wonkyrig

The 873 is a sick rod. I wouldn't get rid of it.

Should be fine with most non screwlock jigheads. Queen are nice. The key is to thread the bait onto the hook straight and when you get to the keeper, grab either the head or chin of the bait and pull it onto the keeper rather than push it on. I prefer a wire keeper for TPE minnows but you can put a drop of super glue on the other kind.

Profile/size and action are more important than color, within reason. Color should play to water clarity and conditions. I'd put some more time into it before getting hung up on refining colors. Depending on your waters, it may not be a numbers bait. Are you getting followed? Are you pulling fish out of or off of places where you wouldn't have known they were there otherwise?

Nice job @Glenn !

If anyone has experience with the below units with 1920x1080 resolution, can you please respond as to whether not your side imaging clarity was improved to a point that you see it as an advantage over a display with 1280x800 resolution? I'm usually using SI for marking bits of cover and structure, but if a higher resolution would potentially enable me to see fish easier as well, that'd be a time saver. Also curious if small irregularities in contours are more easily distinguished. Lowrance HDS Pro 16 Humminbird Apex 13 Garmin Echomap 2 16 Thanks!

Really bummed to hear this. I'd recently sent him a message, just a simple thanks for the frequent food for thought. Rest easy, WRB.

The tip recovers really quick as it should being x-fast, and it's a medium light so there's not a whole lot of backbone, as expected. But theirs for some reason feels like it's too much in each direction, like they counteract each other somewhat, I guess? And a bit tip heavy. I've tried to put my thumb on it and it's hard to describe. Maybe it's just me but it feels like its use case is dropshotting on really light line with hook buried in the plastic and not much else. I've used it for a minnow rod, light neko rigs, dropshot, and some random odd rigs. It's just never felt like a banger in any use case to me and for every presentation i've used it for, there's another rod or 2 in my "collection" that would do it better. Which bothers me because I really want to like it. I have and have had other croix rods that I really like. I've kept it around because I keep thinking there will be that "a-ha!" moment where it would make perfect sense. I may need to bring it tomorrow and play around with some more presentations and how I'm handling the fish. I don't know if that helps or makes even less sense, but that's where I'm at with it.

I think it would help tremendously to know specifically on what baits you are losing them, and what type of line and test and/or diameter. Your rod taper, line, hook size, hookset, how you fight a fish, the size and type of fish, and the cover, all play into a system of keeping them controlled. And you can make it as simple or complicated as you like but we can definitely provide you food for thought to refine what works for YOU. Like numerous folks mentioned, powers and actions are so inconsistent across brands and even within brands sometimes, it's hard to say what would serve you best. I personally find croix's ML x-fast to be quite possibly the most annoying taper i've encountered. I've seen the Okuma x-series rods on sale a lot recently and believe the XB-S-731ML is a lot of rod for the money on sale.

This is a really accurate and thoughtful assessment of this rod. I use it for topwater mainly, and as a random stand-in when I'm dialing in other stuff.

There are some transducer types and settings that are somewhat conducive to this. Think running on pad at low speed and seeing your 2d screen suddenly cloud up with arches. The more likely scenario is it's a feature of some sort. Channel bend or intersection regardless of depth. Foundation, roadbeds, hard spots, rocks/boulders, brush or cane piles, deep humps, timber. Some lakes have submerged springs. I've found a lot of off the beaten path stuff and areas where fish stack up just due to the way the lake current flows just by idling the channels from main lake all the way to the back, as well as riding around on the trolling motor on 10 livescoping around. The best way to learn it is to devote a section of your fishing time to simply looking around at offshore stuff, and looking at that same stuff in different seasons and conditions. I do think scoping speeds up this process a lot since you can literally follow fish around to get a beat on what they're doing out there.

1) If I can't make a good presentation even with a heavier jighead, I usually just go cranking or spinnerbait. If that's not panning out, I look for water that has fish where I can make good presentations. Really depends on what they're keyed in on and I try to stick to what the fish 'should' be doing based on the seasonal stuff. This is the type of situation where scope can be more of a distraction than a benefit. There are still tons of fish you'll never see on scope - I have to remind myself of this all the time. 2) Gar are easy to identify when they're grouped up and when they're perpendicular to the beam. Otherwise, they sit fairly still and will not react to a lure until it's right in their face. 3) Just a result of how the beam(s) works. 4) Normal. Are the fish keyed on threadfin in 10 feet and you're catching them on a small minnow in 10 feet? Try different profiles or baits for those other fish. There are days like this where it's somewhat patternable, and days where it doesn't matter as much. And sometimes, those fish in that depth range are just negative. 5) Hard to tell, but generally a more solid return = denser, more mass. There are mounts where you can click them up and down to angle the ducer and it makes a little difference. There's also perspective mode.

One of the 9s was definitely on a Big M.

Tom/WRB is on the money per usual. I'd add a shaky head, a fluke, and a rock crawler. Spots are maniacs, I love them.

I'm liking the Adrena more every time I fish with it, love the way it loads. In my head, it's for different applications than the CRR. It's been a great spinnerbait rod so far.

One of my favorite rods. Shaky head, jigging a minnow, finesse jigs, etc. Stuck and landed a lot of fish on it, really high confidence in it.

JWRs and I have the 843C MBR which I'm using for topwater. The blank is great for it but the butt section feels short to me which is fine for walking a bait but when you lay into one with some shoulders it's more challenging to hold onto.

If I could go back and get a do-over, I'd wait for a sale and get NRX+.

The blanks are nice but they ruined them with the grips. These rods are heavy - ~6 ounce rods, ridiculous for the price point. Their idea was to weight the butt section to counterbalance the tip to make it easier to shake a minnow on scope. While that's completely unnecessary, it's also dumb to do it to the casting rods. The carbon grip on the spinning is made to put your whole hand above the reel foot, it's uncomfortable if you hold it how you're traditionally supposed to. And the grip on the casting models digs into my fingers. IMO they need to take these blanks and make a B version with split grip cork and the bait holder in a non-intrusive spot. Shame, because the blanks feel great.

Lanier.

Agree with r83srock. The LBTC73MHF "Workhorse". I have that one and the heavy and I don't think I'd want to throw 3/8 jigs on the H. Workhorse seems more versatile, it's a nice rod.

Lake yachts and wake surf boats. 99% of the time annoying and 1% of the time a welcome bit of "current" to churn up some activity on an otherwise dead day.

Yep. Maybe there's a revision coming, who knows.

I love the Vanford series but was told by my tackle shop that it's being discontinued, and the parts diagrams for the Vanford series all list discontinued as well. I'd assume there's something new coming out soon as a super light sku. Stradic is bulletproof awesome reel too, it's just hard to go back after using the really light Vanfords.

I have a few. Big fan. Any particular questions?

I really like the sufix pink metered line.