10,000 lakes Bassin

Pickled pike is pretty common up here too. That way you don’t have to fillet around the “Y bones”. I wish more people would keep smaller northerns. Some small lakes are almost completely overrun by pike in the 10-20” range. Couple of my primary lakes I used to fish have this issue now. I wouldn’t consider them a “ trash fish” but I feel much different about that matter when I loose a bladed jig or vision 110…

The magdraft has the Daingerous beat color wise thought. I want to try some of the 6” unloaded version on a jighead for deeper water.

Low seventies out there for me after a cool few days, was up to 76 a week ago. Might be warmer down there. I think all your fish will be in summer mode. Good luck!

checked the tip and first couple but I’ll double check the rest.

I’ve had two casting setups spooled with 131 for about a month and a half. 30lb for moving baits and 40lb for jigs. I haven’t been having a great experience with it. Lots of breakage issues that I haven’t had to deal with when using 832 in the same sizes. I’m not breaking off at the FG knot or on fish (so far thankfully). Randomly I’ll just cast and send my bait, FC leader and 10-20ft of braid into the abyss. This has happened twice with the 30lb and twice with the 40 also. I’m not fishing rock, docks, wood cover where this would be more likely. Just grass 90% of the time. I can only think of one time that this has happens to me with 832. Any ideas what could be happening? Really frustrating and I’m very close to respooling both reels with 832 or some other brand of braid…

Might be able to get a custom rod built with that reel seat if that something you’d want?

So 4/0? What about for a 4.5 spunk shad? 3/0 or 2/0?

I was looking around at my local tackle shop and noticed something strange. They had a pretty large stock of some New Years special addition 832 braid?? Looked closer and it was a spool of 832 packaged up with a special addition Rapala floater with 2023 painted on it and 2023 stickers on the spool of line. All for only$10 I got to wondering if there was anything wrong with this stuff? Like had it been sitting on the shelf for too long? What do you guys think?

I’m trying to decide between a 4/0 and a 5/0 range roller XL jig head for 5.5 spunk shads. What size hook do you think is best?

FG knot 100%. People talk about how hard this knot is to tie but I don’t get that at all, just takes a bit of time to learn and then it’s like any other fishing knot.

Probably a stupid question to ask because I’m sure the answer is yes, but have you spent time trying the shallows earlier in summer like late July? How’d it work for you?

I hit the water yesterday and got into them largies the best I have in the last couple weeks. I don’t think anything was super special, i just threw confidence stuff instead of messing around with techniques/location that I’m not good at fishing. Water temps were already ~75 degrees which was a surprise to me.

I was looking at that one, seems pretty nice. I like the idea of a 6/0 hook

Whenever I fish a “standard” size frog, like a bronzeye 65 or a pad crasher over super thick pads, mats, or reeds I feel it it’s too small of a profile to push enough water and get below the thick surface covering. I’m looking for a frog that is a bit bigger and heavier for these situations. I know the trick of sliding a dropshot weight in there but on a normal size frog if I put enough weight to get it to fish well, it will sink if even a bit of water gets in there. Any recommendations for a frog that fits my needs? Thanks!

I’ve literally been having dreams about catching smallmouth for the past couple weeks. I got out to my local smallie lake on Monday and caught probably 10 with the biggest being around 2.5lbs and most being smaller. Today I made a longer drive to a super clear water lake in hopes of getting on some bigger brown bass than what we have right around me. Didn’t have a great day, actually struggled a bunch because I’m new to smallmouth fishing especially in that clear of water (averaging over 20ft of clarity). My day turned around at the end when I caught my biggest of the year so far, a very chubby 18”.

I had I DT16 that came in the package with a big crack in the side. Unfortunately I couldn’t return it because the 30 days had passed before I opened it and realized.

On moving baits my line is not slack for very long. Yesterday fishing straight 16lb fluoro there was a very very noticeable difference in sensitivity.

On casting gear I use about 15ft leaders.

I consider my self pretty good at tying an FG. Can probably tie one in a couple minutes. Maybe 4 minutes if I’m using super light line.

I took some pictures of my graph out on the lake today. First pic is of some activity off the end of a point during the afternoon. I only snapped a pic of my 2d on this one but on my down imaging you could more clearly make out some other fish holding to bottom below the school. I threw an 3/4oz jig and a ned rig, but no takers. The next 2 pics are from after sunset when activity seemed to explode everywhere on the lake. The 2 picks are the same school but one pick of 2d and one of down imaging. I should mention that this is right out in the middle of the main basin and over like 80ft of water as you can see. I’m not good at reading graphs so I’m don’t really have a good idea of what’s happening here. I’d assume it’s some forage species schooled up, and maybe some predators hanging around the area, but that’s about as much as ive got. I’d love some guidance on what really happening here. As for what the forage species could be, well either crappie, possibly shiners or maybe cisco. I learned that this lake has tullibee/ Cisco in it, but I’m not sure if they would school like this, or if largemouth would prey on them. Maybe @WRB-2.0 knows something about this? @softwateronly any tullibee in your lake? Thanks!

Ive been a braid to leader guy 100% for the past couple years. In my kayak where I only had 2 casting combos it gave me the versatility that I needed. I honestly only fished straight fluoro for a bit and wrote it off just because it seemed weird compared to braid. Well this year I started fishing out of a boat where I can have more rods and versatility, while still a big deal, became slightly less important. Yesterday I was having issues with the 30lb braid on my only MH moving bait rod (a daiwa tatula elite 7’3 multi purpose) and out of frustration I cut off the braid and spooled it with my leader material, some 16lb sniper. Well straight fluoro was a lot better than I remember and casting distance seemed about the same as 30lb braid. It definitely felt “mushy” and less sensitive than braid, but I’ll just have to warm up to that. I think I’ll finally give straight fluoro a fair shot and see how it goes.

It kept me off the lake this evening. I hope to get out after some brown bass tomorrow to make up for it.

I wouldn’t be surprised if they got discontinued. I wonder if the next version will still have AGS guilds, seems like it’s a love or hate type of deal for most people. Thought about this rod when posting this thread, seems like a 902 on steroids. Would be fun to fish I’m sure but I can’t spend that much on a rod.

I just checked on Omnia and it looks like they have the Steez AGS rods at $699 now. Tackle warehouse still has them at $550 to my knowledge, but I bet they will raise the price soon. Do you think there are any reasons to go with a Steez now that they cost $50 more than a NRX+? Any models that are still worth it even for $150 more?

Try it out and see what you catch