MickD

For just about anything, but especially cranks and surface.

Yup, tubes and Neds work well for largemouths. I use conventional tube jigs, but with the other methods I've been seeing, I have to branch out a bit. I agree that greens are the best for both LMB and SMB, but black and blue is good for LMB too.

How does gloom and doom threaten bass? I think in MI the biggest threat is the proposals to allow tournaments during the spawn. This not immediate release, but the traditional "take em to a distant weigh int tournament."

Ned rig, the little one, New Money, 6-7 SMB. New Money is mostly green. Smallies like green. An acquaintance who does pretty well only takes one color to Lake St Clair, and it's of course. . . green. My best tube color is usually green with red fleck, but last trip of the year a green with all sorts of colors of flecks worked best.

The most important to the success of this presentation is the proper rod, which is a length of your choice,but not too powerful and not too fast! Med light power is right in order to get the right acceleration of the bait when snatching it off the bottom. you want it to start a little slow then accelerate, and after that you want the bait to fall while you are maintaining a sort of soft contact with it. Med light power, moderate to mod-fast action. These characteristics will also cast easily. Braid is mandatory, but pound test of it and the leader is not that important. If you are just steadily/slowly retrieving them after the cast then anything will work. For the best hook sets, rig the swim bait so you leave a large gap open , which means putting the hook not that deeply into the lure. Just under the skin, not through the center.

I watched the video, and the tool accomplishes exactly the same thing that my "tool" accomplishes, tight weaves that don't come loose in the middle of tying the knot. It seems to use a lot more line and leader, and costs a lot more. Not worth it, IMHO.

I have solved for me the FG tying problems. My problems were that holding the line in my teeth often didn't work as it would slip before i got the knot done, and the line coming from my mouth was hard to focus on. Using the tool pictured allows one to solve both problems. 1. Set up your rod so you can put the braid under tension, the usual start point. Set the length of braid coming to you right so you can keep tension on it with a slightly bent rod. 2. While seated, put the tie through a belt loop, then wrap the braid around it a number of times. It will stick to the tacky surface and not slip. 3. Tension the braid and tie your knot in front of you waist high on the braid coming from the rod to the tie. 4. Set the knot in the normal way, lots of force using the business end of the leader and the business end of the braid, not the tags. 5. Loosen the braid and make the finishing half hitches or whatever you finish the knot with. This tool allow the weaves to be formed tightly enough that they don't slip at all when doing the very high force setting of the knot. They are perfectly aligned, no slipping from the teeth, no looking cross-eyed at the knot as you make the weaves. I use 20 weaves, all in succession without intermediate tightening. They are already tight when they are formed. Try it. I don't usually tie them in the boat. If I break one, very rare indeed, I use another rod. They last so long and are so reliable that breaking one while fishing is not an issue, so I tie them in my pole barn before fishing.

I agree.

I also recommend not trying to match it. It will look worse with an inevitable mismatch than with a neutral color that doesn't clash, like grey. Grey is available everywhere.

If you want to keep the investment down, I believe the priority goes with the console.

My question relates to how weight is transferred differently between FWD and RWD. I believe that modern trucks MAY have a mechanical or electronic lock. . .but maybe not. But the point is that there is a significant difference between front two wheel drive and rear two wheel drive for pulling boats.

But it is not as good as a rear drive for pulling a boat. The rear drive gets weight shifted onto the driving wheels. The front drive gets weight shifted off the driving wheels. I love FWD for most driving experiences, but it is clearly not as good at pulling boats as RWD. As Tom says, if you want to be sure you have the issue covered, get AWD. I have FWD and it works fine for the ramps I go to. I had an AWD for two years and never went to a gravel ramp. So I was carrying around the weight and sacrificing the economy for 2 years and 24,000 miles without ever using the capability. I have not wanted to go to a gravel ramp since then, so I'm not missing anything. But if gravel ramps were important to me, I would consider that I had to have AWD. It also depends on the weight of the trailer and boat. For most of the rigs I see on this forum, an AWD is appropriate. It would be interesting to know the rig weight and the gravel ramp usage for all those who don't think AWD is necessary. When you are not in AWD your rear wheels are doing the work, not the fronts, right?

Rear drive or front? If 2wd front I would not use a gravel ramp. I encountered one and couldn't get the boat out, just dug holes. I'm not sure about rear drive, but I would be skeptical about gravel ramps with them, too. Concrete ramps, no sweat.

Deep Little N's are good, even better for me has been the Deep Baby N's, gel craw (now called spring crawdad) finish. There is a new gel coat craw finish that looks very good, Apocalypse.

I strongly believe this is good advice. Reels are so much more complex now that I stop after taking the spool out, maybe repack the drag, and let the rest of it be done by someone who knows what he is doing.

I have a sneaky suspicion that a couple posters here fish waters where crayfish are a big diet item. I think the bass in Sag Bay and St Clair eat mostly other fish, so the patterns that are most effective will be determined by the primary diet. I cannot remember the last time I had a SMB spit up crayfish on these two waters, but lots of white partially digested minnows. Which is why we often have a white tube ready to cast near a fighting fish.

I've done very well with the DT series, too. Ike's Smash and Live River Shad. I think the Helsinki Shad will be good since other lures in that color are good in Lake St Clair. I just bought another deep crank in a color very close to Ike's. Will report next fall. ? I've not used any suspend dots.

Typical year in that they were hard to find, but when I did find them, I did pretty well. Best day was Oct 20, fishing alone, tubes and Ned for the most part, a few by snapping swim baits off the bottom, took 28 with only a couple under 2 pounds. Largest 6 -7 with a couple over 5. Here are some from the year. The DNR came along, checked me out, and I recruited them to take a pic for me. No pic of the 6-7. In the pic below, the pic in the center was taken by the DNR about 9 AM on Oct 20.

Keep a few, especially green ones, then when your regular stuff strikes out, put on the ned. A guide friend of mine was skeptical until one day he and his clients caught nothing on everything else. Only the ned produced. (northern SMB).

30 if you're lucky, 60 if you're luckier. Right?

Serendipity is one of my most effective strategies.

Except for the fact that the colors are a lot like Ohio State, they look fine. Good job. When using cheap guides (or any for that matter) it's a good idea to check the bottom side of the foot for any burrs and clean up any found. I think that's what you meant, but I wanted to be sure.

For tying trebles , it is my opinion that 70 denier is way too small and fragile. The 210 is more like what I would use if I didn't have tons of 140 denier on hand for bonefish flies and bass streamers. The Wapsi head cement is very good, but it gums up along the top of the container and can "weld" the cap on. There is an applicator tool that allows one to pour a little into the applicator and eliminate the constant opening and closing that causes the problem above. Clean the cap and bottle edge when you re-cap it. https://www.jsflyfishing.com/crest-tools-head-cement-dispenser Stockard is an excellent source for everything fly tying.

Do an internet search for instructions. It is a knot for tying leader to braid, and I submit it is not smaller than the FG. Not much bigger, but not smaller. It may be stronger, but any knot that takes an expert 9 1/2 minutes (expert how to tie PR video is 9:47 long) to tie will keep it from breaking on me because I would never get it onto the water. It takes what appears to be dozens of half hitches, costs probably a foot and a half of braid for every knot. It has a strange lump/bend from what I think is the junction of a uni and a bunch of half hitches, is about 8-10 times longer than an FG, so doubt if it clears guides as well as an FG. I don't see it as being a practical fishing knot. 100% line strength vs 80% for the FG? So if I use 20 pound test line instead of 16, and use an FG, I'll have the same strength knot. And the knot takes about 6 minutes less to tie, about a foot less braid, and is less easy to screw up than the PR. The PR might be right for some, but not for me.

Not an elegant solution, but you can put a couple lock loops on opposite sides of the lockers and fit a rod whose ends (flattened slotted) can be locked to the loops. Anything in between cannot be lifted.