casts_by_fly

And you asked brands. Mostly, I’m throwing hand tied ones that my dad makes up. The body looks like the frog buzzer preformed bodies from LPO and the skirts are fire tip black/chartreuse. He likes to tie them up in the winter for something to do. I also fish the strike king sugar buzz and the accent wheeler (regular and finesse). They all work. The main differences are how well they each say tuned after catching fish.

skirted with a spunk shad trailer and trailer hook. Black skirt with chartreuse tips (hand tied). GP chartreuse or white over chartreuse trailer (it’s just for the chartreuse belly). I’ll throw 1/4 up to 1/2 ounce baits depending how fast I want to move them.

Basically every word in that description is marketing puffery. All you can do is read some reviews of real users, get one yourself, and feel it. Since it is TW, they have free returns (even on rods) so there is no harm in doing so.

Yep. That was our last snow storm. It was like trying to move wet sand. My blower couldn’t do it and it was just shutting it down. The impeller just stopped. It’s cold here, but everything forecast is rain which is good and what we need. An inch and a half over the next 24 hours and 60-65 degrees should eliminate any ice holdouts to the tune of I’m not even going to do any more recon trips. Next trip out will have the boat on the back.

You mean Glenn, the guy that owns this site, who tries to get true bass professionals (whether tourney pros, practicing biologists, or others) to share their knowledge for the benefit of the people that come here? It’s not an airport. You don’t have to announce your departure.

grip on tube like that is for manufacturing like you said. It's easy to keep all the grips to the same internal, straight diameter and not have to make them individual to each blank. You can build them separately to the rod in another part of the factory and you need less space to do it becuse you're not swinging around a 7' rod- you only have a 24" piece or so. If you're going to pull the tube off later anyway, it would be a neat experiment to see if the remaining blank floats or sinks. That will tell you if it's hollow (and plugged) or full solid.

thanks gents. I'll give a couple of them a try and see how it fares for me.

I'd still be surprised if that wasn't an epoxy plug and the blank itself was hollow, but you have it in hand so... The last solid blanks I know of were older fiberglass ones (ignoring super specialty ice and heavy saltwater blanks) and that's going back to the 50's or 60's. The thing with a solid blank is that it actually would bend MORE than a hollow version and of course be much heavier. It's to do with the physics of tubes vs solid rods. Considering the end use case here (light power finesse fishing) I'm not sure I see where a solid rod would have made sense design wise. What's your plan for the rod? Surely you have something in mind if you went to the work of stripping it.

I think pictures would help here. Given the aluminum tubing on the butt, I’m not sure you could see up into the blank itself well enough to tell.

What makes you think this isn’t a tubular blank? It almost certainly is. It looks like a tubular blank with an aluminum tube for under the handle.

Year round. Anytime the bass want to eat a bluegill or shad and are in cover that a jig would fish well is the time to throw one. I have tons of grass here and the swim jig and grass just go together.

Agreed. The autopilot had a power drive based motor and was remote only. It’s got spot lock so that’s a plus. Gim’s right though about noise on it- high pitched gear motor whine. For your boat, I’d go with the true cable drive and get a new one. The spare battery is a good idea, but wait until you decide on any electronics for the boat. In the kayak I had a 30 AH for the electronics but I built a wire shunt to connect it to the main battery system in case I ever ran out of battery or had a problem with the main battery. It happened twice and I was grateful because the AP was a barge to paddle.

@Glenn @Bluebasser86 - What knots are you using with the light stuff (6 lb)? I’m having a heck of a time with any knot that isn’t a trilene knot with it. I put it on my BFS rig. My usual knot for all things straight mono or fluoro is a double pitzen. I was a palomar user prior to that. I can’t get either of them to do well with 6 lb tatsu. I am wondering if the pitzen is crimping/damaging the running line as the knot cinches down and on 6 lb it’s just too much. I don’t have the same problem on heavier fluoro or mono. My fluoro leader hook knot is a trilene knot and that was great with 6 lb tatsu. I had a heck of a time breaking off a couple snags today tied that way and I straightened out a light jig hook. If I have to stick with the trilene knot for this line then so be it but it’s just weird to me.

I went with LiTime lithiums because of the good teardown info and the user reviews over the past couple years. I expect they are at least 5 year batteries which compared to alternatives means at least break even price/life. A 100AH 12V is around $250-275 depending which you’re looking at. That’s the same price as an AGM and half the price of the pricier lithiums with a 10 year warranty. So if in 5 years it craps the bed I’ll replace it with the same and be where I would be if I’d have bought the expensive one. And, the 10/11 year warranties are prorated after a certain point so you’re not going to get a brand new battery at year 9. I’d recommend 12V batteries unless he needs the space. It is a lot easier to find a charger that does 12V than does 24 or 36. And if one battery has a problem you can replace a single to keep going. I would also question if he really needs 100 AH. He might. But just be mindful of the comparison to lead. A 135AH group 31 lead acid doesn’t have as much usable capacity as an 80 AH lithium. So if he’s saying that he needs 100AH batteries because he has lead and that isn’t enough then lithium is a different animal. I put a 24/50AH in mine because I was limited on space and couldn’t fit another battery and also 50AH was plenty (and still is) even for fishing electric only lakes. But I’m not fishing 1000 acre electric only lakes or trolling at higher speeds.

Well, it was the last Falcon that I had an eye on but never pulled the trigger. But it’s on the way here for next week. The rod locker’s used sale coincided with them having a Cara 7’ all round in excellent shape. I have the equivalent Bucoo but since moving to a Cara/Expert set of rods this is the one I wanted to upgrade. Since I only really fish it for crankbaits though and I can only fish them until the end of May it wasn’t the priority. But…. A used one for 40% off what the new pricing is can’t be passed up. We’ll see how it fishes next week.

Probably going to go for a boat ride on Sunday. The big pond is 98% open but for a strip right at the ramp. It will be gone for the weekend. You could have launched a kayak out and paddled along the free strip along the shore to get to open water.

Ugh. That sucks. I hate ice like that. Our power infrastructure is such that ice storms like that knock power out all over the township every bad storm. The good news is that spring is imminent for you. Hopefully this is the last of it for you. Wishful Wednesday is now watching Wednesday. Took a ride to the big lake because the water board update said they were pumping water in. They’d only do that if the ice was off and that’s 98% true. There was a patch of ice about 100x200 yards which couldn’t be more than an inch thick. Of course it was all right in front of the ramp. Even with the temp drops it will be gone before the weekend (when I have plans of course).

First fish of the year. The ponds were 95% frozen when I got there so i was throwing to the 4-10’ unfrozen strips. This crappie couldn’t pass a little paddle tail. Unfortunately all the dink bass could.

Looking good. Maybe think about a cheaper dry bag as well. Nothing in that boat is really going to be waterproof so a dry bag for a spare hoodie and socks, maybe a towel, rain gear, etc. Plastic tubs are good for small things. Tupperware is good for stuff too.

@Team9nine - a much younger me would drive 2-3 hours fish for a couple, and then drive home. I was spending 2x the time in the car than I was on the water. I get it for the occasional ‘hot bite’ that you need to be there for when you have other constraints. But not anymore. If I’m only going to get 1 hour on the water and it’s going to take an hour of driving round trip, what else could I do with 2 hours instead? Get some honey do list things done instead and have more time another day. It’s the “is the juice worth the squeeze” rule.

@Brycecover - Board sponsor. Search or scroll for lil man jig

My closest lake is 19 minutes, but between 19 and 39 minutes I’ve got 10 or so lakes I could put on. And if I expand that out to an hour I add at least a half dozen more. Since I am time limited mostly and do shorter trips, I pretty much cap my trips to that 40 minute one way distance. I also follow the 2:1 rule- I need to fish for at least 2x as long as the drive there and back. That means for the lakes 30 minutes away I need 3 full hours- 30 there, 2 hours on the water, 30 back. Of course I try to do more, but that’s the minimum.

Is it the actual threaded collar or just the lighter gray trim ring that goes around it? I don't see the crack extending to the black plastic above and below. If it is the grey, then that's just aesthetics. If it is the collar, unscrew it up and off the seat threads. Find something you can fill the gap between the blank and the collar with. If it is smooth plastic great (like a piece of pex or PVC pipe just smaller than the collar that you can use for support (worst case, masking tape built up on the blank itself. Use something like a JB weld and glue it all back up. Zip ties to hold it in shape/place against the pipe. Afterwards clean up the excess JB with some fine sand paper. The alternative is a new seat which isn't going to be fun.

A trick shad that just ran me $25. I don't think there is a less expensive option. I just wanted a decent quality do it all shad based hard swimbait to see if I can get into it. Now if I like it and it boats me some good fish then it could end up as AJay's GP Pro Perch 110 and set off a cascade.

Koz- i learned that the lawn companies like residential for volume and steady work but they make their big money and margin on commercial jobs. Looks like you just learned that too.