AlabamaSpothunter

Thanks, I've been in contact with them but it's a slow process since they're in China and I can't do it over the phone. Gambling on Chinese products is always a fun time 🙃

Well this battery is turning into a real headache. After fully charging again last night, it read 13.54v. This morning when checking the resting voltage it read 13.21v which is below the threshold for a fully charged battery according to their manual. Guess this battery is defective. Dang.

No, the manual referred to taking a reading at 'resting voltage', or when the battery has been disconnected from a charger or load for 3 hours. I got that same 13.07 reading before bed last night, and then when I woke up this morning. In regard to the bluetooth models, I really thought about getting one of those, but I really didn't want anymore extra tech and liked their specific trolling motor battery. I hooked it back up to the new charger that has a volt read out screen, and charge percentage....it also showed 13.4, and a 95% charge. I'm charging it again fully to see what it'll read with another full charge on it.

It's a Kobalt DT-926 digital multimeter. I'm not an electrician by any means, but I'd assume it's pretty quality based on all the other Kobalt products I own. Kobalt Digital Display Specialty Meter 10 Amp 50-1000v in the Specialty Meters department at Lowes.com My biggest question I have is it normal to get a brand new battery, charge it up fully......it only read 13.07, but then use it some and now it reads like a perfectly healthy battery. Is this just a initial break in deal?

Yeah I was using a 55lb thrust motor as well, just running on speed 3 and 4. I assume based on you guy's replies that I must of hardly used any of the capacity earlier. I'm paranoid after buying 4 lead acid batteries....all of which only made it less than a year. I'm hoping to at least get a couple of years out of this battery. One thing I know is that I'm never buying lead acid again for this usage. Thanks for the reply!

Pretty interesting results and you might just be right.......just got back home from running this battery for about 1.5hrs straight. Just now checked the voltage, and now it's showing 13.41 volts. The manual said anything north of 13.33v is fully charged, so either this new Lithium battery is incredibly powerful, and I barely used any of its capacity, or something is still a bit wonky. Hopefully it's all good. Appreciate the reply friend!

Hey folks, I bought a new Li Time 12v 100ah trolling motor battery along with a 10a Lithium battery charger. When the battery arrived it said it was charged to a state of 50%, and when I measured it on the ohm meter it read 13.2 volts. Last night I hooked it up to the charger, and it charged over the course of about 6 hours when it cut off. This morning I checked the volts again, and to my surprise it was now at 13.07 volts. So then I think maybe the charger wasn't good so I went to autozone just now and bought another charger. This one seems to be working just fine, and after a minute or two went to the 'fully charged' mode. Again it read 13.07 volts. Is this battery defective, the battery owners manual says it will read greater than 13.33 volts when fully charged.

Of all the moving baits I feel like the jerkbait is the most nuanced, and in depth. Jerkbaiting is far more of an artform than a science. Just like painters, most really great jerkbait anglers fish differently from one another. It's a very personalized technique. To me it's one of the techniques that really shines with a technique specific rod. For me that was the Megabass JDM P5 Destroyer 110 Stick. Very short and light rod at just 6'3. Megabass's other 110 specific rods for the American market are much longer. It's a typical medium fast. It's the nicest rod I own. I would only recommend it to somebody who uses jerkbaits a ton because of the cost.

The way I see it is that 90% of quality/large adult Bass take up the best 10% of habitat in a body of water. If you catch a big fish on a spot, the odds are that you can continue to catch big fish on that spot. You simply have to fish around enough to build a big enough of a data set to see where the bigger fish are coming from. At the end of the day, the first priority is to A.) Fish where big fish live, and B.) target those fish in the specific locations they like to be at. A great place to start is anywhere there is good cover or structure that is near deeper water. Big fish like to relax in deeper water, and then simply slide up into shallower water near a critical piece of cover/structure like a main lake point to ambush easy meals. Learning where the biggest forage size and base are within a body of water is extremely advantageous. For example, target the areas that have the biggest Bream, and Shad. Gizzard Shad for example like to be in specific locations. If you find a zone of life that has significant life from other species like Catfish, or Crappie, often times big Bass will be around, or even call that area home. I've caught many of Catfish within feet of where I ended up catching a huge Bass. The easiest way to catch big Bass is time on water. The more time you spend fishing, the more big fish you'll catch. There is no substitution for learning with a line in the water. You learn 10x as much on the water, and most importantly your brain retains it vastly better than if you watched it in a video or read it online. You never want to be comfortable in this sport as long as you're interested in growing and becoming a better angler. If you're fishing for big Bass, you have to understand there are far less of them than normal and small sized Bass, and you have to be willing to fish for less bites or even be okay with getting skunked in order to explore new areas, and fish baits you've never tried. When I first got back into the sport, I learned how to always catch at least some fish trolling a finesse chatterbait. I must have caught hundreds of sub 2lb Bass doing this. Whenever I thought the bite was slow, I'd just start trolling. Long story short I never got skunked, but never caught a fish over 5lbs trolling a small bait. I came to the conclusion that I wasn't out there just to catch Bass, my priority is to just catch fish over 5lbs so if I wasn't going to fish for 5lb Bass I might as well just leave or learn a proper way to catch them. The comfort of catching easier fish was a huge detriment to the uncomfortable task of trying to catch larger fish.

It's bait by bait I've found. For moving baits with exposed hooks, I almost never set the hook per say. For bottom contact baits like a Free Rig, the hookset is absolutely paramount to success. I can't imagine it being anything but extremely difficult to catch fish on baits like a Free Rig, Texas Rig, Jig, Carolina Rig, etc. without a proper hookset. On the hand I can't imagine having much success setting the hook on jerkbait or crankbait fish with a proper hookset. *Proper hookset to me is laying the hammer down, very powerful and fast.

Agree with the Swamp Queen🤣, I'm not quitting after catching a 20lb bag full of fat beautiful 4lb+ fish......that's like leaving the casino with money in your wallet 😆 All the fat short NLGM you guys up north post are the most beautiful fish posted in this thread imho. If you're able to have awesome days during October and November, consider yourself extremely fortunate in my eyes. It's hard for me to pick a favorite month for 10/12, but those two months are easily my kryptonite.

Don't forget the JDM SV TW has alumium gears vs the TW HD having brass. JDM SV TW has a plastic type drag dial, the TW HD has a metal one. To me they're totally different reels. I don't see much crossover between the two reels.

I've got both JDM models, the TW HD is like an Abrams tank. The SV TW is like a Porche 911. The HD TW feels SIGNIFICANTLY more robust than the SV TW and just about any other reel I've used besides the Shimano Calais/Antares lineup. If you're casting it, and it's under 1oz, I'd just stick with the SV TWs. If you're casting it and it's over 1oz like big deep cranks, A-Rigs, smaller swimbaits, or if you're flipping or punching and it's over 1oz the TW HD is likely the more appropriate reel.

If you could take a LVS 34 and 12" Garmin head unit back to those days, I have absolutely zero doubt that the current WR would belong to SoCal. It's actually quite shocking that a WR fish wasn't caught considering how many fish over 20lbs were caught, and then when you know fish like Dottie at 25lbs+ existed. Everybody talks about Lake Biwa, however Lake Biwa to date has produced exactly ONE fish over 20lbs (albeit the current WR), compare that to how many 20lb+ fish were caught in SoCal during the boom days. Considering I'm not currently a FFS user, my time machine trip would be wasted. I'd never outfish guys like WRB or Butch Brown without the technology, so their actual results would likely be far better than anything I could achieve.

I'm going to order a Li Time 12v 100ah battery tomorrow. On sale for $200, and lots of reviews and serious testing videos on YT.

Some of you folks on this forum live an incredibly blessed fishing life.....5 straight days of SM fishing on Erie, that's a bucket list trip for sure. Beautiful fish! I've never fished up north for Bass, sounds like fishing in the Gulf which I have done a ton of. You get back on shore and for hours you feel like you're still on the water.

Nobody puts as much effort into their posts as you do, and it always shows. Awesome trip, fish, locale, food, spirits, and most importantly friends!

I was catching them on a Shimano World Popper last Feburary in 41d water temps which is about as low as the water gets down here, so I'd say no. During the coldest months of the year, that's when I see by far and away the most surface schooling activity. In the summer and spring I rarely seeing Bass schooling and blowing up bait on the surface.

A few swimbaits are designed to minimize hook rash, but most are not, and you can't limit the rash by swapping hooks. Sure you can swap to dull hooks, but then you aren't going to catch many fish. I'd imagine those hook rash protectors work, but I've never had interest in using them. If you watch Millikens videos, you'll notice his big glides are beaten to death, messed up brush tails, etc. Honestly seeing a expensive swimbait with a bunch of rash is a badge of honor. It means you actually fish with them. Regardless of hook rash, if you catch fish on them, you're going to get messed up paint jobs. Don't sweat it, they're just tools.

Retying periodically and especially after a quality fish are best practices regardless of the bait imo. A jerkbait however doesn't impart any extra stresses on a knot that a crankbait or other moving bait does not. Just always keep an eye on that knot, and make it a habit to retie from time to time.

The relative weight chart will give you your best view short of getting an electro shock study done. Simply record each Bass's length and weight you catch, then see how their relative weight scores look. If the fish are far below 100% relative weight, you'll have your answer that the fish aren't growing to full potential. The reason why that might be isn't always population density, but most times in a small pond it is, combined with a lack of forage base to support that population.

I never use a Ned but love a whacky and still use a traditional neko rig quite often. That said after Taku Ito's win on Smith Lake at the end of June, I've been going down the sneaky JDM finesse rabbit hole, and those baits fill the same roles as the Ned/Whacky/Neko for the most part. The 'pancake' neko rig using the Nories Flap Gill 3.2 was Taku's winning bait, the other baits below are ones I put together using inspiration from Taku. They are all a combo of the concepts behind a whacky and neko rig, and the last one shown is a combo of a neko and ned at least in my mind. Taku's pancake neko rig along with a Geecrack CueBomb rig using a Cuebomb, Hayabusa Spin Muscle 1/0 hook, Owner CPS in medium, and a 1/8th nail weight. Then this is a neko/ned thingy using a Geecrack Imo Kemushi 60 Elastomer with 1/8th screw in nail weight, Owner CPS in medium, and a Gamakatsu G Finesse weedless whacky in 1/0. You can either work it slowly dragging like a ned or lift and drop like a neko/whacky. ** CPSs are used to crimp around the hook before being screwed into the bait, this saves you lots of baits especially with Geecrack non elastomer stuff. Kind of like another form of a neko hack like the Geecrack Neko Hack that is used in that pancake neko rig bait above.

@DaubsNU1 Congrats brother, that's a magnificent fish! I knew you were going to catch a 5lb class fish on that lake, and I'm excited about seeing the future 6lb class fish you catch from it 🙂

Beautiful fish, congrats brother!

Most Falcons fans are like me, we consider ourselves to be fans of the worst franchise in the NFL. I've been watching Falcons games for over 30 years, they never change. Regardless how good or bad Cousins is his ceiling for winning is capped by a historically bad franchise. I expect them to lose every game, so if they win 7 or 8 games a year it's at least enjoyable to watch them. We all know the pre-determined Super Bowl winner anyways, congrats to the Chiefs, the NFL couldn't have picked a better team 😀