Raul

Conventional wisdom says: Cold water ---> tight wobble Warm water ---> wide wobble But I 'm not "conventional", if the water is cold then another factor comes into play, water clarity, if the water is clear I 'll use conventional wisdom, but if it 's not clear ---> screw conventional wisdom, I 'll fish wide a wide wobbling, fat and noisy bait. The only exception would be lipless cranks, those work well because they are very noisy.

Don 't know where you guys fish your cranks but as for me, look at the pic, rod sensitivity is important to maneuver the crank through all the mess what 's undernearth. I once had a Kistler Mag TS crankbait series, I can say all bad things about several components except in one department, the blank in that rod was outstanding, not only by the way it behaved but also about the sensitivity, sure, it 's not a CBR but it was a 180 dollars rod.

I use a deep diver to plow the bottom where : 1.- the same bait would not reach the depth I want it to run 2.- to contrarest the bouyancy and make the bait to rise more slowly 3.- to reduce the loss of distance between the bait rising and hitting the bottom again. I use a C-rig with minnows, super shallow and shallow divers when I want the bait to be near the bottom but riding above the bottom and behind the sinker.

I would most definately skip or forget about puting "cougar" on anything, sounds like porn, by defintion: Cou-gar [koo-ger] -noun. is a sexually attractive mature woman, usually over the age of 30 who eagerly pursues younger men for sexual encounters.

every size in between? Yep, every size in between, two things I take in consideration to choose the weight are: 1.- Rate of fall 2.- Wind speed And also, I don 't always use bullet weights just for soft plastics, I also use them on deep diving cranks.

I 've said it before and I 'll say it again: the bait doesn 't have to imitate the pattern of the forage base in any given body of water, it only has to move like if it 's alive and an easy prey We don 't have perch, we don 't have shad, we don 't have white bass, we don 't have walleye, we don 't have northern, we don 't have pickerel,we don 't have brown trout, we don 't have brook trout, 95 % of the lakes I fish don 't have rainbow trout ( and I seldomly fish the ones that have bass/rainbow trout population ) and all those patterns work, hot colors like charteuse, firetiger & fluorescent orange work too. Yes, you are overlooking potentially very productive colors. Color is not as important but sometimes it 's all that matters.

From 1/16 to 1 ounce.

Cloudy, with a very slight breeze just enough to ripple the water surface, water temps in the 70 's and air temps in the low 90 's, water slightly off colored. That 's I what I would like, however for the big gals, in my experience, clear cloudless bluebird skies, slightly windy, water temps in the high 60 's and air temps in the upper 90 's closing on the 100 's , time of the day in between 12 and 4 PM ( yeah, when it 's hotter ! ).

Oh well, I let the BaitMonkey do the shopping . From what all the BM has purchased I fish mainly 3/8 oz bait, from the colors I fish mainly white, white/chartreuse, black/red, also, for blade color the one I use the most is gold. Then, if those aren 't producing good result I begin changing.

Fishing shows are good, but the bad part is that they are what they are, shows, everything in them has been edited to show up only the good parts and all the information is compressed because of time limitations. Instructional videos are great and you can play them over and over again if you have them. BR is greatest, not only you have a big bunch of guys with lots of experience sharing their knowledge, also, heck we can discuss as nauseum a thread if we want to.

The say: there 's more than one way to skin a cat applies, the truth is that there 's no one way or best way, the right or wrong way is the bass way. You catchin '? you are in the right way, you gettin ' skunked ? then you are in the wrong way, as always, you have to experiment until you find their way.

Because of the the lift the blade generates when it rotates my friend, willow leaf blades have minimum lift so for me they are good for slow deep fishing, wider blades have greater lift than willowleafs, even at slow speeds wide blades like Colorados rise so if I want the bait to stay deep I pick the bait that has the less amount of lift, then I add blade size, bigger blades for depth and then I add weight, so for example if I 'm spinnerbaiting at let 's say 20 ft deep my bait of choice would be a single ( for steep structure ) or double willow bait ( for flatter structure ), at that depth a big blade and somewhere in the 1/2 + oz weight. Also, I take in consideration the blade pattern, for high visibility waters I use smooth finish, for less visibility I prefer hammered finishes. I agree that Tandems are great for that "not shure what to throw" moments or for weedy places, the colorado blade thumps and the willow gives th bait more flash.

Uhhh, yep, you are overthinking it, if you want to follow the "natural" approach good for you, doesn 't guarantee success. Why I say it ? cuz many moons ago I used to be just like all the guys who followed that approach and throughout the years experience has shown me that the bait doesn 't has to imitate the pattern of what the fish has available as forage. In my neck of the woods the forage would be: mirror carp, tilapia which exhibit gazillion color variations, bluegill, baby bass, frogs and toads, tadpoles, a ciprinidont similar to a golden shiner and an aeterinid similar to a minnow. So based upon what the fish have available to eat I should use patterns. Guess what ? bass don 't seem to mind what it looks like, shad painted baits work just as well as chartreuse or orange or firetiger and there 's nothing that looks like shad around here, rainbow trout works and bass where I fish most of the time have never seen a trout. Oh yeah, I 've fished for ages with hot fluorescent colors in crystal clear water and with natural colors in muddy water, what is more important for me is not how the bait is painted but the body shape, size, wiggle or wobble and sound ( or the lack of it ) the bait has. For clearer waters where the fish can see the bait I prefer tight wiggling, thinner, flatter, shaped baits, for muddy/stained and deeper waters I prefer rounder, wider wobbling, noisier baits. Let me show you an example, here 's my friend Ulises with a fish he caught on a bait I lent him, see how muddy is the water, he caught that fish and several others with a shad painted Rapala Rattling Fat Rap, shad would not be one of the colors you would use for water that muddy, yet the other characteristics of the bait overcame the importance of the bait pattern.

Deep and slow ---> Single or double willow Shallow and fast ---> Double colorado

I see no functional difference between a regular straight handle vs a swept one, my Alphas R edition has the swept handle and it feels and functions just as the Type F and Itö. About you knuckles probably hitting the cap, tension knob or handle shaft ... uhhhh, nope, that hasn 't happened to me while reeling in with that reel.

Thanks guys, I 'll try all the possible solutions you posted, if it don 't work gonna follow Redline 's advice.

If I were you I would send the reel to the Reel Mech, have it serviced and drag upgraded, he has the drag pads. That way first you support a BR sponsor and second, you don 't mess with the reel, them small parts got a mind of their own ya know.

You don 't need to adjust the drag on that reel ( no need to turn the knob ), it 's got Fighting Drag II system, you set your drag to the desired pressure, in case you need to increase the drag all you have to do is to move the lever to the right and the drag setting increases by 50 % of what you have set, lever in the middle = waht you set, lever to the left 50% less of what you set. I 've got a couple of Solstaces with that system and it does come handy.

Some of the tiny stuff I use when they get picky: 3" Senkos or Dingers C 'ultiva Bug Eye Bait Rapala Shad Rap sieze 5 Rapala Original Floating Minnow size 5 Blue Fox Vibrax #0, 1 & 2 Bass Assassin Baby Assassin ( 3" ) Zoom Baby Brush Hog Megabass Griffon Megabass Live X Margay Rebel Tiny Wee Frog

Man, you gotta be a little bit more specific with your descriptions, was it soft or hard, did it look like a real craw or it looked "crawish". Tail weighted crawfish ---> could be a Huddleston Huddlebug, not exactly tail weighted but it 's weighted, could be a River 2 Sea Stand 'n Yabbie, it could also be a Yum Bill Dance Craw Bug, those are some I can remember that are tail weighted. But that 's not all of it, lots of crwafish soft plastics can be rigged on a shakey head and they become tail weighted craws.

We here got a say: "todo lo que corre, nada y vuela va para la cazuela" ( everything that runs, swims or flies goes to the pot ), I 've eaten lots of meats, gator was good but the texture was strange, kinda like chewing on a chewing gum with a fsihy taste to it. Horse, pretty good, very lean. Iguana, tastes like chicken. But being down here and with all the folkloric food I 've found in my trips there 's still some things I would not try, many insects people eat here as delicacies, jumiles, grashoppers and things like that ---> yuck ! specially jumiles which are normaly eaten alive ( they literaly crawl from the taco and walk all over your face ), magüey worms, oh man, those are really good.

Can 't be '94, 94 is when the mean green appeared Can 't be '92- '93 they had an orange stripe in the middle of the reel Can be late 80 's - '91 they had a flipping switch So you gotta go back to the late 80 's early 90 's because it 's got magnetic braking and the flipping switch. Nice find though, I ? I would have it cleaned and lubed and displayed.

It 's the dude behind the bait what makes the difference, as always.

IB, you gimme too much credit, don 't know how to operate them cell phones properly ( can barely dial ) and you want me to get a cell phone with camera , c 'mon ! . Last time I "played" with my Nextel buttons I erased all my directory.

From those, Avid without a thought.