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Interesting bait, but wouldn't the tentacles dampen the side to side gliding action? I may just have to try a pack of those. They look like an excellent Carolina rig bait.

I try not to use them for that reason, but painted olive green they're not so bad, especially if there's chop on the water.

They're excellent swim jigs. I especially like the Purple Ghost Living Image color with a White Trash Smallie Beaver as a trailer, and yes, they have the rubber band.

What's wrong with leaning your rods against a wall? IIRC, after extended periods of time It will retain that small bend in the rod where its leaning. I assumed that's what he was getting at, but I'll believe it when I see it.

Test them yourself in the store using this old trick. Go to your local retailer, grab a couple rods you're interested in, and very lightly drag the tip of the rod on the carpeted floor. Next to actually fishing with it, there isn't a more accurate way to judge the sensitivity of a rod. If the floor is not carpeted, set your cell phone alarm to vibrate and let it vibrate on the floor or on a shelf and touch the rod tip to that.

What's wrong with leaning your rods against a wall?

The smallest ones they sell at Home Depot. They are about 4" long.

Applying KVD Line and Lure Conditioner and letting it dry overnight will help with that, especially with any co-poly or co-poly blends like Ultra Soft and P-Line CXX. I would recommend trying 6# Ultra Soft or CXX on a spinning reel if you're looking for an upgrade over XL or mono in general. The stuff is much stronger than the listed breaking strength, and the 6# handles like a dream. I haven't tried 8# Ultra Soft, but 8# CXX is a little stiff for me on a spinning reel, so I know where you're coming from BTW, I like the Deadmau5 avatar.

I just got the line today. What a tremendous deal at $25 a spool! The #6 has 8000 yards on the spool and the 12# has 4800. I hope it has a good shelf life. :

Out of curiosity, I''ve tried throwing a few topwater baits on my cranking stick when it had #10 fluoro on it. It didn't work very well overall, but I did catch a couple nice fish on a Rico popper. The sinking line made the Rico dive underwater and it created an unusually loud bloop.

Same here. This guy uses nothing but watermelon/black flake and scoffs at the idea of using any other color. He does very well catching above average sized fish. FWIW, there was a guy featured on the Bassmaster Day On The Lake series maybe a year ago that believed in limiting his jig colors to only green pumpkin and black/blue.

Is Black with blue flake and black with red flake just like Junebug and Black Neon. I see alot of companies have a junebug color and a black and blue flake color Junebug is purple plastic/green flake. Black neon is black plastic/red flake.

Why not braid? I barely have to set the hook with spinnerbaits now. A little stretch in the line allows fish to inhale the lure more deeply, resulting in a better hook-up ratio. You can always use a softer rod with braided line to compensate for this, but generally speaking, braid is not the way to go with reaction lures, IMO.

I think Brauer would miss a fish or two that day if he were using any jig with the cheap Eagle Claw cutting point hooks vs. a sharp Gammy or Mustad needle point hook. Otherwise I don't think it would make much of a difference whether the jig had quality paint or whether it were wire-tied or rubberbanded, aside from a slight different in drop speed due to the difference in bulkiness. There's really no need to overcomplicate the process of choosing a jig, but one thing that any jig worth buying MUST have, at least in my opinion, is a sharp hook, preferably a needle point hook. This sets the baseline at about $2.50 and up. I personally feels jigs are one of the most expendable lures, about as expendable as a half pack of GYCB Senkos. They get banged up, taken by toothy fish, lost on snags, or eventually tossed in the trash or given away once they've put in their time. If you're looking for value, you'll be hard pressed to beat the Northstar Bait's Pro Series jigs at $2.60. That's RiverRat316's company.

How old are the lures? Condition?

I'd say Spro >>> BPS > Scumfrog. The BPS are nothing special, and are fairly good for $5. The Scumfrogs are flimsy and too soft for fishing heavy cover, IMO. They snag often which spooks a large section of weedbed when you yank it out or go in to retrieve it. The softer the frog, the easier they are to snag because they're so easily compressed. Like another poster said, you get what you pay for. Another alternative is the Snag Proof lineup, which are priced in between the Spro and BPS frogs. The Snag Proofs appear to be good sellers locally but still end up in bargain bins at local retailers for $5 in the fall. The Snag Proof Phat Frog is my favorite overall, with the Bronzeye 65 a close second. I was able to pick up a 5 year supply of Phat Frogs last year at $5 apiece. I would recommend that you try one of those in black.

That sounds like fun. I would love to do this, but it's illegal in MN. So I just bring a few cinderblocks with me once in a while and drop them on the weed edges. That'll have to do.

Peacefulness of being on the water, and the challenge of locating fish is always fun, even if I get shut out once in a while.

Could be that you are fishing a water with stunted bass. There are plenty around me that only seem to yield skinny bass, pike, and sunnies. If there are any people living on the lake, they likely don't fish, as evidence by their winterized boats sitting on shore in the summer. I know of one that fits this description, a little lake called School Section, where it is literally impossible for a Senko to hit bottom w/o a tiny bass inhaling it first. Some of these smaller, untapped northern waters are fished so little that an predator/prey imbalance occurs and it results in stunted, underfed bass. Read into Selective Harvest on how to possibly prevent this.

Sounds like you're basically pointing the rod at where the lure entered the water. As SoFla said, finish the pitch with the tip held high(10-11 o'clock), so that you can keep a semi-slack line and follow the lure down to the bottom. The deeper the water, the higher the rod tip. As Francho said, sometimes letting it swing or reeling it works too, depending on where the fish are holding in relation to the cover. Either way, the action trailers are going to paddle, whether it's in free-fall or being retrieved. I figured this little trick out by accident by making bad pitches and reeling them in right away, only to be chased and nailed by an aggressive bass that was holding in places where I expected a passive bass to be.

I don't like anything under 50 on a baitcaster. 30 gets mixed reviews, so maybe it's best that people try it themselves. It digs in just a little, limiting casting distance by a few feet, and I've had it break due to abrasions a lot more often than with the 50.

Cottonseeds, at least I think that's what they are, that collect on the water's surface and have a tendency to collect on the line. They can be a real pain to pick off, especially on braided line. I often cut the line and slide the mess off rather than try to pick it off with my fingernails. I absolutely love fishing in the wind, it has so many fish catching advantages, and the heat and humidity don't really bother me as long as I can jump in and lounge on the shady side of the boat for a few minutes to cool off mid way through the trip.

Cottonseeds, at least I think that's what they are, that collect on the water's surface and have a tendency to collect on the line. They can be a real pain to pick off, especially on braided line. I often cut the line and slide the mess off rather than try to pick it off with my fingernails. I absolutely love fishing in the wind, it has so many fish catching advantages, and the heat and humidity don't really bother me as long as I can jump in and lounge on the shady side of the boat for a few minutes to cool off mid way through the trip.

Cottonseeds, at least I think that's what they are, that collect on the water's surface and have a tendency to collect on the line. They can be a real pain to pick off, especially on braided line. I often cut the line and slide the mess off rather than try to pick it off with my fingernails. I absolutely love fishing in the wind, it has so many fish catching advantages, and the heat and humidity don't really bother me as long as I can jump in and lounge on the shady side of the boat for a few minutes to cool off mid way through the trip.

I think you'll learn more by spending an extra 20 minutes on the water, rather than entering all the data when you get home from your trip. Spend that 20 minutes fishing a technique or lure that you're unfamiliar with, like for me for example, flick-shake worms, open-water frogging, or Great Lakes-style snap-jigging of heavy tube jigs, that would be even better yet. I've found that focusing on the patterns of yesteryear is often a counterproductive and misleading waste of time.