Ogandrews

For an all around size it’s hard to go wrong with 1/2. I really like throwing swing heads when I’m smallmouth fishing up north on rocky reefs and islands. If the rocks are super gnarly or shallow I’ll drop down to 3/8 but otherwise it’s a 1/2 with a zoom z craw or a rage menace on it.

I use 8lbs suffix 832 on both of my finesse spinning rods. It is noticeably thinner and better casting than even 10lbs pp, has less drag in the water so it doesn’t make baits pendulum back to the boat as much when your casting at a specific target, and I get better distance casting light baits like hair jigs. I never have had an issue with it being weak and breaking on a fish, even when using a 12lbs leader I will always break off at the lure when I get snagged not at the leader knot or the braid. If I’m fishing a finesse rod like that I’m never locking my drag and horsing a fish in so I’m not worried about my braid breaking, I’ve landed a 47” musky and a couple channel cats in the 20lbs range on it and never was worried.

Canada gooses chasing me has to be one of the worst things about shore fishing. They are the meanest animals in the country I swear, when they are in spawning season they will fly across a pond to try to bite you. Ive had one get me a couple times and it hurts like, well, a huge bird trying to kill you. My biggest pet peeve here is not strictly about shore fishing but it is uneducated people keeping everything they catch or keeping trophy fish. Pretty regularly around here you will see a guy that has no idea what he is doing get lucky and land a trophy pike or a musky and keep it. Musky here have to be 54” to keep and even then it is really looked down upon to do it. It is a shame that a 20+ year old fish has to die because some idiot wants some big mercury filled fillets or wants a skin mount on his wall instead of getting a replica that looks exactly the same. Same idea with walleyes here in the spring, you’ll see them keep 30-33” fish because “they need one for the wall” instead of getting a replica and keeping those genetics in the river.

I was in your exact same boat a couple months ago and ended up getting a dobyns champion 736, couldn’t be happier with it. Super balanced, light, and way more them enough power to fish frogs in the thickest stuff. One really nice thing about the dobyns is that while it has a fast tip and a bunch of power, the rod still loads up pretty well when you are fighting a fish which helps keep them pinned.

At the moment my boat is a 16ft sylvan deep V with a 45hp Honda on it. When I first bought it I was concerned with it being unstable but after having it for a couple months I couldn’t be happier. I have put it on spot lock, jumped off the boat and then did a pull up on the side to get myself back it and even that barely got it off center. It’s got a good casting deck and the walls are not super high so it doesn’t make working baits hard. I know a deep V is not the optimal boat to bass fish out of but don’t count them out just because that’s not the norm. I’ve had the boat in 3 foot rollers and it had no issues getting me back to where I had to be.

One of my main fisheries sounds very similar to the place your fishing in that video. It gets 20ft deep but most of it is under 8-10ft, silt bottom with super stringy grass that grows very thick. Most of the time if you throw a Weighted Texas rig over 3/16 it will bury itself either in the silt or the grass on the bottom, so it makes punching quite difficult. One thing I have been having a lot of success with while fishing the heavy matted stuff is to use a 1/2-1oz dropshot weight with a Texas rigged worm 8-12” above it. The weight will get through the weeds and bury itself in the bottom but it will keep the worm clean and suspended off of the bottom. I’ll have to try that rig you were using in the video, going out there tomorrow ill see how it works.

Yea it’s not necessary at all, it’s just nice taking a huge amount of the resistance away which is one of the main complaints with a deep crank. I could reel in a double #10 bladed musky in-line spinner with a 200 size reel and probably catch fish, but I throw it on a tranx 500 low gear because it makes a bait that usually takes a lot of effort to reel in and makes it quite easy, making the whole fishing process a lot easier when doing it for long periods of time. A tranx 300 casts smaller baits surprisingly well. I know it’s not necessary and heavier than most bass reels, but if you use one with a deep crank you will know why I’m recommending it. Another guy on this forum took my advice recently and got a 5.1 tranx 300 and is in love with it for even small mid sized cranks, and his previous reel was a regular 200 size.

If we are talking about leader material than there is not a night and day difference in sensitivity between using mono and using floro as the leader material. If we’re talking straight mono or floro than yea I would be throwing floro as well, but in a short section as a leader I have found way too many negatives to outweigh the practically unnoticeable difference in sensitivity. Price for leader material really isn’t an issue, it’s just one other thing that is better about mono especially when your carrying spools with you for every line size. Would way rather have all of the benefits of mono when I’m trying to catch a trophy than the tiny benefit of floro. It’s all personal preference obviously, but I think a huge amount of the reason that a lot of people don’t like braid to leader is that they are using floro and not tying connections correctly.

I’m 100% braid to leader on all of my setups. The only time I will use normal floro is if I am fishing a jerkbait with long pauses, all of my other techniques are done with either normal mono or sunline fc100. There are no real benefits to normal low stretch floro, I am not a big believer in line visibility but even if I was fishing in the clear parts of the Great Lakes with 30-40 feet of visibility I would rather just go to a line size smaller mono. Mono has better knot strength, has some stretch, waaay better shock absorption, cheaper, more abrasion resistance, and less memory in a lot of cases. Fc100 is a very stretchy floro designed to be used as saltwater leader material. It is the best leader material I have ever used, but it is quite expensive so I only use it in specific situations. It is a good amount thinner than the same weight mono so you can get away with a heavier line with the same diameter. I mostly use it when I know I am around toothy fish but don’t want to use a traditional musky leader due to the bait I’m using. Most of the time when I’m throwing swimbaits or heavier swim jigs I will use 30 or 40lbs fc100 and very rarely will get bit off. I’ve used it all the way up to 60 lbs when actually fishing for pike and musky With smaller lures, really want to try their 100lbs for my normal sized musky baits.

Exactly what I was going to recommend. I have actually done some deep cranking on both the 5:1 and 7:1 tranx 300’s and they both make it so easy. If you really want to make it as easy as possible get a 5:1 tranx and get a power handle to put on it, once you get used to the power handle it is so nice for more powerful applications.

Now the only experience I have with vertical jigging spoons is done through an 8” hole in the ice for walleye in the winter, but I have done a good amount of vertical jigging for musky in the late fall with bondy baits (up to 11 oz plastics) and fuzzy duzzits, which are just a monster sized blade bait. One thing that made jigging these huge baits much easier is having handle long enough to go under your armpit, allows you to get a lot more leverage on the rod and not work so hard. Another thing I have used which worked super well for vertical presentations as well as throwing regular baits was a jig ripper handle. It is a vertical handle that goes in front of the reel seat and gives you a lot better grip to jig for hours. Not sure how hard it is to jig these bass spoons, but if their anything like musky baits than making some adjustments can really save the day. One other thing, the longer the rod is the less you have to move the rod to get the bait to move. You lifting up a foot on a 9’ rod is going to move the bait a lot more than an 8’ rod, which again is going to save you energy throughout the day. All of my musky jigging is done on a 9’6” extra extra heavy chaos tackle assault stick 2020 rated up to 24 oz lures.

My 2 cents 3.3-3.8 on a finesse swimbait hook, finesse swim jig or lighter wire weedless- dobyns 733c 40lbs maxcuatro to usually 12lbs mono leader curado dc 4.3-4.8 on a Matt Allen head, regular or nojack swimjig, or owner beast- g loomis imx pro 894 fpr with 50lbs maxcuatro to 17-20lbs mono leader curado dc 5.8, 6.8, or 7.8 on an owner beast or huge swimbait hook is thrown on a g loomis 965 swimbait rod with 80lbs maxcuatro to 25-40lbs sunline fc100 depending on how many toothy critters are around, will step up to 80-100lbs floro if I’m targeting toothy guys, tranx 300 hg

I’ll post the two rods from my arsenal that I would take if I could only bring two on a smallie trip. spinning- g loomis e6x 852 medium xf, shimano nasci with 8lbs suffix 832 to usually a 8lbs mono leader. Covers all of my finesse stuff and I could get away with throwing some jerkbaits on it, which is 80% of what I throw for smallies. casting- dobyns champion 733 7’3” they call it a Mh but it’s more like a medium and its rated fast but it’s more so moderate fast, with a shimano curado dc 8.1 with 30lbs maxcuatro braid to whatever leader I want to use. Good for topwaters, little football jigs, lighter wire pivoting football heads, finesse swim jigs, I’ve gotten away throwing squarebills and shallow to mid cranks on it, spinner/chatterbaits if you wanted, lighter wire t rigs, whatever really super versatile rod. You can find comparable rods to these at a lot of price points. I will say if you do go with a st croix rod go with a mojo bass over anything else. The premiers use scII blanks and the Mojos use scIII, there is a big difference in sensitivity and weight between the two of them. I have a lot of gear that is more expensive than a mojo bass but the 6’8” m xf casting rod is still one of my favorite rods I own no question, best jerkbait rod I’ve ever used.

Had my best day of fishing of the year so far at my normal 100 acre reservoir. Water was perfect, a foot or two higher than normal and about a foot of visibility. Got a new pb of 7lbs, although the way my buddy took the pic makes it look almost photoshopped and smaller than it was at the same time. Wish I could post the videos here, have two good videos showing it off and giving a good idea of the actual size, with one of them showing my entire double xl glove wearing fist completely down is throat. That fish came on a teckel sprinker frog and looked like someone flushed the toilet when it hit, amazing fight. Crazy how fat these fish are for the spawning less than a month ago. Had 3 others over 5lbs and 3 more over 4lbs all on dirty jigs no jack swim jigs, truely incredible day on my favorite body of water. Had a couple upper 30” pike follow our baits up to the boat but none wanted to play, the pike fishing at this lake really slows down when the water gets over 72-74. 2nd pic was the 7 I love my fishing buddy but I need to get him to start taking some more realistic pictures, not sure what he does with the camera but they always turn out making the fish almost look smaller because of how big they are in the shot, if that makes any sense. Hopefully I’ll be posting some pictures of some 50”+ musky in the next week or two, after work on Thursday I’m heading over up to vermilion for 11 days and spending almost the entire time musky fishing. Sure I’ll get some smallmouth in but I really want to get another one of those ugly toothy things, hopefully 11 days is enough to figure the pattern out.

One way to present a keitech differently than most people do is to throw it on a swinging football head. Works especially well around rocks but as long as there is something to bang the head off of it will work well, caught some great fish this way.

Most people around here pretty much laugh at you if your fishing for anything besides walleye. We have some of the if not the best trophy musky fishing in the world, amazing pike fishing in areas, incredible smallmouth, thousands of lakes with great numbers of largemouth, 100+ lbs lake sturgeon, biggest lake trout in the country in Lake Superior as well as great salmon, hundreds of trout streams, great flathead, some of the biggest channels in the US in the red, st croix, and Mississippi rivers, and people want to act like walleye are the only thing you can fish for.

1. Had a giant beaver, looked 60-80lbs, try to climb into the boat one time. I didn’t notice it swim up and all of the sudden heard this scratching noise on the bow, noticed the beaver trying to grab onto the walls of the bow. I luckily had a paddle close to me and whapped it on the head a couple times and it just swam off like nothing happened. Had to change the ole trousers after that one, those things have some serious claws and teeth. 2. Hooked a small pike super deep with a treble one time and really mangled it unhooking him. I did my best to revive him but he went belly up after a couple seconds. Not even a minute later I heard a huge whoosh close to my head and a full grown bald eagle came and grabbed the pike 10 ft from my kayak. Made me feel better the fish didn’t go to waste. 3. Had a vole or mole or something come and sit on my boot one time while trout fishing in the winter. It must have felt some warmth coming from my boot and liked it, looked like it didn’t have much for eyesight. Chilled on my boot for a good 10mins and I proceeded to land a pretty nice brown while it was sitting there.

If you get a trailer with enough action I don’t think that there is any need at all to shake your rod. I have caught a huge amount of fish in chocolate milk water on a straight retrieve with a heavier jig and a more active trailer. I mostly just use keitechs but have also thrown rage swimmers, true bass 4.5”s, and xzone swammers with success. I never go out bass fishing without a swim jig of some form tied on, one of my absolute confidence baits. 1/4 oz-3.8” keitech 3/8 4.3” or 4.8 and 1/2 or 3/4 get a 4.8

Don’t overlook the slx or slx xt. Xt is barely different than a curado K, incredible reel for the price. Seems like most of the guys on this forum are Diawa fanboys but the slx and xt is an incredible deal for the price

That’s awesome man I’m glad you like it. I actually just bought the HG version of that reel as well and absolutely love it, reeling in fish with it feels like your using a winch. There is something about the tranx that just makes it amazing. It’s surprising because technically it’s a super simple and outdated reel, but it is by so much the best big low profile reel on the market. I think the simplicity and toughness of it is what makes it so good. also just recently got the 7’4” MH version of that rod and love it for squarebills and mid depth cranks.

Seems like for me Im having the opposite experience as you guys. I’m in Minnesota and I had my first frog fish on April 29th in the Mississippi, before the rest of the states season even opened up. I have been getting fish to eat topwater since the water was in the low 50’s, most years it seems I can get at least one bite per trip right when the season opens.

Bitsy flips are the jigs that got me started jig fishing, still use them although I usually throw the dirty jigs compact flipping jig now. Very similar size to the bitsy but way better colors and way better hook/weedguard. I absolutely agree that beat up jigs work the best, I also think that my hard baits that are covered in hook rash and chipped paint work way better than brand new ones out of the box. I’ve never had an issue with bitsy bugs skirts coming off though, caught 40-50 fish on the same jig before losing it and the skirt never got pulled down.

I’ve always gravitated toward standard gold and silver blades most of the time. I will say there have been days when musky fishing that I decided to take a break from the big baits for a bit and tied on a chart/chart or white/white 3/4-1oz double willow spinnerbait and burn it as fast as I can, and could not keep the smallmouth off of it. I don’t know what it is about that giant bright thing flying past them but it seemed like every smallmouth I passed I would get to hit. With as much success as I’ve had doing that, I really wonder why when I almost always slow roll spinnerbaits when I’m actually fishing them for bass. Anyone have any recommendations for heavy wire double willow spinnerbaits in the 3/4-1oz range? Preferably with a closed line tie but doesn’t have to. Most of the time I end up throwing smaller musky spinnerbaits, but they generally have a lot bigger blades that make it harder to burn them without them blowing out of the water.

I was planning on it, need to order some

Might actually pick one of those up if I can find a deal on one, been looking for a small reel for my jerkbait setup to replace the curado 70 I sold, I’ll look into those if I don’t end up just getting another curado dc or chronarch mgl