BobP

Repainting crankbaits is not really a snap project if you want them to look right, perform like the original, and be durable. It is certainly easier and cheaper in the long run to send them to a repaint service unless you want to get into the practice as a hobby. Bit if you want "down and dirty", take a bait that has some of the colors you need and simply apply some nail polish.

I have several 15 year old Curado 200's that I still use. I've seen some with grooved and corroded brake drums that were used in freshwater only, so imo it's worthwhile to lube the brake drum with one drop of bearing oil on a Q-tip occasionally. Clean the brake blocks with some denatured alcohol but no oil. Oiling them can prevent them from actuating properly. Once the drum is trashed, it's hard to fix without new parts. I recommend turning up the cast control a little to compensate for the increased speed of the spool - or learning to thumb the spool a little more. I think old Curados tend to be a little more touchy than later model Shimanos but you can still get them dialed in with care.

No good reason to snell an offset worm hook. But snelling a straight shank hook will cause the hook to cam upward into the roof of a fish's mouth, resulting in much better hook sets and fewer lost fish.

You can't equate reel quality to the number of ball bearings in a reel, nor is it a gauge of how smoothly it will retrieve. It really has more to do with design and manufacturing excellence. To me, the brand has as much to say about quality as the description. I trust Shimano, Daiwa, and Abu Garcia reels because I have used them for a long time without problems. I can't comment on Lews since I've never used one. Some of the cheapest, worst designed and faulty reels made by 2nd and 3rd tier manufacturers are packed with lots of ball bearings just to entice the uninformed buyer to bite. Personally, if a reel has more than 6 ball bearings mounted in the right places, I get suspicious. I have Shimano and Ambassadeur (now Abu) reels with 4 bearings that have worked faultlessly for more than 20 years with periodic maintenance.

I've used all three. Izor Premium is a hard surface mono and has excellent knot strength, casting ease, and toughness. But it does develop spool memory, especially in cold weather. Big Game has a softer surface and lots of guys use it as a good general purpose mono. I like its medium green color better than Izor's dark green, but it does have a less consistent diameter than the other two. I like the Pline CXX less than the others. It's very tough line but to me it seems to have a rather "greasy" surface feel to it and doesn't cast as well as the others. Of the three, Big Game is the "value leader" and is widely available. All Walmarts carry it. All of these lines will develop spool memory during use. I don't recommend any of them for winter time fishing but they work fine in temperate weather. I use Izor Premium in the summer and Izor XXX in the winter because the XXX is softer and gets less spool memory. But if I could use only one, it would be Big Game.

Nope, don't think so.

As above, I prefer using fluorocarbon line for Senko fishing because braids do not transmit a bite on slack line or when a fish picks up the Senko and swims toward you. Another thing I don't hesitate to do is pinch down the barb on my EWG hook that I use for Senko fishing. Will they still sometimes swallow the hook? Yep, but you can get it back out without damaging the fish. For me, it kills the joy of fishing to land a deep hooked bass and hurt a fish I have no intention of taking for food while trying to unhook it. And personally, I've never had a bass spit out a barbless hook during the fight.

Two general ways to do this. You can use hot melt glue, wipe the guide foot over the glue stick and then stick it on the blank. Problem is, it's hard/impossible to adjust the guide position after you slap it on the blank. What I like to do is get some elastic thread from the sewing dept at Walmart or wherever and tie the guide onto the blank. Position the guide carefully and then begin wrapping the guide until it holds the guide in place. Use a razor blade to cut the elastic thread. It pops right off the guide foot when cut.

I've been pretty unhappy with any "repair" to a broken rod tip, even if it's only 2". Bottom line, if it's a cheap rod, trim the remaining blank and put on a new tip-top. You'll have a rod that might be useful for something, but maybe not much. If it's a high end rod with any kind of warranty still in effect, I'd definitely send it back for an exchange even if it cost $50. You'll be happier in the long run.

Ok so you're getting some interference from the trolling motor. The sonar should be wired for power to the starting motor battery and not the trolling motor battery, for starters. The trolling motor itself may be putting out electrical interference or the power wires to the troller and the sonar can be routed so close together that the troller power line leaks interference into the sonar power line. It could be a loose wire connection in either system. It could be any numer of things or a combination of things. Good news is that from your pic, it looks like the problem is fairly mild. If it gets to really bugging you, you have to go back to basics and just start eliminating possible sources for it.

I'd always want to replace the entire system when changing sonars. No telling if the former jughead owner wired it properly with correct circuit protection and wire routing, or whether the old installation now has frayed or cracked wiring that will reduce the performance of the new unit. New is always better when it comes to electronics.

I fish a Triton 19 ft boat with a Dual Pro XL 2 bank charger for my 24v trolling motor. 5 amps per bank. I bought it in 2002 and it has been flawless for 14 years. If you are a casual fisherman who only needs to recharge your batteries overnight, it works perfectly well. I use a Schumacher Speed Charge 15 amp from Walmart to charge my starting battery occasionally and it would have been better to buy a 3 bank charger to do them all at once, but it's not really much of a chore to switch the power cord over to the Shumacher for a hour or two before I take the boat out. The needed amp rating depends on how quickly you need to charge the batteries between usages. Dual Pro has an excellent reputation for quality, customer service, and performance that tends to make batteries last a long time. If you have to recharge from iffy dock power where the input amperage can be low, you should look for a unit built specifically for that circumstance. But if you do most of your charging at home with an extension cord, that's not an issue.

Several of the G'boro city reservoirs offer fishing from piers. Also Burmil park. High Point lake offers bank fishing. Otherwise, you have to find small ponds whose owners will let you fish there.

Decals are put on the blank before it is clearcoated. If you remove it, you have matte black raw graphite underneath. So unless you are going to strip the entire rod of finish (after removing all the guides), you'll end up with a rod that looks worse than when you started. You' probably need to shave the decal off with a razor blade anyway since it is plastic, not finish. If you otherwise like the rod, I say leave it alone.

Whether you can bend out a hook eye without breaking it depends on the temper the manufacturer put into it. Generally, japanese hooks have better temper and break when bent so they are not good candidates. VMC hooks usually work ok.

I prefer epoxy because it is more impact resistant. Try some Rod Bond epoxy paste. It's a gel so won't run out of the lip slot. Fill the slot with the epoxy using a piece of wire and then simply push in the lip and wipe off the epoxy that squeezes out the back of the slot. If you put the epoxy on the lip versus the slot, it gets scraped off onto the front of the lip, causing a mess. Rod Bond is sold by Mudhole tackle and other rod building sites. It cures slowly enough that you have time to adjust the lip after insertion. Leave It to cure overnight and voila.

Normal? Yes. Desirable? Not especially but as long as the reel casts and retrieves OK, I wouldn't worry about it. A lot of Shimanos have this characteristic.

I don't think cranking the motor for only 4 revs is enough to build up pressure in the cylinder to it's proper test level. But having them all read similar is a positive sign.

Doing a tear down/clean/relube once a year is considered sufficient by most guys. But you should put a drop of oil in the spool bearings and in the levelwind gear several times during the fishing season. Mono is damaged by water absorption and by exposure to UV light. How often you change it is up to you but if it was discolored and getting lots of spool memory, I'd strip it off and put on all new line. It just isn't that expensive so why fight the spool memory and maybe break off a good fish just to save a buck? You don't need to strip it all off the reel, 150 ft or so is all you will be using until it's time to strip it off again.

Using a large diameter copolymer line will cause your Redeye to swim shallower. Don't be afraid to go as high as 20 lbs. It will also let you use the "bow and arrow" method to free your lure when it gets stuck, or haul in the lure and the log it's stuck on if that trick fails.

I use Kickn' Bass liquid and Megabass gel. My favorite is the Kickn' Bass, which is scent blended into purified fish oil (garlic, anise, or crawfish). It lasts a long time and works great in my experience. I also use JJ's dye for dipping the tails of plastics to present an accent color. It contains garlic scent. What you choose might depend on how you think fish react to "attractants". I like scent to encourage bass to hold on to a plastic bait longer, not to attract them via smell which I don't much believe in as far as bass go.

Well, I built a spinning rod on a similar 7' MH blank and experienced the same thing you have - it's just too heavy a power for just about any freshwater presentation for which I want to use a spinning rod. I used mine as a light duty saltwater surf rod for a few years, at which it excelled, then more recently stripped the rod down and made it into a baitcasting rod - which is a more rational choice unless you are one of those guys who use only spinning rods and need something heavy for jigs and such (which I don't).

I tie dropshot hooks with a Palomar knot and then insert the tag end of the line through the hook eye and down to the weight. That makes the hook stand out perpendicular to the line. It also pulls the knot inside the eye to give it a little extra protection. No problem with the plastic drooping down parallel to the line when I do this.

I like YH too. It's fairly strong, fairly manageable, fairly priced. Line companies often make two versions of copolymer line to suit baitcasting versus spinning reel users. Sounds like Yozuri is now doing the same with the introduction of their Ultra Soft. I prefer hard surface lines designed for baitcasting reels whenever I can get away with using them (not for spinning reels and not for cold weather use where they get excessive spool memory). Many copolymer lines work just fine but you'll get a wide range of likes/dislikes from guys who are sensitive to particular line characteristics or who like/dislike a line just based on anecdotal evidence. There is no line that is perfect for all circumstances, for all fishermen. But lines like Yozuri Hybrid strike a good balance of characteristics for many guys. There are also other "middle of the pack" copolymers that are, or have been, popular: Trilene Big Game, Izorline XXX are examples. You have to try a few and judge for yourself what's important/preferable.

I clean mine about every other year because I typically fish fairly clean water and have quite a few reels so any one reel gets fairly light use. I think it also depends on how you clean your reels and what kind of lubricants you use. Some last longer than others. Between 100% cleanings, I oil the spool bearings and level wind gear as needed. The biggest change I had in how often I needed to clean my reels was when I began using Superlube grease.