fishwizzard

Agreed very much. With a small grub trailer the lure ends up right around 5/16oz and casts a mile on light tackle and even my M rods will get it a good ways out there. They run very well at low speeds which is something I often have trouble with when using other small spinnerbaits.

I have both of those reels and will try to remember to grab some pics for you tonight. I have smaller hands and prefer the SV105, but the Zillion is perfectly comfortable. My only complaint with it is that my thumb tends to "hang" on the spool release causing a second of grinding gears when I go to crank, but I suspect I can train myself out of this.

I just gave it a shot the other day with one of the 10g ones. It very much wants a loop knot or split ring, but they have a nice subtle wiggle at low speeds and the price is right for throwing in all sorts of cover without much worry. Please report back if you have any luck with them.

That is lame as hell. I have both a SV105 and a Zillion SV TWS and I really think I prefer the SV105. Time to start shopping foe a second one I guess.

Really? Did they say why? I love my SV105 and will have to buy a second one it looks like.

My thought for using braid is a backing is as follows. Braid will not gain much if any line memory, so if I do have to fish it as main line, it will work better then mono that is months/years old. In addition, I have done some (admittedly crude) measurements and as near as I can see, a braid of a given diameter is decently lighter than a mono of the same diameter. So a spool backed with braid will be lighter then one backed with mono, which will help a little with my attempts at bait finesse stuff. And finally, I do have mostly shallow spooled reels at this point so spool capacity is something I need to consider. I do use a wrap of trimmed down electrical tape around the spool before I tie my knot and in my (again, crude) testing, it will not slip if I hold the line firm and work the reel handle with a reasonable amount of force. I am looking to fuss around more with Floro mainline and that is what I would fill the rest of the reel, say 3 cast-lengths with. This way a 120-150y spool will let me get a couple of uses on a few different reels.

I have done it with math and had decent luck. I split a 200y spool of floro between two reels that each hold 100y. The first spool is a little under filled and the second one is a little overfilled, but they are close. I am going to hunt around ebay for a cheap spool of 15lb braid and use that for my backing going forward. Due to still being in the frequent backlash phase, I only want maybe three casts worth of nice line on each reel, with a small piece of tape maybe two wraps into the backing to protect it. This way, if I do backlash on a trip where I only have one rod with me, I can remove the tape and fish the braid and a leader until I can get home and respool.

I have a dentist appointment up that way week can after next, so I might take you up on it!

That is sorta what I feared. I fish a few spots where a frog is the only game during the summer, so I will go for a frog-specific rod. My Fenwick MH works well enough for the small collection of hard swimbaits I have currently, but does not cast hollow frogs well at all, so that really makes the decision easy.

I see this rod has an upper rating of 2oz. How would it work for smaller hard/soft swimbaits? I currently use a Fenwick Smallmouth MH 6'9" as my frog rod and for the little dabbling I currently do with swimbaits. It works OK for both but I kinda want to give a proper "long" rod a try before I fully retreat into my beloved 6" rods. The other rod I am looking at for these uses is the Loomis 884C SWB, but I don't know how it will do with hollow bodied frogs.

I am going to pair it with a PX68, so it sounds like I am on the right track. I don't see myself going under 3/16 very often, but would like to throw a weightless finesse worm/plastic if I need too.

I have a little scale that will weight in grams or decimal ounces and really was surprised when I started weighing lures and plastics. I keep meaning to make a thread as a place to collect them as a resource for people. I know I have lots of lures that I bought only to discover they were too heavy/too light to use the way I wanted them too. One of these days I will be motivated and bored enough to do it.

Hi, I am on the hunt for a short BFS rod and have not found much about the CR721. I just picked up a CR723 and really like how it handles and fishes. My main question about the 721 is how it handles lures at and below it's lower rating. I ran a search and while the rod does get mentioned here from time to time, no one has gone into much detail about them. Thanks

What hook would that be? I want to give them a try this season.

Yea, I really noticed that the weedless jighead is only really needed when I am fishing cover or for whatever reason I don't want to have to retie all the time. I will also them when I take non-fishing friends out as a weedless lure is far less frustrating. I want to try the micro t-rig but have never gotten around to it.

Nice, thanks for the info. The Hula Stick is maybe my favorite Zman lure, both cut down and full sized. I think I also want to try a cutdown Boarhog this year, maybe try it two ways, one with the large flappers cut off, leaving the body and the small arms, the other with the body cut down to 1" for maximum flapping. If you ever pour any heads with smaller hooks, please post how it works out.

When I am in my yak I take at most, 4 rods. Each rod has a specific role and gets a single 3600 box for it. Every rod also has a "wildcard" option, but that is just a lure or two. So for example, my ML spinning rod is my Ned/MWF rod, but it's wildcard is a couple of small inline spinners. My MH rod is either dedicated to jigs/worms or chatterbaits/spinnerbaits, but I will have a few of the other on had as well. I never really fish more then two of the rods, but I feel like I might as well fill all four rod holders.

Outing myself as a nerd here, but wargaming minitures used to be made of lead but that was more or less phased out in the late 90's for the most part. I am not sure what exactly the industry swtiched to, but it was called "white metal" and felt a little lighter then lead, but worked in lead molds.

Some custom lure makers what you specify the amount of salt/folatant and the plastics you order. I have a little baggie of high floatant 2 inch tubes kicking around somewhere that I had made for an idea I never did anything with.

Good to hear. What specific plastics are you using on them? I like the idea of stronger hooks, but I really hope people start offering the new heads with #4-6 hooks at some point.

Do they hold much better than the ones on the Z man heads? I picked up a couple from Siebert but haven't used them or really even messed with them yet. Before I started using the Gopher's, I would use the VMC half-moon heads which have a similar wire keeper, but once the plastics got soft saw they would require glue as well.

hah, yea, I saw the "60%" and about broke my thumb trying to load the page.

I either fish from a kayak or the bank, so I want to keep my gear to the minimum. I build myself little kits in 3600 boxes. They are based around one style or type of lure or plastic, and contain the lures and any terminal tackle I need to fish them. I like them self-contained as I can just grab a few and toss them in my car when I head out the door and not worry about forgetting anything. The downside is that I have to keep duplicate tackle for stuff that I use across different kits. For example, this is my "5-6" worms, t-rigged" box: When bank fishing I bring a single rod and grab a 3600 that fits the rod and kind of fishing I will do. I also keep more "universal" lures/plastics in smaller boxes so I can grab a few for variety or to cover myself if my main choice doesnt work out like I hoped. I always want a few senkos or flukes on hand, so I used these small pencil cases that hold 4-6 of each. I do the same with smaller hardbaits if say I want to have a jerkbait or two on hand.

A current favorite is a 4" Ocho stickbait, rigged on a small Owner wacky hook. Drop it into any hole along the river bank and you almost cant fail to pull out a small bass. My "record" so far is 5 fish in 5 casts in the same exact spot. They tear up very quickly however, I need to find my calipers and get some o-rings that fit them.

A couple times I have found large lots of assorted Pond Magic spinnerbaits for very cheap online. I treat them the same way, I'll throw one of those little guys into most anything, knowing that worst case, I'm out a buck or two.