kikstand454

i have a daiwa reel on a convergence... and a daiwa on a compre. i love them both.

i really like the gammy skip gap hooks. they hold onto even the softest plastics with ease. i esp. like them for "moving" plastics like flukes and paddletails and toads.

i think those would be great for "split shot" rigs.... insted of split shots. i prefer the long cylindrical 3/4 oz. weights on my c-rig. i get through wood and rocks decently and they rule on humps with grass. some like egg weights and others like bullets. i think its mostly egg weights offer more feel... and bullet weights come through cover better. like i said i like the long skinny ones.

personally i would toss a 1oz. gold spoon and hop it along the drop off at a 45 degree angle. you work the heck out of that ledge with that. i do real well with gold blades in tannic water. (esp. cypress lakes)

the guy i fish with loves his enough to buy two more and in fact hes going to switch his entire inventory over to them. he gets a dealers price on them though... but still thats saying something.. i know that that skeet reese rod is lighter (feels lighter?) than my crucial.... and its 40 bucks cheaper.

we did pretty good last weekend here with water in the low 60s fishing shaky heads near docks in about 5-8ft. of water. black trick worms. good luck..... the offshore spoon and jig bite is coming:)

ive been fishing my c-rigs with 15lb braid and a 12lb flouro leader in SHELLS and havent had the slightest problem. you have line problems like raul said. i can not think of a single instance... ever.. .with anyone... that a metal leader was needed to catch bass of any sort. and that includes stripers. (to an extent)

i fish mine mostly for reds and trout and do pretty well on it over grass and bars. i personally think that the action is not what i thought it would be when i got it.. but have found that if i "pop" it with a good foot or more of slack in the line... it has much more glide and pause. the slack doesnt neg. affect a hookset cause like a top water i seem to hook up more with a second or two of pause. jmo.

what are you guys talking about? who...if anyone uses a lower gear just to reel your lure slower? just reel a high gear reel slower. deep crankers use a lower gear ratio because it has more torque and more power to counter the resistance that a 3/4 or 1oz. lure pulling against you in 19ft of water gives you. apparently noone got the bicycle refrence earlier... so im going to go with this... its a "towing gear". just like youre transmission shifts down when more load is placed on it in order to pull it and use the same rpms.... such the same is slowing your reel gears down to crank. see?

well.. i have experience with the red eye shad in sexy shad color and a deep diving bandit in the foxy shad color. i have caught fish on both. like everyone else said though.... hard to say if it was ever ONLY because of the color. i dont think it is on the "rattletrap" red eye crank because the paint has long since started chipping off of it. i think its the baits unique action. im a nonboater and the guy i normally ride with listens intently to other tourney talk. but wiht a grain of salt. and he went out and got a few red eye shads last winter cause of the stir it was causing. he says theyre great for the action and they actually come with sharp hooks...lol... unlike rattletraps. as far as the deep crank goes...i out caught him a few times fishing ledges with the foxyshad ... but then i was fishing different angles, different cadence,speed, and brands of lures than he was. so its apples and oranges as far as color goes. wheather its the next greatest thing... who knows..i doubt it. but it catches fish just as good as anything else and kvd freakin KILLS with it. but then.... he kills with most everything...

ive done pretty good with the sexy shad colors. though.... im not really sure wheather the color actually contributed to any of the catches as opposed to another color. *shrug*

drop shot agreed. also a carolina rig with a good 3 ft. leader will let you comb that hump and get a real idea of what is down there. you can do that with a drop shot too but i personally prefer the c-rig for searching. besides... you can throw a 10in anaconda on the crig and people wont look at you funny

i have found that my best clear water choices have been long casts and natural colored unweighted soft plastics. watermelon, pumpkin, black and shad colors seem to work best. i normally just adjust the hook size for how i want the bait to fall. also clear,white or shad colored topwaters can give you distance and big bites. i go with subtle ones though... torpedo's, spittin image, devil horses etc. you can catch clear water fish on buzzbaits and the like but i think you can up your percentage more with subtlety.

my cbs station is running football. not this event. i hate college football. now this...........

man..... had you posted this a month ago..... the abu garcia black max series round reels... the older ones.. had clickers. i used them for a year or two for saltwater use. they were great. i updated all my stuff though and gave them away. i had 4 or 5. id have givin you one. :'( they are good reels... solid nothing at all fancy about them. sometimes the levelwinds on them were suspect. if you can find one cheap id pick one up. http://cgi.ebay.com/BLACK-MAX-ABU-GARCIA-3-BB-FISHING-REEL-ALUMINUM-FRAME_W0QQitemZ290371307774QQcmdZViewItemQQssPageNameZRSS:B:SRCH:US:101 that is a metal one.. the ones with the plastic sides had the baitclicker on them.... good luck

i know when i got my quantum accurist pt. i took it out a few days later and started slinging spinnerbaits with it and ten minutes in i started getting bearing whine... that turned quickly into screams. not having any oil with me i set it down and later oiled the spool bearing and the bearing under the spool tensioner. it casts like a dream now. maybe this is your problem? these two spots are easy to access and oil with a good oil (abu garcia oil of course)

The thought of spending 6 hrs cranking a 20' ledge in 70 degree weather, let alone 100 degree, is enough to make me take up needlepoint. ;D ;D Course I ain't riding a bike up any hills either. : hahhaha.... welcome to lake talquin...tallahassee florida.

ive caught some of the boggest fish of my life on a beetle spin. in fact my p.b. lmb! underrated is the hildebrandt snagless sally. if youre not throwing this in tidal water.... why are you there?

like wayne said, do not put any 3x (elaztech) baits with other plastic lures. the elaztech will melt and make a nice goo that is near impossible to get rid of. it does NOT melt in your typical plano tackle boxes. but keep them seperate from your other plastic lures. strike king zulu's and zero's are my fav. elaztechs.... but im looking forward to new designs now that sk. isnt the monopoly on them.

.ghoti is right. lol.... but i have to admit.. when youre crankin a ledge 20 feet down for 6 hours in 100 degree heat.... your arm gets really tired on a 6.1 or higher. i think im only into the low gear idea for ease of reeling in bigger lures with more resistance. just like a bike with 10 speeds.... can you get up the hill in the big speed gear? of course.... but its a hell of alot easier three speeds down.

trust me when i tell ya... my "home" water is wakulla river here in fla. and it is gin clear. even clearer. and i fished big game green mono for years on it and then yo zuri green. hell for a while there i was even using the cajun thunder red. i never saw a difference in the bites. i agree that the only time that ive seen a difference really was in brite green (big game) flourecent line in clear water. other thatn that i think its a very minute detail. even though i cant bring myself to do it.. i know guys that throw everything on green powerpro braid and get bit constantly. id buy the whole lot of the yo zuri green at that price if you would kindly post the site address

id probably go with the bps too. im thinking about it myself. have heard really good things about the skeet reese rods and the vendetta... and we all know that the shimanos are good. im thinking though that i only need a crank rod ( deep cranking) like 3 months out of the year and i dont want to spend 100 bucks for it. im either going to get a bps or something like it. maybe a lightening rod. you know...jscott... you could just go and buy an uglystick graphite lite for 50 bucks and be done with it....ive got 4 and love them. i use them for saltwater though.

i was a pretty serious fluke fisher for a long time and i LOVED the strike king zulu toos. then they changed the formula and theyre just not the same. i dont throw them that much in freshwater anymore opting for floating worms and things like that but i still will throw a fluke in salt water. reccently though i have to say that i have really liked the strike king caffeen shad. it hasnt produced much for me yet but then i havent had the best conditions for it lately. i love the action though. zooms always seemed a little too stiff for me and i felt that i had to work them a little too gently to make them not twirl. i like to rig my flukes a tiny bit too heavy (hook size) and make them sink a bit on the pause. thats probably why i like the new sk's and why i loved the old zulus.

yeah...when i was first on the lookout for buying my first serious rods... i read alot on here and while there was always lots of opinions, everyone seemed to agree that the shimano rods had a great warranty and awesome customer service. so when i found one on sale (a convergence) i got it. i loved it. so then i started buying shimano rods. all the rods i have purchased myself have been shimano ever since. i have some other ones - alot of nice all stars and some daiwas, but those were given to me. good luck!

excellent choices.