Lobocito

If I'm pond hopping I usually have a specific lure tied on I want to use before I even look at the water. Especially for pond hopping, my experience is that the lure doesn't matter nearly as much as finding the fish and making a good presentation. If I don't get any action in about 30 minutes I'll start rotating though. But I view my pond hopping mostly as a way to work on different techniques because I'm usually very confident I can pull a fish using just about anything from my favorite ponds. Rigging for a tournament or a big day on the boat though involves loading up 8-10 rods with everything imaginable and then throwing a jackhammer all day anyways.

I bought a bunch of pre-made skirts from tacklewarehouse a few months ago and was overall disappointed in most of them. Bought from mostly dirty jigs and zman. They looked good at first but comparing the quality of those pre-tied skirts to some jigs I've bought since is a big difference. Siebert Outdoors skirts are super high quality, just bought like 8 jigs from Mike and am super satisfied. He'll put together any skirt combo you want but he also has so many advertised already its tough to find a skirt idea he doesn't have a name for. I also LOVE my Sixth Sense jigs. I think the skirt quality on those guys is phenomenal.

Last Summer I bought my first ever jackhammer. Took it to the creek, caught a fish on my very first cast. Second cast I flung it into a tree 25 feet in the air. (I had barely done any creek fishing and was terrible at controlling my casts...) I let that sucker sit up there for 3 months until it was late November and the leaves had fallen off and the branches were a bit more brittle, took my flippin stick and a 1 oz jig out there and pulled the whole d**n branch off! Moral of the story is that it is very likely to still be there. If you couldn't wiggle it free you probably stuck it hard enough that it isn't going anywhere on its own any time soon.

I have the jig box and LOVE it. Has taken a little while to figure out how to get all my jigs in there both securely and without really messing up the brush guards though. Have spinnerbait box as well and its a great product but is significantly larger ("taller") than it needs to be.. even with trailers I feel like most of my wire baits are hanging several inches above the bottom of the box. I imagine there are definitely better options for spinnerbait boxes than the EDGE but I'm happy enough with mine. Plus it doesn't really "fit" with either 3600 or 3700 size boxes Finally I also have 2 3600 sizes for my creek bag. The water wicks are definitely a life saver for the creek bag because I tend to switch out a few lures and never really revisit it. Would love if they cut the price down just a bit though.

If "level wind" is just an older term for "baitcaster".. use whatever you want. Modern braid is awesome stuff and is by far the easiest type of line to handle in my experience. Chart below will probably vary from brand to brand, but basically the modern braid is rated significantly stronger than equivalent diameter mono. I use between 30# and 65# braid on about half of my reels and a bunch of flouro on the other half, but I probably wouldn't try flouro on an older reel unless you have a lot of confidence in it.

I might do it if I were gonna drag the swim bait along the bottom, but generally feel like you'll get better swimming action from a belly weighted hook or some kind of jig head. Absolutely no reason to not do it if you feel it will be effective though.. #1 thing to learn as a new angler is that you aren't locked into what Mike Iaconelli tells you what to do on his youtube channel. A lot of your very best fishing days will probably come from you making your own adjustments to your particular fish, and if for some reason your getting tons of bites on a texas rigged swimbait.. keep throwin it.

I feel like fishing hit a ridiculous growth spurt at least here in the US this year. Heavily attributable to COVID for sure, but I also think that a lot of awesome youtube channels getting a lot more traffic is driving some fishing love. I myself really got back into fishing in like October and have now reconnected with 10+ people from my past who have ALSO picked up fishing in the last year, and all were getting started well before COVID. Just really hope we aren't overfishing this summer with all the heightened activity!!

A few of my creek favorites: 1. Rebel Bumble Bug (mostly catches some good size panfish but the bass will swing at it occasionally) 2. Small rooster tails. Have a 1/16 fire tiger with the hooks bent every direction and the weight basically torn in half and the creek fish just won't stop assaulting it... hookup ratio gets a little worse every day but gosh dang they just won't leave it alone 3. Microjigs are fun but I don't get much production out of them 4. Trout magnets will catch anything and everything.. under a bobber or sitting on the bottom the panfish will take it, if you start jerking it around some surprisingly big bass will reaction strike it hard I use Light rods with either 4#mono or 15# braid w/ a 4# fc leader. I hear the concerns about overfighting fish but with those lures you aren't really targetting those 3+ pound bass, mostly sub-1 pound dinks and panfish. Actually caught a 27 inch bowfin on the light set up a few weeks ago, but he got flipped upside down almost immediately after taking the hook so the fight was extremely short.

And I think Team9Nine is saying that there is no real difference between reeling slow or reeling fast. If you gotta reel in 6 feet of line for your crank to dive 12 feet, it doesn't matter if you reel those 6 feet in 2 seconds or 10 seconds - the bait gets there when you've wound in X feet of line. So if your question is in terms of pure time from the second you cast to the second your bait is at max depth.. . just burn it

Recently I made a cast with a newer reel I'm still trying to dial in. Blew it up big time, whatever. Ultimate result for whatever reason is that easily 1/2 of my spooled line is now gone. In this instance I was running pure flouro. So now I have like.. probably 55-60 yards of flouro left on the reel. What do you guys do in these situations? it has enough line to fish but if I make a really bomb ass cast or hook into a 10 pounder I could definitely get spooled. At the same time, it is enough line that if I try to just tie more line on with an FG knot or something, I'd almost certainly be reaching that knot on long casts, and I feel like having a knot that deep in your spool that gets cast is.. not a great idea. Keep fishing it with 60 yards and hope I don't get spooled? Tie on a new line? Chop a little more off and THEN tie on a new line and just use old stuff as backing? Wind the flouro off, put some crappy old braid on as a backer, and put the flouro back on and hope I don't reach the backing too often? Thanks for any input / advice. Just curious what other anglers do. With mono I'd probably just chop it off but these stupid $20 200 yard spools of flouro, I probably don't have enough to totally fill the reel again.

Interesting to hear that KVD thinks its most effective to go slow at the start. Was he talking about the big deep cranks like 5xd and 6xd? Since they float, it seems to make way more sense to me that torching them would cause them to reach maximum depth both quicker and while reeling less line, keeping you in the strike zone longer. I torch mine and feel like the bait usually gets to max depth while only moving horizontally maybe 3 feet.. and certainly seems to be I get way less bottom time if I don't torch it.

I was thinking about this question but from a different perspective - "freshness" of the plastic rather than rust. Strike King loves their coffee scent, keitechs are super smelly, googan has whatever their slaunch sauce is. How much of an effect do you guys think those scents actually have? I was about to rig a keitech onto a new swim jig and when that smell hit me I was like... huh... maybe I should wait until I'm about to toss it to rig it??? From a rust perspective, i've never had the plastic cause rust on my lures.

My color of the year right now is black/blue with some green pumpkin thrown in. Black blue jig w/ green pumpkin trailer, jig w/ both colors in the skirt, black jig head with green bait... doesn't matter. The bluegill in my waters are ridiculously dark. I can't find a picture on google that is even close to how dark these gills are, but they are basically black and purple with the very lightest bit of green on the belly. So I think thats a big part of why that color combo is working for me.

Haven't compared them, but that is basically the same question as any other Yamamoto soft plastic vs. the YUM or ZOOM equivalent. Yum & Zoom work pretty well, are tougher, and are dirt cheap. Yamamoto plastic has more action, are remarkably fragile compared to competing plastics, and are more expensive. I used to stick to Yamamoto plastics on the theory that i wanted to pay for the best and I'd rather catch that one extra fish every 25 casts or whatever it might be, but as time has moved on, I've realized I'd rather have a single bag of plastics last me a year or two instead of having to go buy a new $7.00 pack of senkos every two fishing trips. But I'd guess any feedback you'll get will be the same. You maybe catch more on the GY, but we'll never be sure because tis fishing and you can never directly compare really anything when your success or failure is defined by what got a particular living organism to bite a lime green piece of plastic.

Watching Wheeler fish was one of the main things that motivated me to want to go buy a bass boat. The dude is simply an amazing fisherman and an awesome entertainer. And no doubt that he is out there grinding his butt off every single day for every oen of those fish he catches.

I uuuussuuuaaallly use 15# Suffix 832 on my nearly-ultra "light" rod. I love it. Usually I'm using it in some close quarters and the 15# gives me the strength to get my lure back or at least bend a hook out and get it back if I get hung. Definitely get more bites using a flouro leader than the straight braid for light fishing though. Right now I have some 4# mono on it though. If I had to guess if your already having bad twist problems you may have spooled it backwards.. I've had awful luck with mono on spinning set ups before but now that I know how to properly spool them I really like mono.

I picked up a St. Croix Triumph 6'0 Light and put a Sedona FL on it. Bought it specifically for creek fishing during the week days when I only have 45 minutes to fish and can just wander into the woods behind my house but its becoming one of my favorite rods hands down... Two weeks ago I caught maybe 10 little bluegill on the rod, switched to a slightly bigger bug bait and caught a dang 27 inch bowfin on it using 6# flouro 2 weeks ago. (I'd love to say what a fight but the sucker just rolled over onto his belly and let me drag him in... before snapping my line while I was trying to get my phone out to take a pic T.T) Besides that light rod though I hate my spinning set ups. Maybe I just need to buy some nice ones like you have though. I thought I was getting myself a decent spinning rod in a Lew's Carbon Fire Speed Stick but fishing with that thing, I feel like I might as well be using any old stick I can find in the woods. Also have an Abu Garcia Vengeance and it is hands down my least favorite fishing thing in my possession.

Yeah you gotta cross their eyes even if they hit it on the move, at least with the Jackhammer. I've been ON FIRE with the Jackhammer using 15# flouro on a MH-F. I keep my drag light enough that when I hookset it gives just a little on them, but swing for the fences every time I get bit. If I throw a huge hookset and they are still there, they almost never get off. Recently had a 3.5 jump maybe 4 times and she never had a chance. A few other tips - I pull away from the fish down and sideways when I can tell they are trying to jump and be d**n sure you can pull even further once they get up in the air, and reel like crazy while they are airborne. The benefit of keeping your drag appropriate is that you can reel as hard as possible without necessarily just jerking the fishes head towards you - in another words, its easier to keep constant tension, because you won't snap the fish towards you with a big reel turn or jerk of the rod and create slack Edit: I'll note that you will lose some fish swinging for the fences... but IMO, if you can't drive the hook some with a big swing, they're gonna get off before you get your hands on them anyways.

What color V2 do you use? Admittedly my Onyx has held its color a LITTLE longer, but I got some Moonshine I was super excited about and the color is just... GONE after only a few trips. I was using it on a Jacob Wheeler rod that has micro guides and the first two trips my guides were just straight up yellow lol. Maybe the micro guides stripped the color faster? 832 is awesome line. The moss green does hold its color super well. I fish a few ponds that are super pressured and the fish will spook off any 30# braid on the water (even the moss green.. if you cast it over a school of 'em you can see boils everywhere as they panic away) which is the only reason I want high vis, since it'll only work on my resoirvoirs, if I'm gonna spook 'em I want it to look cool lol

@garroyo130 - Thanks for the insight. I didn't quite make it all the way to the pinion bearing, but I did get close enough and squirt some oil in there that that may have been what sped it up. I'll check out that grease. My other stupid expensive hobby is RC trucks so I know all about the good grease. @Delaware Valley Tackle - I thought it was the spool too, but I reseated it probably 15 times before committing to tearing apart the handle gears (and lubed up all contact points for the spool and spool tension rod) but that had almost no effect on the just.. STICKINESS of the reel. I suppose its possible that something wasn't seated quite right in the handle portion of the reel body and I only accidentally corrected it, but after re-assembly several times before hitting the gears with oil.. I THINK it had to have had some effect because of how rapidly it changed the performance. @WRB - Yessir did lots of fiddling with the spool tension knob before my tear down. BUT I have now dramatically increased the speed of the reel. Thanks all for super helpful replies. This was one of my first times ever tearing down one of my reels so it was a learning experience. @Delaware Valley Tackle I'll definitely keep your comments in mind about the gears.. I definitely understand why they SHOULDN'T have any effect on the spool but it certainly felt like that was a problem with this particular reel for some reason. @Bass_Fishing_Socal IDK if you saw my second post but I did manage to significantly speed the reel up once I took the handle off so I don't think it was a bent spool shaft. There was DEFINITELY something wonky with the spool shaft seating, just don't know if I fixed it by total tear down, thru grease during total tear down, or just accidentally got it right after the 16th re-assembly.

I need to start buying in bulk but having 1k+ yards of fishing line lying around seems like an awful big commitment so I'm still trying out a few different products to try to settle on the FC that I'd be comfortable always defaulting to... I've tried suffix fc and it sucked so bad I pulled it off my reel within a week. Tried 12# InvisX but found it a little too weak to handle some of the monster stickfish I like to target. So far 15# InvisX is pretty close to getting the nod, but I just spooled up some 14# Sunline Sniper I'm hoping will impress As for braid I really like the PowerPro Slick V2 stuff but every color I've bought so far basically fades to straight white within 3-4 fishing trips and basically loses whatever its "slick" coat is. So its great line for a short period of time. Gotta find a high vis braid that will actually hold its color.. not that white is any worse for my purposes than neon yellow but just like my bass boat I want my line to be F L A S H Y if its gonna be high viz

I did put some oil on specifically the gear turning the line spooling mechanism. Seemed to be no grease whatsoever on it. Think I should order some high quality reel grease to apply to it?

Little update for anyone who stumbles across this topic: I took the reel even more apart and applied oil to all the internal gears inside the reel handle itself. Upon a close inspection, it appears to me that the culprit was specifically the gear that turns the line spooling mechanism. Applied some lube to those gears and re-assembled and I'm now getting about 8-10 seconds of free spool action. Not quite as much as I was hoping for, but it is nearly 1,000% better than it was, so that is a plus. For others out there buying SLX'es, it may be worth tearing them down and lubing them up before even your first use, because this is dramatically better than it was straight out of the box. I seriously doubt I would have been able to cast 20 feet before lubricating. Still waiting on my new rod to give it a proper test drive but I have high hopes.

Hey all, I recently purchased my 4th Shimano SLX reel (this one is just the slx150 model). Out of the box the reel is very "stiff" or "tight." I've tried disengaging all breaks and have messed with the tensioning rod extensively, but the spool does not spin freely at all. Initially if I tried disengaging the spool and flicking it it would get at most two rotations before stopping. I've taken the reel apart and put some of the included oil on every bearing I could find, and now its getting maybe three rotations. Likewise if I flick the reel handle as hard as I can.. maybe three rotations before it stops. One of my other SLX'es was a little slow out of the box but nothing like this, and with a little use it has sped up. I was going to spool this new one with some Sunline Sniper FC but that is some expensive stuff and right now I can't imagine the reel is going to cast more than 15 feet. Anyone have any tips or advice, or particular spots on the reel I should maybe investigate before I just return it? I've got some old line on some reels I don't use anymore I could spool onto it to see if its any better once its spooled perhaps? Any advice would be great, thanks all.

I have a Silverado and a Jacob Wheeler series, both from Duckett in 7'3 MH, and either of those rods have plenty of backbone to wallop the fish with. Great for chatterbaits and spinnerbaits. Probably would throw a trap well also, but probably not your 1.5's.