Chris at Tech

Are the squirrels biting? Yeah, I see your point. Just knowing that not everyone palms the reel, and some people actually hold the rod there, it was puzzling that they didn't simply include another 3/4 to 1 inch of cork there to pretty much cover all their bases... The Zillion is too heavy? Nice...

They do look great in person... However, I have no idea why St Crox made the cork grip under the real seat so short. It's not even an average hand's width...

Was this straight braid, or braid with a leader?

I currently have a Humminbird 535. If I want to replace this unit with, say a Lowrance, can I simply unplug the old unit and plug the Lowrance into the existing transducer? Or does each brand/model have it's own transducer?

The 535 was purchased brand new and installed on the brand new boat I got in March 2007

Interesting... Without having my manual in front on me, any settings you can think of off the top of you head I should consider messing with before calling HB?

This is my first year owning a boat so I'm still learning and getting used to things. I have a B/W Humminbird, 535 I think, and I fish a few lakes that are REALLY weedy, with weeds almost to the surface. Now the question...what should I expect to see on my depthfinder. Often times, the screen is simply all black. I've played with the sensitivity and a few other settings. In open water, it seems OK, so I've simply told myself that with so many weeds, that's what I'll see. Is my assumption correct, or should I expect a better picture? And in a friend's private pond that's a bit muddy, the depthfinder often reports 0.6 feet of depth when I KNOW I'm deeper. I've tried wiping off the transducer. Any ideas? Is this what I should expect, of is the depth finder not behaving correctly?

I've recently gotten much better in walking the dog while holding the rod upright. It's just easier to learn when you can point the rod down. Any docks around that you can fish from? Take a few casts from there and try to get the cadence down while twitching downward. Once you know what to do, you can easily adapt to fishing the spook with the rod upright.

Talk about a close one. 2 hundredths of a pound?!??!?! Wow...nice

Please clarify! When you say o-ring are you speaking of the rubber o-rings or are you talking about a split-ring :-? I'm sure he means a split ring. 1) not sure how the heck he'd get a rubber o-ring on there 2) setting the hook with a rubber o-ring would bring back the end of the line with the lure likely missing

If you're just learning how to do this, I'd recommend a 6ft baitcaster. Shorter rods are easier to learn the technique on, and once you have the basics down, it's easier to do with 6'6" and 7' rods. Start simply. Cast it out and let it sit. Give the rod a downward twitch with your wrist. If the bait comes straight forward, you didn't have enough slack in the line. Try again with a bit more slack. If it 'walks' sideways, you had enough slack. Now the trick is establishing the cadence between twitching with your wrist, and reeling in just enough line. You can also experiment with different amounts of slack, and different twitching to see the effects. You can get the lure to glide gently, pop, swing wide, walk narrowly, etc.

You will either find a rod that excels with plastics/jigs, or excels with cranks. Those 2 applications really require 2 completely different actions that don't overlap.

What was different about them? Still good D and special teams, bad O.

Baitcast or spinning?

First off, you'll probably want a H rod with heavy mono or braided line. Now, 2 possible approaches: 1) a heavy T-rig. 3/4 oz + is often needed to punch through. Peg the sinker, or even better use screw-in sinkers 2) Zoom Horny Toads rigged weedless and retrieved over the top of the grass. You can also let it sink into the holes

I fish the full size Zoom Trick Works mostly on a split shot rig. Use a 1/16 or 1/32 Water Gremlin crimp-on 'bull shot' sinker 1-2 ft above the hook, a 2/0 or 3/0 hook and then T-rig the trick worm on the end. It's just a miniature Carolina Rig. It works well because it essentially lays on top of any grass around. Twitch it, hop it, drag it...experiment. My other primary use is on shakey heads. But I can tell you from quite a few trips with Randall the split-shot rig is the way to go

All, I've recently gravitated towards using braid with mono leader on several of my outfits, and I'm liking it. C-rigging has also moved up the list of techniques for me as well. Both these techniques require leaders of some sort. Problem is I don't want to take an 300 yd spool in several different lb tests for these situations. Are there any sources where I can get a few 'trial sized' spools (100 yds and under) of P-Line that I can carry along for making leaders? Or short of that, does anyone have any suggestions or tricks for carrying along leader materials of different strengths?

I think the 5'6'' would be a good choice for topwaters, jerkbaits, etc The flipping stick should be OK for jigs, t-rigs, flipping and perhaps C-rigs. I agree that the 3rd should be a 6'6" - 7' MH stick. These can often be used to throw nearly everything...

I've had my Tierra for an entire season now, and I've caught my 2 biggest fish of the season on the 2000 size. I like this reel A LOT. The Saros is pretty new, so it may be a little while before you get some significant feedback on the reel. But my opinion is that Shimano has been in the game a long time. Although the Saros is a 'new' reel, it's not Shimano's first entry into the spinning reel market. They make good reels, and I'm sure the Saros will be no different.

I thought this post was going to be your confession that you bought a Revo STX :-X

Booyah and MiniMe.

And here I was thinking each of those 12 rods on deck had a different color buzzbait on them Nice fish!

Needless to say when I'm able to put 7+ fish in the boat on this lake, a good fisherman will get 20

...we're gonna need a bigger boat... 8-)

Oh geez...this is like asking whether Daiwa is better than Shimano First question. Can you live in a cubicle, or is that just not a possibility? The answer could narrow down things a lot.