deep

1/4 oz jig + rage craw. So versatile, and catches fish of all sizes

Both hands, except for short-range underhand casting, and casting with my ultralight (the handle is too short for both hands lol).

You could try pitching one of Matt's ultimate or U2 bluegills and see if she eats that.. Just be as stealthy as possible. If she knows you're around, your job becomes twice as difficult. I'd pitch the bait a little past her, and drag it back to her, and let it sit in front of her nose as long as I can bear it.

I don't think one rod is going to do everything you mention... not very well anyway. I'd get a heavy powered cranking stick for your regular bass crankbaits, and the 4" BBZ. And a medium heavy powered swimbait stick for your little 6" swimbaits. While I haven't fished either of the rods, the Okuma does get very good reviews as an entry-level swimbait stick. Tackletour did a swimbait rod showdown which featured the Okuma guide select rods. You might want to find and read that. JMHO P.S. the 6" BBZ jr floater weighs 2 oz... the fast sink version weighs around 2.5 ozs IIRC.

I use a Curado 301E; picks up 28 inches of line per turn. Next time I'm out with those hudds, I'll try that out. Might just work for me. I'm not having much luck with the soft swimbaits lately.

I think, skitter-pop = popper, skitter-walk = spook type lure. Never tried walking the dog with the skitter-pop, but as a popper, it's pretty good. Try it, it catches fish. The only rapala that I never caught anything on is their rattletrap.

Yes, the 8" hudd is a different beast. It has a bigger thump than the 6", and is less subtle. You could also try some hudd 68s if you find them for cheap. Or a traditional paddletail, like an Osprey. I bet the water temp is high enough for those. The funny thing with the hard swimbaits is that even little fish will hit them. I fished for about 2 hours this morning. Mostly threw a 6" BBZ Jr floater. I caught 3 bass on it, and guess what, the biggest was 14", and the smallest probably around 10" lol.

I'm very surprised no one's mentioned Powells yet. I like medium power and extra-fast action for the application you mention.

WTG! Nice fish.

The longer the rod the better, those little 4" Spros don't cast particularly well. I throw them on my 7'8" Pinnacle Perfecta cranking stick. EDIT: didn't notice the price range, sorry. Take a look at the older model Shimano Compres. Hell of a rod for <$100. I have one of those too..

Welcome to the dark side!

Still in. Could we have a headcount of boaters and non-boaters? P.S. looking for someone who would have an empty seat.

http://www.316lurecompany.com/baits/hardbaits.html These, among others....

I have a Curado 301E on the self-same rod that you got.. I love it for the little 6" swimbaits that I throw.

I rediscovered jig fishing this year, so I thought I'd share some of the techniques that worked for me. By the way, by jigs, I mean casting jigs, not flipping/ pitching/ swimming ones. The jig that's worked the best for me is the 5/16 oz Booyah Baby Boo jig. I've tried several other name brand ones, including the Booyah Boo jigs, none of them worked half as well. I'm still waiting for some North Star jigs I placed an order for, though. Equipment: 7'3" medium power extra-fast action Powell Max spinning rod, Shimano Sonora 2500 reel, 30 lb test Daiwa Samurai mainline with 8-12 lb test fluoro or mono leader. Technique: Cast out past a likely fish holding cover, let it sink. If a strike doesn't occur on the first fall, lift it off the lake bottom, and let it sink again. Repeat until the jig is out of the strike zone. The conditions dictate how aggressively the jig must be worked. In winter, I have let the jig sit (after the drop) for as long as 30 seconds. Today, I let the jig sit for maybe 1-2 seconds before lifting it again. In colder days, most of the bites I got were when the jig sat on the bottom, or when I just started to move it after the pause. In warmer water, a lot of jig bites came on the drop, either on the initial drop, or on one of the successive ones. Bite Detection, Hookset: I'm a line-watcher, all the time, every time. Sometimes, of course, as with plastics, the bass just eats the jig and sits there. The only difference with plastics is that the bass doesn't hold on to the jig forever. So set that hook hard and fast. Jig fish = Big fish? I speak from my very limited experience, but the vast majority of jig fish I've caught are in the 10"-14" range. Maybe it's the way I fish, or the location, but that's the way it is with me. I get plenty of bites while fishing the little jigs that I fish - today I got 16 jig bites and landed 13 in about 3 hours- so if you're someone looking to dabble with jigs, rest assured that you'll get plenty of bites even if you're fishing a jig. Booyah Baby Boo: This is the jig I fish 95% of the time. In the winter/ spring, the bass liked the orange jig; now-a-days, they seem to like the green one way more. I used Rage baby craw trailers in colder water. As the water warmed up, I started to lean towards the Rage Craw. The particular green jig you see in the picture must have accounted for at least a hundred bass, no kidding. I caught 13 on it today, and 12 last Saturday, and I fish a lot; go figure. I trim the weedguard on almost all my jigs. I like to believe they allow for better hooksets, and the bass holds on for a little longer without half of that stiff weedguard.

Cork over foam any day for me. Split-grip vs full-grip: doesn't matter either way. Foregrip: a big comfortable foregrip is an absolute must on my swimbait stick; there must not be a foregrip on the bottom contact baits rod(s) for me; for all other techniques, it doesn't matter.

When UPS broke a rod I ordered, TW made them pick up the damaged rod from my apartment the next day, and sent out a replacement within a couple of days. I don't know about other "dealers". Good luck.

Just wondering what rod(s) you guys use for these lures, if you use a spinning rod. I throw all of these on my 7'3" Powell Max medium/XF mostly. This is what I found out. BTW, I'm a line-watcher and use braid. Finesse jigs: The Powell I have is probably best-suited for the regular jigs. Hopping, skipping, dragging, yo-yoing; you name it and my Powell just rocks. The sensitivity is so outstanding and I can distinguish between rocks, grass, laydowns and bites pretty well. Swim-jigs: I either yo-yo them or just plain old swim them back. Detecting bites is almost a non-issue. Hooking up is more of a problem; I have to delay my hooksets to make sure that the fish engulfs the whole lure, and not just the tail of the trailer. With practice, I've gotten quite good at it though. But I believe I could fish them swim jigs a little better with a true fast action rod. Weightless texas rigs: I use weightless T-rigged plastics (senkos or ikas 99% of the time) as a true finesse bait. I deadstick them a lot, and just like regular jigs, the Powell Max is outstanding. Wacky rigs: I like to use them as a shallow water (less than 10 feet) search bait. I don't reel them straight back - almost all the bites I get are on the drop - but I'm looking to cover water. I do not use the "weedless wacky" rig though, it's the plain old wacky rig. I believe I'd do better with a medium-fast action rod here; since I don't really set the hook, I just start reeling in when the fish takes the bait. In fact, I have done pretty well fishing 4" wacky GY senkos on my medium action ultralight rod lol.

316 hard baits are anything but cheap lol. The Spro BBZ shad, BBZ Jr and the BBZ are all great. Tylures baits get decent reviews as well, along with Black Dogs. And of course, the Mattlures. Must have forgotten a few baits, but plenty of good ones out there to choose from. Of the ones I mentioned, I have the 4" BBZ shad, the 6" BBZ Jr, Black dog shellcrackers and punkers, and one Hardgill. Stick with a few decent baits that cover the whole water column, and fish them hard until you lose them. EDIT: MS Slammers, AC minnows are pretty good too.

Count me in. Non-boater here though.

#1. GY senkos. Had no confidence in plastics before that. Texas rigs led to jigs (I fish them pretty much the same way). And now I use jigs and swim jigs 80% of the time. #2. A dedicated swimbait set-up. It hasn't quite borne fruit yet. But I'm having fun with it, and learning new things on every swimbait trip.

That's so true.

Sufix Siege of course; 10-12 lb test for casting reels, 6 lb test for spinning. The Sufix Elite is okay, but a bit too stretchy for my liking. Trilene XL is a very distant third.

If you're looking for an all-around rod, a Shimano Compre is hard to beat. That's what I have my Citica saddled on. Nice as the Powell and the Dobyns are, I won't drop $150 on a general purpose rod. Of course, that's just me.

Manageability is a bigger headache on spinning reels. With your Citica, most fluorocarbons in the 10-12 lb test range should behave reasonably well. Heck, you can even go up to 15 lb test, and it should probably be fine. Use KVD's L & L as has been mentioned. Spiderwire Ultracast FC, although not very popular here, is what I use and will recommend. Low stretch, good knot strength, okay abrasion resistance, low memory. Seaguar Invizx and Abrazx both get good reviews. The invizx is limper and the more manageable of the two, but it also has much more stretch and a lower abrasion resistance. Invizx is more manageable than the Ultracast FC, but I hated the stretch it had. I haven't used Abrazx too much though. Trilene 100% is another favorite. It's thicker than comparable lines in the same lb test. So it's got good abrasion resistance. But it also has more memory than Invizx or the Ultracast. P.S. All of these are priced around $20/ 200 yd spool.