ElGuapo928

That is the best, simplest answer to it I have ever heard.

I’ve got a Shimano Bantam Magnumlite that has been geary since the late 80’s. The majority of reels use a mix of helical cut and straight cut gears, and straight cut gears make noise. As long as you keep them lubricated and clean, they should last virtually forever. I would go with a full synthetic grease on the gears, I find SuperLube hard to beat, but there are plenty of others to suit your preferences.

I can see that working, would be considerably classier than my Yuban can full of concrete as well.

I’ve never done it, but I do put a small O-ring over the R-bend just to keep my line/knot from traveling.

I use an eclectic hodgepodge of JDM and US sourced stuff. The only places I have found clear preferences are Japanese hooks, and local/semilocal plastics.

Not always. When dealing with clear water and pressured fish, the slow crank is usually the best retrieve possible. Watch minnows cruising around - they don’t move around the water column much, and there isn’t a lot of erratic movement. Gerald Swindle just recently did a bass university video on YouTube about this, and I cannot pretend to have his command of the English language to discuss tapdancing crawdads.

I’ve never bought the Light, but have had good results with the regular.

I buy a lot of hand pours, since it’s become harder and harder to find large producers that cater to our western color palette.

Got a late start on Roosevelt this morning, pretty slow bite. Got a 3.32, a 3.20 and a couple of dinks before it got too hot to enjoy (106 today). All came off a couple of ledges between 25 and 35 feet.

Ichikawa RC - work great with suspending baits and are about the stickiest treble I’ve ever seen.

Another very good point, also piggybacks onto the argument of them getting spooky from sonar pinging.

How much validity there is to this I don’t know, but the theory used to be that shad were preferred prey based on bluegills’ spiny dorsal fins being able to lodge in their gullet. I can say that threadfins are the number one prey hacked up in my livewell most of the year.

I agree with you on the need to limit the technology, but why handicap the kid by letting him believe he’s behind the 8 ball? One of the biggest hammers I know runs an old (ugly too) Champion with an X102C on the bow and a Hook 5 on the console, yet he manages to make the scopers look silly on a regular basis. Confidence will put far more (and better) fish in the boat than gadgets will.

When my grandfather built my house, he determined that yardwork ate too much into his time, and covered 90% of the yard in concrete. It took me years to realize that the man was a visionary.

Except for the days that stealthy and subdued are the only thing that work. I think this is more tied to water clarity than anything else, but still a factor to consider.

Shhhhhhh!!! Don’t let everyone in on the secret!!! An old Cordell jigging spoon on a cast/wind retrieve can pick up a bite when nothing else will.

That’s the lesson that they need taught - they are by no means undergunned without that stuff. Skill and confidence will always be there, while a dead battery or something causing electronic interference makes some guys a complete non issue. To me, if anything the kids in the decked out rigs are at a huge disadvantage- they aren’t learning boat control, topography and triangulation, or myriad other skills that would allow them to be thrown in any vessel, on any body of water and be competitive. As any of us who have ever seen an 80’s movie will instinctively know, there is great joy in handing the rich kids’ butts to them.

That’s exactly it - next time I rig one up I’ll grab a picture. The cheapo 50 lb is about as stiff as weedeater string, so it works really good.

I had the 7’3” MH and I liked it. Little lighter than it’s rated, and kind of soggy in the tip would’ve made it great for treble hooks and spinnerbaits. Unfortunately, I bought it with the intention of a dedicated spider jig setup, and it was way too loose feeling. I gave it to my neighbor and he’s still slinging cranks on it.

Same here, work great and cheap enough to keep spares on board.

I winterize my boat by putting an extra sweatshirt in the glovebox. Seriously though, for you who have a real winter, it’s cheap insurance to do it right.

I was told a long time ago to always pull double the rod length of braid off and retie after pulling it out of the locker. Supposedly the vibrations of the boat/travel cause it to get microscopic weak spots where it rubs against guides or the level wind.

Well said.

Certain colorants stiffen the plastisol, others soften it. The stiffness and movement affect the fall rate. Different flakes will affect the movement as well. There’s a local guy here that adds ground glass to his, gives them a different wiggle than just salt.

There’s a lot of different ways to look at it, but at the end of the day, it comes down to what you have the best feel with. Higher end rods are lighter, usually more sensitive and usually better built. I personally carry a mix of higher end stuff, mid range stuff, and stuff that many here would call garbage, but it works for me. I can tangle my $44 BPS flipping rods in the brush the same as I can a $300 Loomis, but $44 is a whole lot less painful to break the tip off of.