG hook if you want to try dragging one. If I don't let the bass swim off a bit with them, my hook up ratio suffers and oddly enough, they will swim a mile with those things without spitting them out. The Swing Impact baits have 'squid scent', but I use Hot Sauce on top of that. Could be why they'll chew on them for so long ;~)

LOL, probably need you to be more specific on the type and size of swimbait you're talking about ;~) Seriously though, if you tell us what you're using, that will let us match-the-hatch so to speak. For me, that could be anything from a Megabass 10" Magdraft all the way down to a 2.8" Keitech Easy Shiner on an 1/8 oz ballhead jig.

I would suggest that there are also regional differences in what things are called. Marketing speak gonna have us tied up in fits.

To me, it's an exaggerated/oversize paddle tail swimbait.

I would call the worm above a paddle tail worm, and I have caught many bass on them. The Keitech Swing Impact, I would call a paddle tail swimbait. Love those too. Try a Google search for: paddle tail swimbait and then paddle tail worm

Balance is important for me. Fishing with a tip heavy combo is less than satisfying to me. Lightweight and balanced is sublime. If I had to choose, balance is more important than lightweight.

I had an incident last week that I have not seen mentioned here. I snagged one of my rod/reel combos on a backcast and flung the rod and reel into the lake about 25 feet in front of the boat. I fully expected it to slowly descend to the bottom, but it just floated right at the surface (and it was rigged with a 1 ounce sinker for Carolina rig fishing) with the full cork handle pointing upwards until I made my way to it and plucked it from the lake. I am thinking that it was the full length cork handle that kept it afloat, but can't say that with certainty. Whatever it was, I am thankful that I didn't have to say goodbye to a $450 rig. When I bought it, I wasn't sure I would like the full length cork, but it is my favorite rod to fish with, and should I ever manage another such bonehead maneuver, I am reasonably assured to get it back without having to swim or go jigging for it. I have several cork handle rods, and I always put cork seal on them before they ever see any action. Keeps them from getting too dirty looking.

I totally depends on your setup and the conditions you're fishing in. If you have hooked a big one on light line, you're gonna have a battle on your hands, and it could go on for several minutes. I had a battle with a 10 lb 10 oz LMB that lasted for at least five minutes because I had it hooked on 6 lb test with a relatively finesse style hook. It took quite a while just to get it up to the surface. . . the first time. Then it still had more runs in her before I was able to net her. OTOH, I hooked a 12 lb 4 oz bass trolling an AC Plug at nine colors with 27 lb lead core line with a 25 lb trilene XT leader and literally water skied that fish on it's side to the net with no fight whatsoever. Bass ALWAYS ate the front hook on those plugs. We used a 5/0 3x front treble and sharpened them well. If you get one going like that, you better keep her coming like that all the way to the net if possible. Those are at the polar extremes of the battle spectrum and need to be approached as such. On the in-betweeners, I will try to pull them over to the side just as they are about to break water to jump. This can mess up their attempt to jump fairly often, but not always. As they come toward the surface, I lower the rod tip and try to get a bit of a side angle on them if possible. The type of bait and hook(s) being used also factor in. Smallish trebles can pull out with too much pressure which makes it more sensible to use a regular or moderate action rod with those baits. Heavier baits can be used by the fish to shake it free when they jump. And as much as I prefer they didn't come up to battle on the surface, sometimes it's better than letting them stay down where you hook them if they have cover or structure to foil you with. I'll take my chances on top rather than let them wrap me up in a tree. The only constant I can offer is to try to keep the butt section of the rod more or less perpendicular to the fish and keep pressure on the fish to keep the rod loaded. Sometimes, no matter what you do, no matter if you have the best setup possible, the fish just wins. The more mature response at that point (after muttering some possibly profane things you won't be proud of later) would be to say "Well done sir and thank you for playing!"