Busy

1/4oz. weight may your problem.

Just went to the Tackle Warehouse website for the first time O.O Looks like good prices to me. What are your favorite online retailers for price and selection? Tired of not finding what I want at Cabelas and BPS!

Zebco 33 still going strong! lol I expect AT LEAST 5 years from a reel that cost ~$100. I'm pretty sure certain I'll get more than that though out of my Quantums and Shimanos that cost around that.

It did not take me that long to get used to. Read the article at the top of the forum on how to set up your baitcaster, it makes a difference, especially at first. When I got my first baitcaster I tied a washer onto it and threw it in the yard for a few hours. You will get good at sorting backlashes

I would retrieve it normally, maybe pause a second first.

I use 20# green Suffix braid on my baitcasters, never had a problem with line digging into my spools.

I'll use my smaller spinning gear when it's necessary to size down (heavily pressured and/or very clear waters). I always use spinning gear for panfish and crappie so I'm pretty used to them. The fish in my profile picture was caught on a 5' ultralight Shimano Voltaeus rod with a Quantum Kinetic PTi size 20 reel, 4lb. mono Edit: Big hooks will catch big fish, but small hooks will catch small AND big fish.

Along with Bluebasser86 and Hi Salenity, the lakes around here have 18" limits (with a 13"-18" slot I think). Keepers are always my goal, but I enjoy catching any size fish! I get very excited at anything over 5 pounds.

Sorry it's been so long. I made a bracket and put a 12" roller on it, I'll have to remember to take a picture. Way easier to load now, couldn't miss it if I tried!

The ultra lights are news to me! Thank you, exactly what I was looking for! Item # ULM04RT

Closest thing I've found to what I had. That is a Rapala Balanced Jig Rap Size 02 Rainbow Trout color, but I need it to be floating with a treble and not designed for vertical fishing. Any help would be appreciated!

Anyone know where to buy 1" - 1 1/2" rainbow trout colored floating minnow lures that have a single treble on the back of them? Anything similar to this that won't dive more than a few feet on a somewhat brisk retrieve? Several years ago I bought like 20 of them at a hardware store I can't remember for very, very cheap. The brand was no-name and I can't seem to find a similar lure anywhere. These became my go-to lures for those "clear rainy days" when its raining or just got done raining and its still bright out rather than grey. I lost my last one today

I've been catching a lot of bass lately using crappie spins and realized I never hear much about them. Anybody else use crappie spins for bass?

I also think your knot might be slipping, it happens with braid. I often use braid and almost always use the palomar knot. http://www.bassresource.com/fish/knots.html - Article On Knots For topwater fishing, I would keep the tip of your rod pointed downwards towards the water. Move the rod perpendicular to the fish when setting the hook (go against the fish). Keeping your rod down makes you more ready to set the hook and easier to control the fish after the bite so you can keep it from diving or jumping. My experience with topwater frogs is that bass have bad aim lol. Like NitroFreak said bass will bump the frog and then come back and really hit it, but if you yank the frog 5 feet after the first bump, the bass may not come back for it Keep fishing and your casting issues and backlashes will go away, I promise! One thing that helped me a ton when I got my first baitcaster was a very frustrating night full of backlashes fishing in the dark. Just have to keep doing it and you get the feel for it

Link to the article please?

I would definately learn to Texas Rig your worms. Makes fishing the grass a lot easier. When I fish from the shore I always try to get in the grass, especially if it's hot.

Chartreuse with Black Flakes, but I always have White, Black, & Rainbow Trout colors with me too - top 4

Changed the plugs and went out yesterday. Ran great!! Thank you for the replies. The old plugs probably only had 10 hours on them and looked fine from the outside, but the new ones seemed to do the trick.

Will try plugs and plug caps and keep my fingers crossed. Don't want to take the flywheel off unless I have to. I didn't realize that a coil would work at low throttle but not at WOT. The intermittant dropping out had me pretty confused. Thanks for the fast reply! I really don't think the plug got fouled.

I have a 1969 Evinrude 9.5 that ran perfectly last year. Stored inside all winter, new gas. Took it out yesterday and idled it for awhile, idled fine. Getting up to speed it lost a cylinder. Bottom spark plug wasn't hot. Trolled and fished for a while with the motor off to let it sit. Took the gas line off and turned the motor over several times. The second cylinder fires only intermittantly and I only seem to lose it at WOT. Every time I open it up the second cylinder drops out and comes back on when I throttle it back down. What would be the most likely cause of this? I would think if it was in the magneto or ignition related it would either fire or not, instead of being intermittant.

I've thought about changing that, too. Thank you for your response, but I think I confused the issue. The roller in question is the little white nylon roller behind the bow roller. Not sure what to call that.

Hey I've been getting an old boat together to fish out of and everything is going pretty good except for when it's time to get off the lake! I've adjusted the bunks and rollers but the bow roller is giving me fits; it's pretty hard to hit when loading the boat and even if you do hit it you end up sliding off of it. Since I have no experience with this I thought I would put up a bunch of pictures and see if you guys have any recommendations. If something looks wrong here, please let me know! Backing down the ramp further makes it a bit easier but this isn't an option in choppy water because then the running boards are too far in the water to keep you on the trailer. I'm thinking something needs to be with the front roller. I was thinking about putting an 8" stern roller that's a shallow V shape, but I'm not sure if there's a better setup. The trailer is a pretty light gauge so I don't want to modify it too heavily with brackets that come off of it. Let me know what you think.

Best picture I could get last night: Seems to be a lot of noise at the top of the water; I don't know if this is typical. This is the first time I've used a fishfinder. After resetting the system, it did work better Here you can see how it's in the boat. The battery box is in front of the third seat.

It's an old 12V car battery that I had around. The boat is a mid-1950's 16' V-bottom with few electronics. There are bow and stern lights with a switch for night fishing and I'm planning to also hook up a Wondertroll 606 tonight. The transducer is mounter on the bottom of the transom. Pretty sure it's mounted fine because it found the bottom at full throttle well (w/ a 9.5hp motor). The wire just run along the side of the boat; the battery is near the bow. I'm mainly looking for advice on adjusting the sonar settings on the fishfinder. I think I'm seeing a lot of noise on the screen, even when anchored with the motor off.

I've been getting an old (old) boat fixed up for fishing and am looking for some help working the Lowrance Mark 5X Pro fishfinder that I put on it. I used it last night and everything seems to work, I just don't know what it means! What advice can you give to getting these set-up and fine tuned? My graph is filled with light grey speckles and I know I'm fishing in pretty clear water. I moved all around the lake and just didn't know what I was looking at the whole time! Could anyone give some advice to a fishfinder newbie? I fish freshwater where channels are not much more than 40' deep, and will be in ~15' water a lot.