BobP

I don't see one right answer to this. If you have no problems with backlashes with a particular reel, go ahead and fill it up. Got a reel that's a little touchy? Under fill it a bit to tame it down. Worried about IPT? Fill it to the brim or use a faster reel. There's all kinds of ways to skin this cat.

Like a lot of mono's, Izorline comes in 2 flavors. Premium for baitcasters which has a hard surface, good knot strength, limited stretch. XXX for spinning, which is softer. Premium develops quite a bit of memory in cold weather, XXX less. Izor has a more consistent diameter than Big Game, costs a little more but is cheaper than many others. The larger quarter lb spools are a bargain. If choosing an all season line, I would go with Yozuri Hybrid.

I keep a "Go Bag" of about 15 plastics and 5 plastic containers of hard baits, divided into types and depths. That's all that goes into the boat with me. If I'm going to fish new water, I'll review the go bag for additions/subtractions. I keep abut 5 times as many baits in inventory in my garage. If a bait doesn't get selected for the go bag in a few years, I give it away to friends or family. That's what keeps me sane and prevents me from spending the fishing day sitting in the boat changing lures instead of keeping my line wet and catching fish. I think of baits as tools. If you aren't using them you might as well give them to someone who will.

Personally, I would choose the Hawk pattern and just paint over it to get an acceptable ghost perch pattern. I don't much like trying solvents to remove paint from a crankbait. Most of them eat plastic as well as paint so you have to be careful while doing it. One sure way of removing paint is just to simply sand it off. That will also remove any 3D plastic features on the lure, if that's an issue. The best professional repainting services use media blasting to remove paint from lure before repainting. If you're going to try repainting for yourself and want a semi-transparent ghost look, be sure to use transparent airbrush paints.

There really isn't much available that is proof against yellowing due to UV radiation. I use Devcon Two Ton epoxy. Exactly measured and well mixed, I've had lures 5-6 yrs old that show no discernible yellowing. Flexcoat epoxy makes a version that contains a UV filter to retard yellowing. Find it on rod building websites. More expensive than Devcon. If you want to add glitter to the topcoat, you have another problem. If the flakes are fairly large, it takes a fairly thick topcoat like epoxy to carry them without flecks of glitter sticking up in the topcoat, unless you want to use more than one coat.. Another candidate is KBS Diamond Coat, a moisture cured urethane. It has a lot of advantages as a topcoat and a few disadvantages. It's one part, so just brush it on without mixing. But like most MCU's, it can be hard to store without beginning to harden in the storage container. MCU's can also be touchy about application over solvent based paints or latex paint that has not dried entirely. But they perform as well as epoxy for durability, waterproofness and have more gloss.

Like Crypt, I also like to use an old Abu Pro Max 1600 for light line baitcasting. Six bearings, a small light aluminum spool that casts small baits well. To me, it's the easiest to use, least backlashing reel ever - and I've used a bunch of the newer Shimano and Daiwa baitcasters. I like Suffix 832 braid on it. If you're familiar with the internals of a 4000 series Abu, a Pro Max will be the same, just smaller.

First you need to find the bass, or at least what depth they are using. My home lake is max 130ft deep but I rarely see bass deeper than 55ft deep in winter, as they are grouping up to feed on schools of baitfish this time of year. One of my most productive lures is a 3/4oz jigging spoon. It gets down fast, it's easy to fish, and makes for fast action when active bass are feeding on a shad school.

Thinner line moves less water so there's less for the lateral line on a bass to sense. But the difference is probably neglidgeable. The main advantages are that there is less for the bass to see and thinner line lets the lure act more freely and naturally.

Izorline is a copolymer line and that just means that it is a monofilament extruded from two or more different types (polymers) of nylon. It is functionally identical to regular "monofilament", although the different nylon polymers in it may offer better knot strength, less stretch, etc.

I got schooled one time by a buddy using a 70's era Abu spin cast reel. He made twice as many casts as I was able to make with an open face spinning reel and caught twice as many fish. So it's a matter of the right tool for the existing conditions. After that, I bought a few old Abu 505's and 608's on EBay. But I still use mostly bait casting reels and modern spinning reels. It depends on the water and the fishing conditions, what size bait I'm throwing, and how the fish are reacting. If you fish for the pleasure of it like I do, you don't need to get swept up in the latest greatest equipment craze. A baitcaster makes sense if you are using heavier line and if you want to expand your fishing experience to a new horizon. And modern open face spinning reels are more durable than most spin cast reels that are designed for light duty panfish fishing. But most of us fish for fun, not for competition or as a career. So choose whatever equipment that helps you do that.

Sharpie is a solvent based dye pen. After the solvent evaporates, there's no scent.

The reason you don't see much about trolling baits is because it's illegal to use that presentation in BASS tournaments, and so we Joe Blow bass fishermen mindlessly follow suit. It works just fine, though. Most larger bass boats cannot idle along slow enough to make trolling productive. I catch largemouth quite often when trolling for stripers with a buddy of mine who fishes out of a center console boat that trolls at 1 1/2 mph. My fiberglass bass boat won't troll below 3 mph, so it's not suited for trolling.

The problem with DIY broken rod repair is that to do it properly, you need specific pieces of graphite and fiberglass blanks that fit the broken area of the rod. Unless you are a rod builder, it's unlikely that you'll have the right scrap blank parts laying around for that. Send it to a builder who knows what he's doing and you'll get a rod back that performs as well as it did before the accident. I have one repaired 7' jig rod that was fixed 10 yrs ago and has worked flawlessly ever since.

I prefer the plain Gamy dropshot hooks. Fishing vertically 99% of the time, line twist isn't really an issue using 6lb fluorocarbon. The Spinshot and similar hooks that incorporate a swivel work OK but jmho, the plain hooks are lower profile and work just fine as long as you know how to tie the knot properly for a dropshot.

Great chart Molay. Two comments. Oil viscosity is highly dependent on the temperature. Some are better than others at maintaining a viscosity over a temp range. Also, you should be aware that very low viscosity oils will be slung out of your bearings faster than a thicker oil will be, and so need to replenished more often. So choose an oil that agrees with your re-oiling habits. I like servicing my bearings twice a year, with oil added periodically during the season. I like a medium viscosity bearing oil like Yellow RF or Reel Butter. They stay in the bearings for a period that agrees with my servicing habits. Nothing worse than having a reel start screaming at you for service when you're on the water fishing.

I'd also go with 6 or 8 lb test on a 2000 or 2500 size reel. Two things helped me when just starting with fluoro. First, under fill the spool by 1/8" or so compared to what you would with mono. That helps a bunch. Second, after casting, close the bail with your hand, not by rotating the handle, and give the line a little tug after you do. Those 2 things eliminated 99% of the problems I had when I switched to fluoro. They become automatic after a few times. I've fished braid with a fluoro leader and it does make things easier, but I really prefer presenting lures on an all-fluoro line since I fish very clear water most often.

I trust DVT but to me, why use acetone when you can be sure that naphtha or mineral spirits will not harm plastics while acetone can in some instances? I soak all parts in naphtha which works quite well. It doesn't evaporate as quickly as acetone but works faster and dries faster than water based detergents. Whatever works for ya.

Mod action bends more and farther down the rod blank. When you cast, it bends more as you acclerate it through the cast. That is "loading" and it makes your cast more powerful and longer. The rod is doing a lot of the work for you. Fast and very fast rods flex less and so store and release less energy to the cast. But they generally provide more sensitivity for bottom presentations like worms and jigs while slower action rods are often preferred for moving presentations like crankbaits where you are doing a lot of casting. The slower action is thought to allow a fish to engulf a bait better than a fast action rod and keep the fish pinned to a treble hook better. Anyway, that's the theory. In practice, you might prefer one action over the other to the extent that it's all you use. And you wouldn't be wrong as long as you are rarely losing fish during the fight.

Big Game is "old reliable" and widely available but there are a couple of things you need to watch out for. If it has been sitting on a retailer's shelf, or in a warehouse in hot conditions, or in sunlight, for years it will degrade. Since it's so widely sold, you can't really know how long it's been stored or under what conditions. You can control that after you buy it, but if you don't the same applies.

I use elastic thread from Walmart to hold the guides on a rod while I wrap them with nylon thread. Some prefer rod guide cement, which is a weak hot melt glue stick. After wrapping, you coat the thread with slow cure epoxy and rotate the rod until the epoxy sets up hard enough not to sag, an hour or two depending on epoxy brand. Honestly, if you can find a rod builder in your area, the easiest and best way is take it to him. The reasonable fee is usually worth the hassle avoided. He can make it look like it never happened.

I'm not a fan of Abu 4000 or 5000 series round reels but if you like round Abu's, I can highly recommend the Ambassadeur Pro Max 1600 or 3600 for finesse fishing. That's really what they were designed for. You see them on Ebay for $50-80. There are very few reels that you can dial the cast control off enough to have a little side to side play in the spool, fit with 2 black (light) centrifugal brake blocks and cast all day with never a backlash even if you are only a just-barely-above-average caster like me. I don't know what it is about the Promax but the design just works great. It has the simple bullet proof quality of an old Abu. Easy to service, take apart and reassemble. No gotchas like many newer designs. 7 ball bearings. A small light aluminum spool. Multiple disk drag. They cost $170 back in the '70s when new and came with a lifetime warranty. Abu and other companies like Southwestern still carry parts for them. They came in 5.3:1 gear ratios and can be upgraded to 6:1 gears with parts from another Abu reel. I think the reason they sell for so little used is the gray paint they had tended to scratch and flake off easily, so the look on many of them is pretty rough - but it's definitely a diamond in the rough. If you looks are important, the Black Max of the same period is a similar design reel with similar performance but fewer ball bearings, a very durable black finish, and sells for less $$$. I especially like these reels for pitching and casting light baits.

A MB Ito 110 weighs .46 oz on my digital scale so I don't consider it a light jerk bait, by a long shot. I throw mine on 12 lb fluoro with a bait caster. Just sayin.

Just for laughs, I'd put a drop of oil in each of the two spool bearings and look at the centrifugal brake blocks and the brake drum to see if any trash has gotten in there. You should also put a drop of oil on a Q-tip and run it around the brake drum to lightly lubricate and clean off any corrosion. It's a quick fix that may work.

"Sensitivity" is quite complex and in the end, how exactly can you measure it? In addition to all the technical measurements there is also the human factor - how well is Joe Blow able to detect a fish bite on that Rod/reel/line combination? Not so simple. It even extends to human biomechanics. If you use a rod that is tip heavy, the effort to hold the rod while fishing for hours will fatigue the fine motor muscles in your hands and reduce your ability to detect a strike. So in practical terms, sensitivity is also dependent on the balance of the whole rig you are fishing.

Bankbassing, braid usually comes in 150 yd spools, which is plenty enough to fill 2 reels if you fill their spools about half full of backing before spooling on the braid. You cannot cast 75 yds. However, if you have a perforated spool, you can tie line through the holes and it won't slip on the spool during use. But if your spool has no holes and you put braid on there with any kind of knot, all of the braid will spin when the spool is under strain while fighting a fish. It makes it seem as if your drag is slipping - but it's the braid spinning. Not a good result. So yes, you should put at least a little mono backing on the reel and join it to your braid before you fill the spool. I like dividing the braid into half since 75 yds is farther than you can cast anyway. And you can reverse the braid when it gets old and discolored and so save even more on this expensive line.