Ogandrews

Have you considered getting a aluminum bass boat? For that amount you could get a great used boat, going to end up with more for your money with aluminum that you would with glass. If your wanting to fish really really big water like take it out on some more inshore spots in the Great Lakes than I would understand getting a glass boat. I had that money to spend on a boat right now, I’d look at getting a used tracker 195 with a 150 on it or even a ranger 198 if you could find one cheap enough. Lots of great boats in that price range if you look around. I’m sure you’ll be able to find a good glass boat for that price, but don’t think you need a glass boat just because the pros drive them. Aluminum will work amazing on 95% or more of the lakes in this country.

Got this 14ft aluminum shallow v a week ago for the small reservoirs and ponds around here. My buddy bought a trailer for his drag car and the guy left this boat in it, so I got it for $200. No leaks and light enough that I can throw it in the bed if my truck myself with no problem. I’ve got a 55lbs tiller minkota that I hook up to it and it actually pushes it pretty good, got to 5mph on Sunday on calm water. Hooked garmin striker with down imaging up to it I had left over from ice fishing, ripped out the front seat and replaced the middle bench with a 2x10 to save space (pictures are from before I replaced it). Surprisingly stable for how light it is, and I can get it in less than a foot of water, I couldn’t be happier with it for what I’ll be using it for. I’m thinking about building a casting deck in the front, probably going from the middle seat up to the bow. I’m not sure how I should go about this. I know having a higher deck would be great for ease of rod clearence but the higher it is probably the less stable the boat will be. Also really want to keep the weight to a minimum as it’s already probably around it’s limit with 2 people, 2 batteries (use 2 on both sides just to make it more stable) multiple rods and my other gear. Any recommendations on how to go about supporting the deck and what to use to make it? Or any other ideas on what I could do to make it a little better to fish out of? And yes my entire garage is taken up by 2 boats, a kayak and a bunch of fishing gear, lady isn’t to happy about it but it’s gotta go somewhere.

Pad crasher are one frog that I have used and done super well on, I’m really not sure why I don’t throw it more often honestly. I like that the bullywa is a little fatter than most frogs, seems to put out a bigger disturbance while still being able to walk. That bigger profile isn’t always a good thing though so I should keep some more of the pad crashes in my box. Anyone here tried any of the teckels with the metal feet on them? Might have to throw one in my next TW order because I could see that subtle action really working well, might be similar to a soft toad but a little noisier. One other frog I want to try to get to work this year is a bigger heavier frog designed for fishing matted vegetation. R2s makes one that I’ll try, any other recommendations? I have had some success with bullywa’s on Matt’s but it doesn’t really make a big enough disturbance for it to seem very effective.

Thanks for the replies. As of now unless I can find an expride XH somewhere I will most likely be getter a dobyns champion 736 spit grip. I already know I’m a big fan of dobyns rods and I like all of the champions I own so I doubt it will be much different. I liked the Sierra a lot and I would still use it all the time if I hadn’t had sold it, it just didn’t have quite the power I was looking for. Most of the time when I’m frogging I’m fishing in some really nasty stuff, and a lot of the time I’m in that I’m in a kayak so it really pays to have some extra hooksetting and dragging power. If I can find an expride I’ll get one, but I know I’ll be happy with the dobyns. I am looking for a new jig/t rig rod though so I still might get the 7’2 h, or maybe a MH I don’t know. Decisions decisions

Ive got a huge amount of bites on the toad runners but my god does that thing have a terrible hookup ratio. I don’t know if it’s something I’m doing wrong but I hook up way more on the teckel. I have actually had some great action on roadrunners once the paddle tail got bit off, frog walks super easy.

Anyone here have any experience with the zodias 7’2” heavy ? I need a new frog rod and I can’t find an expride 7’3” extra heavy anywhere online so I was looking at the zodias instead. I like a really strong rod for frogging so I would rather have a XH, but if the heavy zodias has enough power than I’d be willing to try it. Last year I frogged one a dobyns Sierra 735c which worked but was definitely underpowered. I’m also thinking about just spending the little bit extra $ and getting a dobyns champion 736 which I know I’ll like, I own a champion 766 flip so I know a 6 power will have plenty of horsepower. Any info on the zodias would be appreciated, or any other recommendations for a frog rod in that 200-280 range.

Never owned a fury but I own lots of sierras and champions. The 733 is a little light for t rigs for my liking a 734 should be perfect. I had no issues throwing t rigged paca slime with a 1/8th oz pegged tungsten on my 735 Sierra so you shouldn’t have any problem with the 4. At least with the Sierra and champions the rods have a nice soft tip and then transfer into a strong backbone so it really helps casting even light baits.

If you really want to make him happy get him a Shimano expride and a bantam mgl. Lews makes good reels but get him a good Shimano and he’ll be a happy man. Another option that if I was getting the gift I would prefer is that you get him a really nice rod and let him get the reel so he can get exactly what he wants. For the rod take the money you would have spent on a combo and get him a G loomis NRX or GLX, or a St croix legend extreme. I am super picky on what reel I want, but I would be jumping for joy with any of the rods I mentioned. It’s hard to go wrong with a 7-7’3” MH or heavy if he is in to bass fishing.

I don’t regularly keep fish but when I do bass doesn’t even cross my mind. Around here we have so many other high quality fish like northern pike, walleye, sauger, yellow perch, whitefish, channel cats from clean water, wild stream trout from crystal clear streams, lake trout from super clean deep lakes, salmon in lake superior, burbot, crappie and sunnies of course, people even net smelt and eat them. Very rarely will you hear about people eating bass here, it’s kinda looked down upon even though bass are pretty unpopular here. There’s a lot of fish on that list that I would be willing to bet taste a lot better than bass, not something I’m going to keep any time soon.

Felt like I was the only person that fished tubes like this. Amazing way to fish for smallmouth, especially in current. I think it works better with a lighter weight in the tube, gives it more of a gliding action. If you want a great little tube to use for this technique try the TRD tube on a 1/16 or 1/8th head. Has an incredible action, very small bait but I’ve got some really big smallmouth on it. Everyone overlooks small 2.5-3” tubes but I get my biggest smallmouth of the year every year on the 2.5” power tube.

Going to fish a shakey head A lot more often that a Ned. I can cover more water with a shakey head because a ned is best fished dead sticked for longer periods of time imo. I can drag a shakey head through rocks, wood, weeds, sand, gravel, and it is effective through all of it. You can effectively fish neds through the heavier stuff as well. A shakeyhead can be fished with a finesse worm, a smaller creature or craw, or a big worm with a heavier and bigger shakeyhead and fished aggressively. A ned obviously works, but all of the hype about it on YouTube is really overemphasized in my opinion. It’s so trendy to use one now that people think it is the cure all lure. It obviously gets bit, but so does a tube, dropshot, wacky/neko with a small senko, split shot rig, hair jig, smaller grub, small swimbait. People forget how many good finesse baits there are because there is so much publicity around the ned. I throw the ned, but I definitely use a dropshot, tube, hair jig, and 4” senko more often.

With real frog season right around the corner for me it got me thinking about them today. I throw frogs more than any other bait in the summer when I’m fun fishing because I enjoy using them so much. I find myself having a river2sea bullywa2 tied probably 90% of the time. Once in awhile I’ll throw a spro popping frog when it’s windy or I’ll cover sparse grass with a teckel sprinker, but vast majority of the time I’m throwing the bulywa. What are your guys favorite frogs? I have tried a good amount and have a lot of confidence in the bullywa but I’d like to branch out some. I walk a frog almost all the time I’m fishing it so what I think of as a “good” frog is one that walks well generally. Let me know some recommendations you guys have.

Never used them before but this winter my local fleet farm had a bunch of bags of uncle josh pork craws so I bought probably 6 bags. When I took them home they were super stiff and a couple broke when I took them out of the pack even though they all were covered in a bunch of oil. A they also were some pretty weird shapes with a lot of them being all folded over. I’m assuming that they aren’t good anymore, anything I can do to save them?

If walleye are anything like muskies than warmer weather and longer growing seasons do not automatically mean bigger fish. They do grow faster for sure, but the almost get burned out at a certain point. TN has some monster muskies in it, bigger than Wisconsin besides the Great Lakes in my opinion actually, but never get to the size of the fish in northern MN, Ontario, and a couple places in Michigan that live over 20 years and get to world record potential size due to incredible amounts of forage and a life span long enough to grow to that top .01% size. I can’t guarantee that walleye are the same as muskies in this aspect but it would make sense to me. The fish down south will grow much faster but will die off before they have the potential to get to that record size. Look where the biggest walleye consistently come from nowadays, the Great Lakes, Columbia River, lake Winnipeg/red river, even the rainy river in northern mn and lower Mississippi here in southern mn. They are all in a much colder environment where the fish grow at a much slower rate but the fish still get to that trophy size on a consistent basis. If there wasn’t any negative effect (shorter lifespan) on cold water fish like walleye and musky growing faster in southern waters than the fish down there would be significantly bigger than our northern fish on a regular basis, just like largemouth are. I could be completely wrong about this too, I’m just speculating as I know a lot more about muskies than I do walleye. Musky strain makes a big difference as well in growth rates. I was looking at a study that was done on musky growth rates and it showed that our leech lake strain Minnesotan fish will usually be 40” or more by the time a Wisconsin fish hits 30”. Pretty crazy the difference in growth potential.

I would definitely recommend against using the 70 as a reel for heavy applications. I love my 70, I have it on a 6’8” m xf jerkbait rod and I couldn’t imagine trying to use it for power techniques. I don’t think that it is nearly as strong as a K which is a beefy reel. I could be wrong and it could be an awesome flipping reel, but with the small handle and how it feels when I fish it I’d way rather use it for finesse stuff.

Reading the beginning of your post I was going to recommend you going to either 50 or 65lbs maxcuatro, as even 65 is smaller than most companies 50lbs. Unless your fishing a super heavy wire hook, try dropping down to a little bit lighter leader and you might get a little more distance as the leader knot will be a bit smaller. Another option I used when shore fishing is switching to a heavier longer spinning rod. I’ve caught a lot of fish on t rigged senkos on my 7’6” st croix triumph mh spinning rod that I usually use to throw jerkbaits and little stuff for pike. I’ve got 20lbs maxcuatro on that, and it can cast an absolute mile while still having decent hook sets due to its length and power. Great info in this video. Not enough people stress the importance of casting like this where your rod is almost like a pendulum around the reel. This is especially important in my opinion when throwing really big baits where if you try to throw them really hard your going to end up wearing yourself out and not getting any more distance. When I’m musky fishing, big swimbaiting is the same idea, I will use the weight of the lure and the length of the rod to make the cast and it will go to the other side of the lake without me putting a whole lot of effort into it. Saves your shoulders and allows you to throw these big baits all day long.

I’ve actually read that article multiple times, that fish has a lot more evidence going for it than a lot of other world records. I’m not saying that it wasn’t a big fish, based on the size of the head that easily might have been in the 20’s. I personally just don’t really believe records from back then, as many of them from that era have had the sizes exaggerated. Look at the multiple “world record” sized muskies that came from the Hayward area from that time, and then how every one of those fish has been proven to be faked. People didn’t take the record keeping process as seriously, a lot saw it as a way to bring tourism to their areas so there was a lot of incentive to “break records”. If you want a good history lesson on musky records specifically, look into Larry ramsel he put out a great video with today’s angler debunking all of the musky records, as well as having his own record keeping agency called the modern day musky record. There’s no way to know if that walleye actually was the size it was, just like there’s no way to know if the smallmouth or largemouth records from that era are true. I don’t really believe them, but then again there’s no way for me to really prove them false.

I know it would. When I was a kid and didn’t know anything about bass fishing my go to way to catch bass was to cast or troll a bladed crawler harness that is designed for walleye. Would use them on a really short snell most of the time so I can cast them and use a bullet weight up front of the swivel. Caught some awesome fish doing that.

The legalis lt is the only diawa reel I have ever owned and I was super impressed with it for the price. Ended up giving it to my girlfriend, used her combo last weekend and landed a 47” musky on it with an 8lbs mono leader so the drag is pretty decent.

The two biggest largemouth I have ever caught, actually my only 2 over 5lbs that I officially weighed, were on musky baits. The first was on a 9” black weighted suick and the other was on a walleye colored magnum bull dawg I was ripping through weeds. That 5lbser eating a 15oz bait that is almost 20” long with the tail extended gave me a lot of confidence to throw bigger baits for bass.

I use a violent extractor when I’m fishing really heavy slop for pike and musky and still want a blade. It is bigger than what most people throw for bass but I have caught a lot of smallmouth and largemouth on musky sized blades. It also comes in a shirtless model that has a larger hook with a reaper on the back, looks great in the water.

No way for me to say for sure that it is a lie, I just think that it makes more sense for a fish of that size to come out of the Great Lakes. It doesn’t mean that that fish was fake, but if you look at where trophy fish consistently come from i think the Ontario one is more believable.

I’ll have to give a fuego lt a try, I’ve got nasci on all of my spinning rods. The reels are good enough than I don’t feel the need to buy a higher end reel as I would rather put the money towards buying a better rod. As long as the reel has a smooth drag I think you get more out of your money by buying a much better rod when it comes to spinning.

A used nrx with a Shimano nasci would be a nice combo but if I had $500 for a spinning rod I’d probably go with a poison adrena and an ultegra or a st croix legend elite or old model xtreme both the same blank and a Shimano nasci

There are so many igfa records that are either obviously frauds or very questionable that I honestly don’t pay much attention to their lists. In my opinion the real biggest walleye is the Ontario record from the Niagara River at 22.25lbs. It was 36.5” which for a fish out of the Great Lakes is actually believable unlike the apparent 41” fish from Tennessee. If there is going to be a real walleye record it’s going to come from either the Great Lakes or another large lake in the north with very little pressure and allows anglers to fish for them prespawn.