cdlittle

There's no other sub 2" plastic that is anywhere near as durable or has as much action. The tail is insane.

Donkey Tail and Donkey Tail Jr hands down. I've never been skunked on those things.

Way ahead of last year in numbers, but it's been a dinkfest. Largest bass this year measured 2.71lb

You'll have a ton of fun. These warmouth were big enough to hit a 2/0 finesse bass jig.

I use a drop shot for suspending a bait right at the tips of the weeds and working it across weed beds. Being able to work the bait super slow across the weed bed without it dropping down into the weeds gets me so many bites. Like another person said, the secret with swim jigs is using a trailer that makes the trailer undulate without having to shake the rod. I love the Xzone Swammer on 1/4 or 3/8 oz heads.

Throwing baits under 10 grams on light powered, fast action casting gear with super shallow spools is an actual technique developed in Japan, and has been named BFS. I'm gonna go ahead and keep using the acronym.

My childhood best friend and I recently reconnected. I'm gonna surprise him with his first fishing rod setup. He's been wanting to get into it since he's seen me doing it, but unwilling to spend the money since he's into guns. Gonna surprise him with an AirdX 7' ML

Beautiful fish! Yesterday was a skunk on bass for me. They seemed tight lipped after the rain the night before. Caught some real chunky warmouth.

I'm outside of Chicago and I've seen two cicadas so far

Anything topwater

Online Outdoorsman does a lot of kayak fishing

I'd go with the Senior Paca Chunk or the Baby Paca Craw. I love the Paca series. I use the Tiny Paca Chunk on trimmed 1/16th Bitsy Bug jigs for BFS bass and big ol' warmouth. I use the Tiny Paca Craw for the same jigs, just untrimmed. Makes for AWESOME BFS jig fun.

I'm hoping this means lots of bass on cicada pattern flies! Got a 5wt glass fly rod I built just for this.

Weightless fluke

I agree with this. The slower the bait is moving, the more realistic/natural I want it to look.

I have M and MH casting models. Love them and it's made it so hard to spend more than $50 on a rod

For me it almost does. I have two spinning setups, one is a 6' XXUL I use for 1/64 jigs with <2" plastics and the other is a 12' crappie float rod. Everything else is casting. The BFS setups that have replaced spinning setups are a 6' UL rod for 1/32-1/8 oz crappie/panfish jigs, a 7' light rod used for moving baits 1/8-1/4 oz, a 7' ML rod that I use for ned rigs/Bitsy Bug finesse jigs up to 3/8 oz, and another 7' ML rod that I use for drop shot (generally a 2-3.5" plastic with a 1/8 or 1/4 weight). All these rods have BFS reels on them.

Found this thread and, coincidentally, I have dedicated myself to learning to jig fish this year. Read this entire freaking thread and finally got my first jig fish last night in a downpour. http://imgur.com/a/M4TZMpD

Sensation! I use the 2lb for my XXUL spinning setup and 4lb for my panfish BFS rig. Never broken off unless I was doing something stupid.

This is the way. Pull out line, wrap around something (I usually use my folding knife) and walk backwards.

TBH, I'd steer away from combos. You'll get much better value buying separate. If I was setting up the most bang for the buck spinning setup for a 10 y/o, Ugly Stick GX2 with an Okuma Alaris. You'll spend about $80-$85, but the Alaris is stupid smooth with insane line lay for $30 and the Ugly Stick is indestructible. Bottom line, get a decent reel. The reel in the Ugly Stick combo is such a piece of junk it's embarrassing. A 10 y/o needs a reel that helps them with line management, instead of making it more of a struggle.

I've wrapped one ice rod. Never again, buying ice rods from now on.

Texas rig. I keep meaning to try it, but always end up throwing something else.

This! I built my wife and I matching XXUL spinning rods from 6' 2wt fly blanks. They will cast 1/64 jigs with <2" plastics a respectable distance but have the backbone to turn a medium size bass fairly easily. http://imgur.com/a/f9ZPSls

I have a 110 in Bone and have had zero luck on it. Got a 60 for my wife and it got crushed on her first outing with it...on Easter.