BobP

If you want to lock down the drag, be prepared and competent enough to know when to put the reel in free spool and use your thumb as the drag system. I prefer to set drag at 5-8 lbs and let the reel work the fish. If you can't service a drag system properly, that may not be the best option. But I can. If necessary, I can add drag with my thumb to get a fish out of heavy cover. I've lost more fish to heavy hook sets, tearing a hole in the fish's mouth that let the fish to spit the bait, than not getting a hook buried. It's a balance. How you like to set hook, the size of the fish, the cover, your bait, hook sharpness, your rod, and your line. Getting the mix that works best for you is what counts, not what other guys may do.

Well yeah. Look on Ebay and buy a round Abu Promax 1600 for around $60-80. These are small 8.5 oz all metal round 8 bearing reels made in the early 70's and sold for $169. They are champs at casting 8 lb line and light lures. Take it apart, clean everything and lube it properly. It has simple straightforward design so there are no "gotchas" in servicing them. One white brake or two black brakes on the centrifugal brake posts in the right side of the reel. Fill the spool until you can see about 1/16" of daylight between the line and the reel's top. Back off the cast control until there's just a tiny bit of side play in the spool (in other words, the cast control is essentially OFF) - and it will cast light baits all day without a single backlash and without the drama many of today's reels will generate. The only knock on these reels was they were painted with gray metallic paint that was easily marred and scratched. If you can see beyond the surface condition to the high quality below, you're in for a treat. Great casts, smooth retrieve.

Round Shimano Calcuttas are built like tanks BUT that is brand and model specific, not an inherent design characteristic. There is no engineering reason that a low profile reel can't be just as tough or a round reel a wimp. Gear ratios are gear ratios. Any reel can have high or low ratio. Any reel can have a low or high capacity spool. Low profile reels are more comfortable to palm for most guys and their spools are more accessible, so its easier to pick out backlashes. I use both types but it's based on gear ratio, line capacity, how they handle line, and what weight they are comfortable throwing - not the shape. JMHO

Some pro rod makers did testing on the lifting capacity of rod guides and found the guides on most rods start popping off the rod blank at about 12 lb deadweight. This brings up the ?? - why would you want a drag with more than 12lb resistance on a bass reel?

I wouldn't put much stock in bearing count when evaluating reel specs. 5 or 6 bearings (depending on whether your count the IAR bearing) has all critical moving parts covered (spool, pinion, levelwind, main gear). Bearings are heavier than most components, so a 10 bearing reel may be overweight just due to the 'extra' bearings. You may also find that a 5:1 ratio reel like the Shimano will be smoother on the retrieve than a 6.2 or 7 ratio Shimano because the gears are cut less aggressively, under less strain, and work smoother - at least that is true of the old green Curado 200's versus the 200B5 - which I am still using 8 yrs later.

Don't know what size reel you're using but I think a 2500 size is about the minimum for throwing 10 lb fluorocarbon. One thing that helped me: you don't want to fill the spool to the brim like you might with mono. If you leave a 1/8" lip unfilled, it will be much more manageable and will stop jumping off the spool. Yes, it is stiffer but the advantages are so many that it's worth the trouble. BTW, it will last MUCH longer on the reel than mono will.

If you're going to color green braid with a black Sharpie, do it in an intermittent pattern, not solid black all the way. The idea is that the different colors will break up the linear look of the line, like camouflage. I fish clear water and only use braid in heavy grass where the fish can't get a look at the line before they see the bait. Don't much care for throwing braid with a FC leader knot in it, so I just use FC except when I think I'll be cutting through vegetation.

I've used the San Diego Jam knot for a couple of years now and never had a break-off with fluoro, mono or braid. It's easy to tie and I think one of its strengths is that you can easily see how the knot is going together while you tie it, so if anything goes wrong, you know it immediately. With fluoro, I think various knots that include multiple wraps around the standing line work well because the wraps cushion the line from instantaneous shock. I'm not 'hung up' on the San Diego knot, I just know I can consistently tie it correctly - and that makes a big difference over time.

Nice work as usual, Marty. The Petey's are one of my favorite to fish or build.

I think it's easier to stick a fish with a barbless hook (smaller hook point cross section going into hard bass mouth parts) so to me it's a tradeoff between hooking up and staying hooked. If you don't horse them too hard and tear the hook hole open, a barb on the hook is almost always superfluous. Player's choice.

If you're going to be fishing mostly weed lines you can go with heavy line - 20 or even 25 lb is not too much. The bites are reaction bites and the fish can't detect line very well in vegetation. Many guys prefer braid for grass fishing because it will cut through grass stems when needed. 30 to 65 lb braid is popular but with braid, you don't want to use snap hook sets like you can with mono because the instantaneous strain at the knot can break even 50 lb braid. Personally, I find fluorocarbon or mono easier to handle so reserve braid and 1+ oz weights for punching through heavy matted vegetation. I had a heck of a time teaching my kids and friends who grew up spincasting how to use a baitcaster. They are used to accelerating the rod tip any ol' way, like using a buggy whip, and that meant endless backlashes until they learned that a smooth controlled cast is necessary for a baitcast reel to perform well. Sounds like you're on the right track. Enjoy!

There really is NO FREE LUNCH and there never was regarding Loomis rods. The Loomis warranty/expediter service is paid for by the very high price you pay for one of their rods. When the expediter service was $50, that seemed a reasonable charge for Loomis to accept, replace, and ship a replacement rod. Now doubled, many guys feel the deal they made with Loomis by paying that premium price has been abrogated unfairly by Loomis. I think they have a valid point and the change constitutes a "bait and switch" by Loomis/Shimano. On the other hand, I have no sympathy for jerks who repeatedly abuse rods and then use an expediter service multiple times a year to get over on the company. If you don't know how to handle and fish with high end graphite, you should recognize your limitations and buy something in IM6 or fiberglass from BassPro. JMHO

Gotta have? No. BC has advantages, like ability to use larger lines and no twisties (semi important with expensive line!). Many experienced fishermen find lure placement easier with BC equipment. Also long casts with C-rigs. Casting under stuff like docks and trees is easier with a spinning rod, and fishing very light baits is certainly easier with a spinning rod. Where you live, I wouldn't be too worried about handling 10 lb bass so spinning rods are capable of doing everything if you want - but you'll be missing some of the fun if you don't learn to use both. They have their respective strengths and weaknesses and complement one another when you need to use both finesse and power presentations.

Run a Qtip inside your guides to see if one isn't cutting your line.

Yeah, it's lucky pics show only one side of a crackle crankbait because the other side usually ain't the same! I get best results when I brush the medium on both sides at once, then shoot the paint and dry both sides simultaneously. There are LOTS of variables: What surface the medium is applied onto, how much medium, how much and what kind of paint, medium wet or dry when painted, how fast you dry the paint. Doing both sides at once cuts down on the variability. When I tried shooting acrylic crackle medium through my airbrush, it came out looking like a thick spider web. Not so great for crankbaits but maybe handy if you are making a creepy horror film.

Every bass nut has a bunch of crankbaits. Some of them work great and catch a ton of fish. Some are OK but not great. Some are dogs that will never hunt. The problem is that if you gave these baits to another bass nut, his judgment would be different. The dogs would probably still be the dogs, but the others would be sorted differently. Not sure what your interest is. If you want to sell them, get advice from a knowledgeable fisherman or collector. If you want to fish them, get them wet and see what the bass think. Afraid you have a $50,000 lure in there and don't want to get screwed? Don't worry.... you don't.

After reading a ton of comments from pros and dedicated dropshotters, I chose a Shimano Crucial dropshot rod a couple of years ago - and haven't regretted it. The Crucial has a sensitive fast "hinged" tip but enough backbone down the blank to handle any bass. There may be other rods that work great too, but the Crucial was purpose-designed for bass dropshotting, and I think that makes a difference.

Fin@tic, I'm no sonar expert but there are a few things I try to keep in mind. First, a standard 21 degree transducer will show you what's in a cone whose diameter is only about 7 ft in diameter on the bottom in 20 ft of water. So it's pretty easy to miss structure or fish unless you run right over them. Remember what you see on the screen is a history of what you have been running over, not a live TV screen (which is the way we all have been programmed to see it). Sonar can spook fish so it's best to turn it off when fishing shallow water. They don't seem to spook as easily in deep water and you can use the sonar to stay on a shad school that bass are attacking (maybe they can't hear it in the commotion, or just ignore it to gorge themselves). A screen fish hook is produced as a fish swims into, through, and out of the center of the sonar cone. When the boat stays directly over a bass for a few seconds, what gets painted on screen is a thick line that looks like a worm. A school of bass looks like a pile of worms. Lastly, if a fish is literally sitting on the bottom or is in close contact with cover, you won't detect it. That's why sonar should mostly be thought of as an aid to locate where bass SHOULD be, not necessarily where they ARE. If you find structure and/or cover and/or baitfish on the screen (all three are best!), you deduce that bass are there even if you don't see them on screen. Take your knowledge of fish behavior, seasonal variations, weather factors and prey behavior, then add sonar to refine and confirm what you think bass should be doing. It's a great tool but not the only one in the tool box.

One thing guys get confused about is what fish look like on screen when you turn that useless Fish ID off. The fish arches you see on the demos and ads for sonars is something you don't often see. What you see more often is a "worm" shape on the screen. The thicker the worm the bigger the fish, and a school of bass looks like a pile of worms. A school of shad, on the other hand, looks like a cloud. Individual shad are too small to register but the whole school will. With experience, you can get pretty good at distinguishing different kinds of fish: bass, shad, crappies, etc. We would be better off if guys didn't call sonar "fish finders". The best use of sonar in most lakes, most of the year, is to show you structure that should be holding fish, not necessarily the fish themselves. Rock piles, brush piles, drop offs, channel beds, etc. Maybe that's not critical in shallow Florida lakes where emergent vegetation shows you where to fish, but it's bread and butter stuff in the rest of the country, especially when fishing off shore.

I've caught fish on them and they seem to work pretty well. I wish they came in a wider color selection that included colors with less flash like green pumpkin. They tend to get pretty bent up in the bag too.

I use glow white on jigging spoons and catch all kinds of bass - white, largemouth, or stripers. I brush on several heavy coats of acrylic based glow paint, then dip the bait in moisture cure polyurethane. Even on a cloudy day, the ambient light is plenty strong enough to energize the paint for hours and it really shines in deep water. The glow intensity is directly related to the size and number of the glow grains the paint contains, so you have to brush it on instead of shooting it with an airbrush.

Well, the 'cons' may each be minor or not, depending on what you think is important but even if you feel they are minor - if the competition has fewer of them, which is the rational choice? Personally, a loose side plate that would leak water, plus less than great performance with light lures, plus suggesting only the factory should service the reel are significant 'cons' to me. They may not be important to you and you might love owning one. Thanks to competition, we can both get reels we like.

I've gotten very good service from P-line, Seguar Carbon Pro, and BassPro XPS. For the price, especially if you get it during the spring sale period, XPS seems impossible to beat for price vs performance. Pay attention to the amount of line you get for your money. Filler spools of different brands have from 150 to 250 yds of line, which is a big difference.

When I fish clear northern waters, I use 8 lb test fluorocarbon line on a spinning rod. It has great sensitivity and handles well on a spinning rod if you don't overfill the spool (I leave a 1/8" lip on the spool unfilled). Use an improved cinch knot, a San Diego Jam knot or similar knot including multiple wraps around the standing line. When you get up to 12 lb fluoro, you begin to have handling problems unless you use a baitcast reel. Northern bass are not too large for 8 lb line and you get more bites with fluoro. When fishing grass beds, I'd switch to 20 lb braid. Easier for the bass to see? Yep, but hard enough for them to notice it in heavy vegetation and the braid will cut through grass if the fish buries up in it.

I'd give fluoro another shot. Because it sinks rather than floats like braid, it allows a direct in-line connection to the bait and more feel than braid or mono. I'd try 14 lb BassPro XPS fluoro and use a knot that includes multiple wraps around the standing line to tie it on. I use a San Diego knot, but there are others.