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I set the centrifugal brakes for casting with a heavy wind to my back. Then, I adjust the magnetic brakes to compensate for either no wind, or a head wind. Since there's always a pretty stiff wind around here, I use the magnetic brakes to control for that since they're so easy to adjust. The only time I mess with the centrifugal brakes is when I switch from casting to pitching.

I haven't owned that one, but I've owned several of the more recent BPS rods. Honestly, they're about as good as you can find for the money. What I've noticed with BPS brand rods is they spend all of their money on the blanks, especially with their cheaper lines. So you usually get a more sensitive rod than most other brands that you'll find in the same price point. Though often times things like line guides, handles, and reel seats won't be as nice. Years ago BPS and Cabellas had the best rods you could find for the money. These days, there's a lot more competition for them, and they're no longer the clear cut winner in the value department. But that doesn't mean that they're not as good as they used to be. Just that other companies have come up to challenge them. I'd say go for it. It should last you long enough to be done with school where you'll likely have enough money to want to upgrade whatever you get now anyway. And the best thing about BPS rods, in my opinion, is that if it ever breaks, they'll often replace it for you, free at the store. At least they always have for me. And that's better than shipping it off somewhere far away and waiting on a replacement in the mail.

Or get the Fuego. Honestly, I don't think the T-wing adds much. And the extra ball bearings of the Tatula are in the handle, so if you wanted, you could upgrade the handle and pretty much have a Tatula with a regular levelwind. Or Curado's are fine reels too.

It's less of an issue with these new carbon fiber drag discs. They're hard, and they're not really gonna deform under pressure.

That's what I do. Though it's not to keep the knot away from the T-wing (I use 30lb braid and sometimes I'll use a 10-12lb leader and never had issues with my Tatulas). It's to keep the knot off the spool so that when I cast and hover my thumb just above the spool, the knot doesn't wear out the pad of thumb. And even that length is more so I don't have to retie my leader as I switch baits throughout the day. I won't retie a leader until it's down to a foot or two. Fish aren't smart.

That's what I use. Only with braid, I up the twists from 5-6 to 7-10. That seems to hold better with thinner braid. Also, make sure to wet your knot before you pull it tight. Like soak it really good.

My two regular lakes are about 10-15 minutes away. One is large and the other is small. Neither are good for catching bass. But none of the other lakes within an hour's drive are any better. There are two more lakes I'll go to a couple of times a year that are about an hour and fifteen minutes away. They're not amazing lakes, but they're both much better than what I have nearby. From there, for every hour I want to add to my drive time, I can reach a lake that's twice as good as the previous ones, up until about 4 hours. However, with the drive back, that's going to take a pretty hefty chunk on the amount of time I can spend on the water. With work and family, six to eight hours is usually all I can find to slip away, if I'm lucky.

Had a bunch of gulls darting at my Spook this fall. They kept diving down at it, and veering off at the last moment, realizing that it wasn't real. Eventually one got caught in my line. He squawked really loud and then hit the water. But once he was in the water, he managed to untangle himself and fly off. Oddly enough, it didn't deter any of the other gulls from darting at it. I also caught a crab in Corpus Christi in the middle of my line. He pinched the meat of my hand when I tried to untangle him and wouldn't let go. I had to use my needle nose pliers to get him off. It didn't break my skin, but boy did it hurt!

As long as the blades are the right size and shape, color is what I'm looking for, and size is what I need, I don't much care about the brand. I haven't noticed one to produce better than any other. The basic styles are all that matter to me. I typically buy War Eagle, Strike King, or Booyah. You know, the brands you can sneak into the shopping cart at Walmart when you're out buying groceries with your wife. It's all six and one-half dozen to me.

I don't think it will be nearly as bad. Maybe not as good as in the before times, but from what I'm seeing so far this winter, most of the stuff I couldn't get my hands on this summer without several months of wait is back in stock and no longer scarce on store shelves. My guess is as things start to open back up, there will be less people out fishing. That, and I'm betting many of the manufacturers who were slow to ramp up production, will also be slow to scale it back down.

And spoons. I fish spoons a good bit they'll ruin you line without a good swivel!

1 - Heddon Spook One Knocker in Pearl Shad 2 - 1/2 oz. spinnerbait w/ double willow blades in chartreuse and white (any brand) with 3.5" Zoom Fat Albert Grub trailer in chartreuse. 3 - Rapala DT10 in Old School 4 - Strike King KVD 1.5 squarebill in Chart Black back 5 - Strike King Tour Grade 1/2 oz. football jig in Black and Blue with headless 6" Zoom Lizard trailer in Junebug

My local lakes don't ever seem to fit the profiles of the standard lakes that most of the articles and advice you read online apply to either. Mine are lowland, man-made reservoirs, fed by underground pipes without underground outlets that feed nearby water treatment facilities. They're deep and muddy with very little cover. There are no creek channels and very little structure, other than the dam itself. What I've found the best thing to do is to just get out there with your fish finder and run around, checking various areas. The steep transition zones are always a good place to start. Just look for fish and schools of fish. Get a read of what's out there. Find the depths at which they are holding, and the types of structure they seem to like. Then look at your maps for other similar areas to check out. Look for patterns to narrow it down. What you're trying to do is eliminate areas with no fish. None of that means that you'll find fish that are actually active and willing to bite, but at least you're not casting into barren water. Bathymetric maps and online advice can help give you clues on where to start, but they're just a small fraction of what you need to consider. Your best source of information will come from experience of that particular lake, either from your own or from others who fish it regularly.

Green pumpkin is probably the worst color for me. I've wasted so much money on that color due to everyone on the internet saying how great it is, but all it's good for, in my case, is snagging tree branches. However, the waters I fish are usually stained pretty heavily with an iron red color. So I'm sure that's the reason why. That, and I bet everyone else is throwing green pumpkin, so the bass may be conditioned to know it's not a real food. For me, black and blue, junebug, chartreuse, and chartreuse and white are the only colors I ever use on my nearby lakes. When I venture to clearer waters, which isn't often because it's quite a drive, I'll break into my green pumpkin supply. But even then, I can't remember ever getting bit on one. It might have happened. But I can't specifically recall an instance.

I feel the same either way. Speeding up or slowing down, in and of itself, isn't difficult. It can be a bit tiring trying to pull in something like a buzzbait on a super slow reel, however. So maybe reeling faster is harder, but only once you reach that point where you're wearing your muscles out. To be fair, I've been a musician most of my life, so learning to do the same things really slow and really fast are pretty basic skills to master. So I might take for granted how difficult this could be for others.

I'll take my shoes off and wade up to my knees into the water. I've done that many times, as recently as last year. And if it's hot enough, I might go in deeper (getting soaked in lake water isn't a big deal when you're already drenched in your own sweat).

The biggest issue you'll likely run into is casting distance. It'll be hard to properly load a rod with too light of a bait. You may also loose some sensitivity versus and identical, but lower powered rod. But, other than that, it won't hurt anything. So I'd fish whatever you want with you have now, and then maybe consider getting a medium for your next rod.

It would probably be best to remove the factory switch all together. If you accidently knock it down, it could starve the unit and cause issues. The tin foil was a good move. If you can ground it, it'll work even better, acting as a faraday cage. Or move it into a metal housing and ground the housing. Basically the PWM is generating a rapid pulse of electricity to control the motor. That is generating magnetic waves, which are exerting an influence on your transducer, which also runs on electromagnetic waves. So it's kind of like having a loud stereo on in the room while you're trying to talk to someone on the telephone. A bit a bleed over is gonna occur, unless you can isolate it. PWM units can still generate a lot of heat, and they tend to be much more sensitive to overheating than resistive units. That's a large reason why they're more prone to failures. Yours is probably not getting too hot because it's only running at 40 amps, and the unit was designed for 60. So that too was probably a good move. The reason why you loose some top end speed is because at full power, you're wasting some electricity on the PWM controller, even though you don't need it. You could install a bypass switch to go around it when you want to hit top speed, but if it's not bothering you, then I wouldn't mess with it.

That's it. It would probably save you some time switching too.

I'll lift them in if they're small enough and I'm not using a wimpy rod. Probably something like 3lbs or less on a medium-heavy.

I prefer the paddle. But I own some T-shaped and don't have any issue using them. I won't avoid a reel because it has T-shaped handles if everything else is there and the price is right. But if two presented two identical reels except one has a paddle, that's the one I'll take.

ditto.

It doesn't work well in most of the waters near me. However, there's a lot of iron in these waters, so the water itself is usually pretty stained with a red color. So red lures blend in more than stand out. I wish they'd make a rusty red colored braid. That would do well in my area. But I can see why they don't. There's not a lot of red lakes out there.

It needs to be an SDHC card, which can't be above 32GB in size. Anything from 4GB-32GB should be fine. The technicals behind it is the Hummingbird requires a FAT32 file system to read off of. SDHC cards, typically the SD cards in sizes from 4-32GB, are FAT32. Cards below 4GB are typically regular SD cards, which are FAT16 file systems. I don't know if the Hummingbird will work with them. Usually, this stuff is backwards compatible, but not always. Cards above 32GB are SDXC cards. They use an exFAT file system, and the Hummingbird can't read that. So my guess is anything 32GB or below would probably be fine. Though I'm less confident in cards below 4GB.

Speaking from experience, waves are twice as big when I'm sitting in my kayak versus standing on the bank.