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She did great! Casting was good with baitcaster. Got 2 backlashes and got them out herself! Asked good questions. We had fun! I didn't fish, just ran the boat and refrained from trying to tell her everything I know!

When I use a trailer, the old school Zoom split-tail has served me well for over 30 years. Same for buzzbaits. Does everything a trailer is supposed to do, and nothing it’s not 😎

Bass 😉 Other than a Snagless Sally I don't normally use a trailers. Occasionally a single tail grub.

Took it on the chin two days ago, not even getting a bite. Got a chance to sneak out to the lake for a few hours this afternoon and try and redeem myself. Fortunately, things went better, as I was able to figure out a pattern and bite. Hooked up with half a dozen bass, about twenty crappie, two channel cats and half a dozen white perch. Landed 4 of the bass, losing a small keeper when it jumped near the boat, and had a much larger fish hooked for a good while that eventually just pulled off.

I met up with my regular fishing buddy on the 20th (Saturday). We had not fished together yet this year. Sadly, he has been inflicted with a bad case of steelhead-itis and there is no known cure Anyway it was just really exciting to be back on the water with him again and we definitely made a good go of our chance to fish together. Between the two of us we caught over 70 bass. I did a little better on numbers but he had the two biggest (17.5" and 18.5"). The best I could manage was a 16.75". Other than not catching any real big ones the day was as perfect as could be. The Columbia was glassy calm for most of the day. There was a slight breeze for a short while first thing in the morning and then a very welcome wind in the afternoon that freshened just as we were beginning to roast. I caught fish on topwater (Sammy), spybait, jerkbait, swimbait, swinghead jit+creature bait, drop shot and Ned rig. The fish were actively chasing bait until about 11am and we caught our fair share of fish chasing the bass that were chasing the bait. It is so much fun to see bait skittering and the bass swirling and toss into that maelstrom and immediately get slammed. While we did do well fishing for those fish it was definitely not as productive - especially for size - as in my last few outings. I was really hoping we were both going to get a 20+ inch fish but you can't have everything. Over the course of the day if one of us would get on some fish we would call the other over and hammer on them together. Just perfect teamwork. I would say I probably caught about 1/2 the fish on active baits and 1/2 on soft plastics. When we would get on them with the Ned rig we would often hook up doubles and that is just so much fun. My only real disappointment on the day was when several really big fish were jumping all over each other trying to eat my topwater. After much missing (it is off camera but you can hear them splashing, jumping and churning up the water) I did hook one, had it on for 5 seconds and lost it. I guess I would have to say I ended up losing a ton of fish overall. Not quite sure why. I think probably partly because we were often chatting or I would be looking over to see how he was doing. A bit of a lame excuse but I am a fisherman and that's what we do best Funniest thing is that three times over the course of the day I had gulls trying to eat my Sammy (a walking bait). The worst was one gull that kept diving at it as I reeled like crazy to keep it away. It kept attacking all the way to the kayak and I had to swing at it with my rod to scare it off. I guess that lure has a pretty realistic action! Anyway, here are some pics from a wonderful day on the water and a link to the day's video at the end.

I thought jigs were A- a good way to practice casting, and B- a good way to reel in algae. Never caught a bass on them except once in a blue moon getting hit right after the jig hit the water. But I started using lighter 1/4 oz. swimjigs with either a Rage Craw, Rage Bug or Rage Menace trailer and lately it’s been the bait that’s had the most success.

Back after mrs big again in the church pond. First decent fish since the 6 pounder.

Back at the graveyard pond at crack of day. Got this one on a hand sized bream. No, I don’t have a scale because I dropped in the water the other day. I did get a measurement from my reel to first guide.- the fish fit perfectly between them . I will get the length when I get home( forgot my fish ruler too. This isn’t the one I’m after, but it’s halfway … I guess 5-6 pounds…

Committed an afternoon to some old school Carolina rigging. I picked off a few fish on rocks in 12’. I caught the big fish of the trip off a newly discovered rock pile. Always an exciting moment when you feel the line swim off while probing a new piece of structure.

Really 😎 Just about everyone I can remember that has ever spent a day in the boat with me crappie fishing ended up going home and stripping off all their old line (nylon/copoly/fluoro) and replaced it with braid. If you’re a live bait or bobber guy, it’s not near as critical. But, if you’re a jig caster, it makes a world of difference.

I have confidence in my ability to locate bass. I will catch em by whatever means necessary.

So far, since discovering spinner baits last week, I've attached crawdads, paddle tails (Mayor and Keitech with chartreuse and white being the best colors), and Rage Tails. For Monday's fishing, I just attached a Geecrack Bellows Gill Creature Bait. It looks weird, but it might work. What all do you guys use?

You guys are making this out to be something it isn't. GSM has done this before. It's nothing new, or nothing to speculate about. They will continue to grow and expand the brands they have. Business as usual. Dobyns is NOT out of business simply because you didn't get a response as soon as you wanted. sheesh. You guys are like..

Joey P. Boots aka JP Little Joe Joe-Joe Rumpusshrimpskin Mr. Wiggles the miniature German Schnapper the Bangor Biter da Boots As regards quality over quantity, I'll do my best and thanks!

All are ways to fish soft plastics! All highly productive pretty year round.

I think my memory is not as good as bass though.....I forgot what I was talking about.....oh well....

Well that didn't last too long, GSM was acquired by a PE firm; https://dallasinnovates.com/irving-based-gsm-outdoors-acquired-by-beverly-hills-pe-firm-platinum-equity/#:~:text=Irving-based GSM Outdoors%2C a,Platinum Equity from Gridiron Capital.

From the last 2 days of harvesting. We’re completely inundated with cucumbers, can’t give enough away.

10-20% of LMB can have that tongue patch, so I wouldn't use that as a full indicator. Imho, that's a LMB. I haven't witnessed any LMB with the rough patch, but it could be geographical. Outside of the patch, that fish looks 100% like a LMB.

Critters from around the house this summer - water related bugs

It's worked in MI too... scott .

I don't usually add a trailer. When I do, I use the Zoom twin tail trailer.

Get a net.

nothing

Yamamoto Zako!

Eh, I'm not really focused on spool tension caps while I'm fishing, so I'm far less upset about that. But hey, you do you. I suppose they have their reasons, one being that Daiwa's braking system does work best without leaning into the spool tension. More than that, doing so seems to cause more problems than it solves. We had a thread here from a new-to-Daiwa guy a few years ago who couldn't stop blowing up. After questioning him, he finally revealed that he was slow dropping his baits with spool tension. Once he learned to stop that, his problem went away.

Reel hand on the reel handle.

I dunno, but after I found out that reading on the terlit can lead to hemorrhoids I gave up my subscription.

If you are using bream for bait the best thing to do to increase the number of hook ups is use a circle hook. No hook set at all required. Resist the urge to pull back, let the bass run off with the bait, then slowly reel. The hook will securely hook the bass in the in the corner of the mouth. Not only will your bass landed to bite ratio go way up, but you will not gut hook any bass. Circle hooks and live bait go together like jigs and pig.

@Pat Brown We've had some epic discussions about a bass's memory. Definitely fascinating

Several times I've caught the same bass, off the same bed, with the same white lizard two days apart. I've had bass break me off in brush, couple hours later caught the same bass with my worm & hook in its mouth.

I used them some . Caught some pigs with it but bites were few and far between . This phot is about 40 years ago and we were not catching any fish . I told the guy I was with "If I'm not going to catch any fish , I may as well not be catching big ones" so I tied on a jig and spring Lazard and caught this one .

I really like the paint job and quality of these baits! I can't wait to throw them tomorrow. Here's one of them: https://bit.ly/3ROTf51

Good Day All, Hope you’re all able to enjoy family and friends during this Holiday Season. During my time away from professional responsibilities I’ve been able to explore a number of angling related topics with one on soft split rings to share. Here in Arizona we’ve had a mix of weather mostly great for getting out an taunting fish. Many of the lakes / ponds are stocked with trout during the cold months so my angling fun is expanded. I’m happy with simply catching fish primarily bass and sunfish but grateful for any fun on lite tackle. Recent events have restricted my time out on the water so I’ve changed focus to learning and testing out a few new knots. I generally use between two to six pound line. I’ve been looking for ease of tying, sufficient strength, and minimal waste. So in goofing off doing all this research and trying out the various knots using old residual stock of various fishing lines, I fell into the rabbit hole, distraction, of learning about soft split rings. I had remnant spools of ancient braid or braid I collected with intentions of reuse. Originally I used those remnants for fly tying or leader material. I figured it was more than I wanted to simply discard and it could be used otherwise. Reviewing a number of articles and videos on why use soft split rings, exchanging the connection between bait and hook with short segment of braid. This allows the hook to move with greater freedom independent of the lure body. The principle benefit is to minimize leverage or binding from the limited range of motion with a wire split ring. I wanted to see if it would improve hook up ratio where it would be harder the fish to throw the lure once connected. Using heavier fishing equipment it is possible to overwhelm a hooked fish by hauling it in aggressively to minimize thrashing and potential to throw the hook. There is only so much of that persuasion with lighter fishing rigs. So it was worth my attention to give it a try. I worked up several brands of small metal spoon type lures. I’ve used them successfully for bass, bluegills, and trout. I removed the split ring and replaced it with a segment of braid to re-connect the original treble hook. I did work some up some with single octopus hooks too. The result was a short pig tail segment of braid, roughly a 0.5 inch , 1 cm or less in length between hook and lure body. My initial findings were impressively encouraging. Using the newly configured metal spoon baits, I caught and released nine trout in a couple of hours of walking and casting at one of the regional parks. None of the trout threw the baits even with the aerial antics of jumping completely out of the water. All I did was simply keep reasonable tension with the ultra lite rig. All were nicely nose hooked in the tip of the upper lip. Sure fun to experience the smash and grab action on ultra lite rigs. I’m happy I took the time to investigate this new option. I hope to expand it to other larger hard baits, crank baits, and jerk baits when using these heavier rigs. It must be providence as while was taunting trout, I recovered a floating jerk bait body along the shoreline in some weeds. The hooks were corroded away, so it will be the next re-build effort. I found a variety of hemostats to be really helpful in fabricating these soft split ring segments. There are a number of on line videos out there. I watched a few and settled on one version that was more elegant, easier to tie, with minimal material. I did my best to keep the link no longer than a centimeter. Be well, cheers!

@Jayd0976 I realize you pulled the trigger so congratulations on a nice setup and I’m still going to share directly from the Daiwa website anyway. The only difference may be the colored accents as I don’t remember the scheme but I believe the 6.3:1 is gold which is what you bought the 7 speed is red and the 8 speed was purple if I remember correctly.

This is the same for me. I have not caught any with that or the magnum u-vive craw. The original u-vive and the super speed craw are favorites for me. The baby brush hog is a favorite also.

A trailer does create a great, big gob of a lure, for sure.

Nothing on an SV3 or a War Eagle usually. Paddletail if I want more weight or a pop of color.

I can offer a significant, though expensive spool bearing upgrade. https://www.hedgehog-studio.co.jp/product/5510 MC-Squared offers dual-race hybrid-ceramic spool bearings that will both improve light-end casting, and don't have an upper load limit. Casting light weights, only the inner race and inner row of balls spin with the spool, giving you a microbearing. Casting heavier weights or with big drive load, the middle race and outer row of balls also spin, giving you unlimited load capacity. Bearing size for your Alphas is 1030 (2 ea) oops - just noticed they're OOS on the double-row 1030s. But they do have the 740 fancy handle-knob bearings.

I didn't read most of the above, but I do have my new Curado MGL next to me and it displays the exact same 1/4" of play before it engages. About 1 out of every 10 attempts does get lucky and gives me no play. The reels are made with the same parts so I really don't see how some can have absolutely no play every single time.

Alright pulled the trigger with the $100 tatula SV TWS 103 reel and paired it with a Daiwa Aird-X Rod not bad for $160 total.

I do a lot of fishing in rural areas, even Toledo Bend is. There ain't NAPA stories everywhere, there are Wally Worlds everywhere.

An artificial worm is what I feel the most confident with. So many different ways to fish it depending if you're using a ribbon tail, straight, finesse, etc. Love the different types of artificial worms available today. Wacky rigged or T-rigged fishing it slow and steady does the trick for me.

Same same - definitely depends on the fish 😂😂😂👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼 I don't want to get anything confused here either - worm is 100% my favorite bait for bass! 😎😎😎🎣🎣🎣

Appreciate you! Yup all i gotta do is put on the flip flops and grab a pole and I'm at the water in 30 seconds 😄

I can't help you. I swing like a man trying to kill wasp with a fishing rod.

Walmart Everstart batteries are made by East Penn. NAPA batteries are made by either East Penn or Clarios. So they could both be the same battery. Either way, they're both made in the USA (Pennsylvania or Michigan), and probably nearly identical.

We used them in Mexico with quite a bit of success. Rig off choice was a 1 ounce swing head with a 7/0 Owner Beast EWG. Work especially well on deeper fish down 20 or 30 feet in the wind. A-Jay

Recently moved to a new apartment complex, and there is a huge pond out in front of it. Decided to go give it a try. Caught 5 large mouth and even a couple catfish, nothing huge, but decent fish.

Usually I go to the pond in the early morning before work, but decided to try my luck on the river today instead. Made it to the spot about 6 AM, and right away caught a fish. I didn't know I had a fish until I got my lure back in because he was so small. I thought I had just wrapped my line around one of the trebles or something. I then absolutely set the crap out of that lure on a submerged log and had to break off. 😭 So I switched to top water. Lost one right away, but then hooked another at the very end of about 100 yards of line downstream. I doubt it was actually that far down, but it was a long way off. Not a monster, but what with the fish using a pretty strong current to fight me, and having that much line out, it was the longest fight of my life. Poor fella was worn the heck out, but he seemed to revive pretty quick and splashed me as he swam off. After about 30 minutes of fruitless casting, I switched to a #5 Mepps Black Fury. Another absolutely tiny dink bit. I finished the morning with the Crush City Mayor on Owner's underspin hook. Missed two fish who seemed to have lazily swiped at it. Then I finally hooked into a really good one. A nice 16" smallmouth that leap as high as I've ever seen a fish jump. Twice. But EWGs hold really good, and I landed him with no problems.