Great day of fishing miday in the thumb of michigan

To day I sold some excess equipment to fund another bait caster set up. After meeting up with the guy I headed to Millington , MI to drop my wife and daughter off at the inlaws house. I headed to lake that I had never fished before called Murphy lake which, is about 10 minutes east of Millington. I finally put the boat in the water at about 1pm. The boat launch was interesting to say the least, just a gravel drop off the side of the road. My hopes were not that high as it was already 88 degrees at 1 pm and clear blue sky.

However, I was able to pound out 6 fat large mouth from 14-17 inches plus a bonus northern. The large mouth all came on a Zman crawdad-Z greenpumkin with orange claws texas rigged with I think a 1/4 oz weight. These were also the first fish that I have caught while Texas-rigging plastic with a weight. Cool thing with crawdadz is I was able to use the same craw all day ( I did have to flip it over once as it was sliding down th shank way to easy after while).  Basically, I was either casting to shore, casting to shore with some sort of shade or drop offs. Most of the time they were hitting it on the drop or after the first two drags across the bottom.  Some of the drop offs may have only went from 2ft- 5 ft but, it must been enough of a change in depth for them.  2 of the 6 came from well protected coves with weeds.  The northern came on a black and purple bomber crankbait. I think the bass are done spawning as I didn't see any beds.  The water temp on the surface was 80 degrees.  I definitely gained some confidence in t-rigged plastics to day. 

For casting the crank I used my recently purchased abu Garcia black maxx medium bait caster combo ( for the money I like this set up for chucking spoons or cranks) with 10 lbs berkly big game.  For throwing the Texas-rig I was using my old reliable spinning rod a MH Berkley tactic 7ft rod with Quantom accurist spinning reel. For line I was using 8lbs spider wire stealth-braid with a stren 10lbs fluoro leader.

I think for a dedicated texes rig bait caster rod I am going to buy a Berkley lighting rod. They seem pretty powerful and sensitive for 50 bucks. I don't know what kind of bait casting reel I am going to put on it though.  I want something with a 7ish gear ratio and a budget around 100ish bucks.