Kevin22

Get them custom poured.

Aerated livewells are required for almost every tournament I have ever seen.

You sure it want a piranha? LOL!

The difference is $7. Some days the fish want a specific action and/or color, it might be the $12 lure or it might be a $0.98 cent walmart lure.

Only green fish with no stripes and teeth I know of are walleye.

Make sure you look at WHO is selling the rod. Amazon does not ship everything, there are a lot of different people who sell on amazon (like ebay). Most people do not realize this. I ONLY buy an item when it is being shipped and sold by AMAZON. Item arrives fast and they will always quickly help if there is a problem. Plus even without a prime membership it is free shipping over $25.

Alright, when you see that fish take the frog, FREEZE. Look at your line, is it moving or sitting still? If it is moving then reel down to it and stop, when you feel the fish pull then cross his eyes. If the line is not moving, slowly reel down on the fish until you feel him and then cross his eyes. Do not set the hook on slack line.

Use either an orange or pink bobber stop and watch it as you retrieve making sure it doesnt leave the top of the bobber. 99% of the time I do better without the bobber, just throwing small jigs on light line.

A lot of the smaller lakes and ponds here see bass cannibalism a lot. There is not much for food as there are no shad and few species of minnows around this time of year. Bugs/insects and a few smaller toads/frogs, but not much else for the bass in the 6-10" range when they are too small to take a bluegill. Crappie, bluegill, and bass will all take the bass fry once they leave the moss/weeds.

Probably $20.

I use the VMC weedless wacky hooks #1. They are really thick and stout with good points and huge barbs. If the hook goes in, it isn't coming out. If I was wacky rigging with a spinning rod I would choose a thin wire hook to get a better hook-set, but most of my senko fishing is in cover so I use a baitcaster. As for having the stick last longer, one trick I have found is to nick the worm when putting it under the o-ring. Each time it breaks loose on a fish, hook it on the other side of the worm in fresh plastic. When I have exhausted all plastic to hook to I pull the o-ring off and just hook the worm. It will be lost the next fish anyways and this way I saved the o-ring for the next bait (yep, I'm cheap like that!).

How are you setting the hook?

There is not a hollow body frog on the market that will not get a good hook-up percentage if you do your part. Just about every single lure on the market is put in front of a professional fishermen for testing before going to retail. If the testers did not get good hook-ups with the frog it would have never made it to market. The obvious exception from this are the chinese knock-off lures.

No, it is not. Casting, spinning, or spincast only.

6' is too short IMO. I have some 4'8, 5', 5'6, 6' and 6'6 panfish rods. The 6'6 is by far my favorite. Much better hookups when a bass decides to take it, with the little rods I lost way too many fish when they jumped and I couldnt pick up enough line to keep them hooked.

Spinnerbait and chatterbait have been the best for me in the rain. This is sprinkle and light rain, I don't fish in downpours or storms.

You may run into problems with loss of sensitivity and bad hook-ups with 17# mono on footballs. It will work though.

Sounds like you want a line that will float. Co-poly will not float. I would suggest power pro 50lb braid. If you want to help keep your buzzbaits up you can tie on about a 10' piece of 20-25lb mono as a leader. I think the 50lb braid would excel for what you want to do.

#1 here and 1/8-1/4 weight.

Bullfrog.

Don't judge all homemade chatterbaits by what you experienced from one guy. He likely did not know what he was doing and used the wrong style head or some cheap blade. I have some custom 1/4 big profile chatters that a friend of mine gave me, he made them with owner hooks. They have a very cool head shape, I think it is a spinnerbait head. Those suckers will vibrate your reel off the rod in shallow water, they vibrate twice as much as a true chatterbait.

A 20" smallie would be roughly 4lbs. Congrats again!

Looks like a solid 16-17" fish.. congrats!

GP for everything except baitfish imitations. For baitfish I either use a junebug green flake around bluegill or something white around shad/shiners. White grub is a killer lure for bass, and most bass fishermen won't touch it. That is what grandpa used to use to catch bass, fishing has evolved since then so they don't work anymore... right? wrong...

One of the quotes from a professor I had really stuck in my head. He was giving a lecture on home defense, he was in this situation first hand. He shot a man breaking into his house in the middle of the night in a rural town. He never was charged with any crime, but when asked by the detective why he shot the man 11 times he said "because he quit moving before I could find my second clip". This man is a 30 year veteran police officer, was the police chief for many years, and now teaches college criminal justice classes. The one thing he really reiterated and kept telling us to always remember is if someone is in your house and you need to fire a weapon to protect yourself, NEVER STOP SHOOTING UNTIL YOU RUN OUT OF AMMO OR HE STOPS MOVING. Even a dying man can reach up and put a round through your skull, and it only takes one. If he stops moving, you keep that gun pointed at him and stand where you are until the police arrive. It is not your job, nor your obligation to see if he is dead or alive. You threat him like he can kill you at any second until the police arrive.