BobP

What’s wrong with the obvious answer?

I use slow cure 30 minute epoxy to glue. Any brand will do but I use Devcon Two Ton. You can also use it to clearcoat your lures. Fast cure epoxies like 5 minute versions are a no no. The cure too fast to level out, turn an ugly brown exposed to UV rays, and are not waterproof. Spray can urethane? A few guys use it but most think it’s not durable enough. Lots of guys like KBS Diamond Coat moisture cured urethane. You can dip and hang lures with it, a simple method. Check with tackleunderground.com and do a search on KBS for lots of info on it.

You might as well use the best materials you can find because you put a lot of hand work to shape and finish a lure, enough that the materials costs are inconsequential in comparison to the work involved. I use kiln dried wood, polycarbonate (aka Lexan) 1/16” or G10 circuit board 1/32” sheets for lips, and fashion my wire hangers from soft temper stainless steel wire .041”. You can buy most of the materials from the above mentioned sources, or get them from McMaster-Carr online. Soft temper wire is much easier to bend and shape accurately and it holds up fine for bass baits and is easier to tune while fishing. I think lurepartsonline.com carries belly hangers with lead ballast weights molded on them. It’s the easy way to ballast a lure. Many average size bass baits work well with the 2 gram belly weights.

I use a Shimano CRS-DX68M medium power dropshot rod rated for 1/8 to 3/8 oz for all that stuff. Mine is the older version with cork handle and has a “hinged action” with a soft fast action tip mated to a medium power shaft. My favorite rod for any finesse presentation.

I understand the urge to use available materials for crankbaits. But to me, the many hours you put into shaping, assembling, and finishing a crankbait hugely outweighs the cost of basic materials like wood, wire, and polycarbonate (aka Lexan) or G10 circuit board. JMHO

It’s just a fact of life that small diameter braid on a spinning reel will be easier handling and give you less trouble than mono or fluoro. It twists just as much but it’s not going to jump off the spool in knotted coils. It’s sensitivity is also superior and it lasts a long time. After fishing mono and fluoro for many years I recently switched to braid with a long leader. I can’t see any downside to it and I appreciate the advantages. I use 12 lb Power Super Slick, 10 lb Sufix 832, and Gliss 18 lb Monotex on various reels. They all have very small diameter and I like them equally. I used to be a staunch 6 lb fluoro or mono guy. Now I’m opting for fewer hassles.

I use soft temper stainless steel wire ordered from McMaster-Carr online. .041” diameter is right for most bass cranks, is easy to bend and twist with hand tools, and is plenty strong. It allows you to tune the line tie on a crankbait without breaking the finish on the nose. Cost is around $7-8 for a 1/4 lb spool that will wire a bunch of baits. Pick up a set of round nose wire bending pliers at a craft store. I order medium density balsa from Balsa USA online. Cheapest? Probably not but you get what you pay for and the costs for crankbait components is tiny tiny tiny compared to the work you put into building them. Penny wise pound foolish, as they say.

Yeah, screw eyes work ok. Put a little superglue on them and screw them into a drilled hole. A big compressor is perfect, most builders use them, but you need to add a pressure regulator valve that works in the airbrush range 10-40 psi. Add a moisture trap if you work in humid air and an oil trap if the compressor is oil lubricated.

I think the difference is much less on more modern design reels that use larger diameter gears. On my old green Curados, the 5:1 geared reels were much much smoother than the 6.2:1 reels. On my later Daiwa Tatulas, I can’t tell any difference. They’re all smooth. A lot of engineering goes into reel gears: diameter, cut angles, metal composition, tolerances, etc. it’s hard to single out a single “smoothness factor”. But my gut says lower ratio gears tend to be smoother, all other factors held equal (which they seldom are). But the difference has to take a back seat to line take up speed in my view.

Any grease will work on reel drive gears but some are better than others. My favorite is Superlube grease with PTFE, a white medium viscosity multipurpose grease sold at Napa in small tubes or 400 gram cans. As for worm gears, I lube mine with reel bearing oil. If lubed with grease, the worm gear accumulates trash from the incoming line while fishing and needs to be cleaned and lubed more often.

I epoxy tip tops with 5 min epoxy. To remove one, I hold a butane lighter under the tip top while pulling on the tip top with needle nose pliers. As soon as the epoxy softens, it pops right off. If your rod is warranted, you might call the factory and have them send you a matching replacement. Since I build my own rods, I keep a variety tip tops on hand for repairs. Don’t much care for those you see in repair kits.

Personally, I’m not gonna fish a tip heavy flipping stick when I can balance it out perfectly by weighting the butt. Does it weigh more? Of course, but a balanced rig is less tiring to use and transmits info better to my hand. I’d rather not add weight to a rod if I can avoid it but lifting a 6 oz rod instead of a 4 oz rod is inconsequential on a flipping stick. I say try it in a temporary configuration. If you find it’s worse than unweighted, change it back

A Zman jig head with a little Zman TRD on a ML spinning rod and 10 lb test braid is hard to beat. It catches everything. Small bass, large bass, large bluegills, even catfish. Go with a very light jig head. The Zman Elaztech plastics are super durable and stick like glue to the Zman jigs with their wire barbs. Great lure for kids. And adults.

A lot of this has to do with how you personally want a topwater rod to feel and work. 15 yrs ago I bought a 6 1/2’ All Star Topwater Special graphite 785c rod and have felt no need to change to another since. It’s easy to work a walking bait with it because it does not have a too light or flexible tip. The length will not have you splashing water with it. In short, I’m lazy and it’s a comfortable rod to use and work a bait with. I also like to use it for jerkbaits, which is the same basic retrieve action and benefits from the same rod weight and action. That said, only you can decide what length, action, and weight rod is perfect for you for this presentation.

My basic question was whether there was an electrical advantage (I.e., a voltage advantage) in using 4 ea 6 gauge cables carrying 2 pairs of 12v current from 2 separate batteries over 20/ft of wires versus a single pair of 6 gauge wires carrying 24v from a jumped pair of batteries. I think the answer is yes since the impedance would be half as much on the 12v wires as on the 24v wires. I know the simplest wiring would be to jumper the batteries and run a single 24v pair to the front of the boat. But since I already have 2 pairs in place, it would seem the most practical solution with the best electrical efficiency would be to continue with a jumper on the TM plug as there would be less voltage loss. I can go either way and am sure any TM would run ok with either wiring scheme, so if I’m getting my electrical theory wrong, there’s probably no use in beating knots in my head cause I’m done here. Thanks to all for their advice.

While there are occasional largemouths in quieter river water around here, it’s mostly smallmouths or spotted bass in current areas. For them, plastics on a small jig head or a light T-rig bumped down the current will catch more fish than any other lure, and with fewer snags. We use spinning rods and 6-8 lb mono or 10-12 lb braid. If yours is a deeper, slower river, you can use standard largemouth lures to catch the largemouths that dominate there.

You have plenty of give with most glass blanks. I like 20 or 30 lb braid with a fluoro or copolymer leader. It’s really about the complete system from treble hooks, to line, to rod action. I use mostly factory hooks on my baits and the braid really helps to get fish hooked well while also helping to get baits deeper and getting longer casts. To each his own.

New2bcforbass, the old round Black Max 1600 and 3600 Ambassadeurs are solid and the same general design as the Pro Max, just with fewer bearings. But their black finish lasts forever. The ProMax came with gray paint that quickly flaked and scratched. Their beat up external look turns a lot of guys off but I love their performance and mechanical durability and they can outcast a lot of modern low profile reels when used for light line applications. I upgraded my spool bearings and changed the gearing to 6:1 versus the original 5.3:1. The color of the 2 brake blocks on the side of the spool determine their weight. White, black, blue, and fiber, heaviest to lightest. I use 2 black in mine. You can also go wth one block instead of 2 to affect the braking, no problem.

Ok, now I have 3 options. Nice! Thanks for the comments guys.

Yeah, the TM is an old OMC unit. The mount is getting a little wonky now but has run reliably for 20 years. The danged thing just won’t die! I’m a “not broke, don’t toss it” guy but if it ever breaks, I’ll be upgrading and was just wondering how a new unit would best be wired since I have two alternatives with 4 wires in place now.

If I remember, the better size is 6 gauge, and that’s what they are. I bought the boat used and the TM might have been installed by the first owner after the original purchase. But my question remains, basically is there enough drop in amperage on a 24V 6 gauge cable over 19 feet that it is advantageous to run twice as many 12V 6 gauge cables instead? I ask because I may want to change TMs in the future and it would be simpler to jump the batteries and use a single pair of cables up to a new TM.

Mine are gauge 6 or 4 Diameter. Pretty large.

You can’t catch them if they aren’t there. If bass are bedding and that’s what you want to fish (personally I don’t when there are other options) you want to see beds with fish on them before you fish. If you want actively feeding fish, check points and wind blown banks or anywhere you can see baitfish present. I thing bedding is winding down now in most of the South so I’d be fishing deeper or fishing cover most days to find the more active fish. And if I don’t get a bite to begin putting together a pattern in about 15 minutes, I move on to a new area.

No it won’t hurt them. In fact you might get batteries that are fresher than those sitting on a retail store shelf for months and months.

I run my H’bird with surface clutter cancellation ON. I can’t tell the difference in sensitivity.