Raul

Yes, I use rainbow trout patterns with good success ...... where bass have never seen and will never see a trout.

You can 't add bearings to the knobs in a Citica, the only upgrade is a handle change for a Curado E handle assembly. So by doing that ( cost of the part ) + the original cost of the reel, well you could have purchased a Curado. There 's no "improvement" in the performance by changing the bushing for a bearing, it will only make the reel a little smoother than it already is.

Ruby red is standard in the SS Utale worm and the Trickworm, in the Brush Hog is a special color.

Old Chromica or new Chromica ?

Uh ..... define "normal". More than 700 cranks and ......... I end up fishing with the same 20-30, go figure.

Bags and utility boxes. Grab a few baits, put them in a bag and put the bags in the ultility boxes, neat, clean and greater selection of baits and colors.

Different animals, shure a beaver can be fished weighted, rigged in many ways and used as trailer, the same applies to the craw but the beaver does what the craw doesn 't, and viceversa the beaver when rigged unweighted backwards ( inserting the hook in between the flaps ) & allowed to sink on a slightly slack line sinks away from you, the craw doesn 't do that. I like the craw because of the shape of the claws, with a good rod you can feel the vibration of the claws as it moves through the water, so it 's an excellent low visibility environment water ( stained/ muddy/ murky ).

4" & 5 " senkos are far from being light, 4 inchers weight 1/4 oz, 5 inchers weight 3/8 oz, any baitcaster can cast that with no issues, so as practically any rod can cast those weights. So if you are trying to cast unweighted light plastics it 's a matter of improper balance between the rod/line/reel system, lighter baits require lighter line, but 30 lb PP is very light so that 's not the problem, the reel ? could be or it could be not, it 's necessary to make good adjustments to the tension and braking system, now that brings us to the rod, trying to cast a light bait with a stiff rod is just asking for trubble, a M/ML power rod is capable of loading and casting properly with very light baits.

Where 's the sport in doing that ? :-?

You really need it to be weedless ? because there 's an even better hook than the Gamakatsu for wacky rigging and it 's available in larger sizes but it 's not weedless: Owner Mutu Light hook, I use 1/0 for 3" senkos, 2/0 for 4" and 3/0 for 5" senkos.

The depth Kent, the 9 size dives a couple of feet deeper than the size 8. Some tips on Shad Raps: Wooden ( Shad Rap & Shallow Shad Rap ) and plastic ( Shad Rap RS, Glass Shad Rap & Jointed Shad Rap ) are not the same, the wobble is different ( wider wobble on the plastic baits ) and plastic baits suspend, balsa baits are floaters. If you want a balsa bait to suspend you can do it by adding weight, one method could be the one described by Thad, the other method is by changing the hooks for the next larger size. Balsa baits prefer lighter line ( 8-10 lbs test ), some of the action is killed when using larger line, plastic baits don 't care what line you use.

You can catch bedding tilapia by annoying them with your lure, those tiny tubes ( squirth ) rigged on a 1/32 oz jighead are excellent for that purpose, if you can see the bed you drop the bait and wait for the fish to come and try removing the bait from the nest, as soon as you can detect the fish lifting the bait you set the hook. Tilapia also love tortilla, a small hook, a pencil bobber and a small piece of tortilla as bait usually catches you a truckload, the art is in setting the hook right at the moment you detect the bite, because tortilla is brittle the fish can rip it from the hook really fast, excellent excersize for honing your hook setting skils too.

Follow these steps: 1.- Measure length and girth 2.- Log to BR 3.- Click on the Tacklebox box above 4.- Click on Fish weight calculator 5.- Select species, enter length and girth 6.- Click on Calculate 7.- Voilá BR 's fish calculator is the most accurate of any I 've tried, the margin of error is minimal ( a few tenths of an ounce ) when compared to an actual weight obtained with a good scale.

You don 't wanna know Raul 's "begginner" ( yeah, it 's not a typo ) list. Follow it and you 'll be a begginner. Kidding aside, to RWs suggestion: Lipless crank Single Colorado blade spinner bait, any color is fine as long as it 's white.

You don 't flip with the reel, you flip with the rod.

Predators and prey coexist together and prey isn 't always worried about having a predator hanging around, the predatory response of a predator happens when/if the predator detects signs of weakness or the opportunity to ****** the prey, if that doesn 't happen the predator doesn 't enter in predatory mood. So assuming that there are no big predators around because you see prey is a wrong assumption.

Think like a fish, no matter how weird you think it is.

That 's too --->

My friend Rigoberto fishes exclusively with spinning gear, he never got used to bc and by the time he had achieved control with bc gear he just decided he didn 't want bc gear so he sold his bc rig and got himself another spinning setup. For those who still think bc gear is superior to spinning should take a look at Chris ' site, the man fishes exclusively with spinning gear and he has caught more 10+ pounders than most will ever catch in three or four lifetimes.

Bed depth varies greatly, it can be in a foot of depth or 15 ft of depth, such variation in depth depends on many factors like degree of slope, bottom composition, water clarity & water temperature which also depends a lot depending upon height above sea level and distance to the equator. Roger exemplifies the typical bed you can find in places like Florida, ask me and I will tell you it depends on the lake around my neck of the woods, some lakes will have beds like Roger described them, others won 't, there 's a chain of small lakes on the hills that surround the city where I live, lakes that are "mountain type" lakes ( steep slopes, rocky bottom, ultra clear water ) bass bed up to 15-20 ft deep and you can spot the bed because the rock is "clean" ( lighter than the surrounded rock ).

My friend, the devil knows more from being old than from being the devil.

Cool friend you got there Marty, he must have a lot of relatives hanging around a small lake I fish regularilly cuz I meet them oftenly when I go there, but I take it with Karate Kid philosophy: man that can catch fly with chop sticks can accomplish anything . Actually when I 'm about to go on a trip I ask myself: " you wanna catch feesh or you want to catch a lesson of humilty ? " more often than not I prefer to go and catch me some humilty, that way when I go somewhere else I feel like Superman.

If you can see them they can see you, good enough reason not to bite. Also, followers are telling you something but you haven 't paid attention to what they are saying, they say: "I 'm interested but ..... not convinced ", they are interested on the bait but you haven 't been able to convince them to strike, so if what you are doing doesn 't convince them you have to try a different approach, changing the speed ( faster ), making the retrieve not that predictable ( stopping, twitching, jerking, ripping ) many times is what you need to trigger the strike. Reeling in steadily is just one of the many ways to reel in a crank.

A man gotta do what he gotta do even though he dont like to do what he gotta do. I also hate braided line but ..... look above. :

There 's no "winter" Matt, in the warm regions of the country tilapia spawn 3-4 times a year, in the "cold" regions tilapia spawn twice a year so all year long there 's a supply of bite size tilapia for the bass to eat, they don 't need the trout. The situation with commercial fishermen is that of absolute ignorance, heck, most of them barely finished elementary school, so many of them view bass as a fish that eats the fish they fish for and don 't like bass, they want to see it dead and gone; but as I said, they are ignorant, the reason why they have good tilapia fishing is because bass are there eating away the excess tilapia population that the same tilapia produce. They don 't know that in an environment where there 's only tilapia it grows stunted. Tilapia has intersting breeding habits, first of all it 's a mouthbreeder, secondly, it 's very sexually active and most importantly it matures sexually at a very young age, at 6 months of age it 's ready to breed so if there 's nothing there to control their population the population reaches critical numbers in a very short period of time, they eat away every vegetable matter they can chew upon and when that 's gone they become detritophagous ( mud eaters ), since the population is too large and there 's not enough food they can 't grow, they stunt but still are sexually mature so they spawn which adds more numbers to the population, a never ending vicious circle. But stunted fish are not good enough for human consumption because they are too small and they don 't have the minimum legal size ( 10 inches ) they can 't be kept by the fishermen. Actually what most of us know as tilapia is not really tilapia from the genus tilapia, we have got used to call tilapia to almost every fish that looks like tilapia when it 's actually a different species belonging to the genus Orechromis which is waht the mexican government stocks in these three principal species: O. aureus, O. mossambicus and O. niloticus, plus a few hybrids of those three species. So for us who fish in Mexico we have this situation where unless it 's woody cover or some plant the tilapia won 't eat like water hyacinth the lakes are weedless, if you want to catch fish here where "tilapia" is present you have to be good as fishing structure beacuse that where you 'll find the fish.