fishwizzard

If you abandon the 1/2oz Spinnerbait you should be able to find a M/F or M/MF that will worth with the larger topwaters and still be good for lighter plastic/jigheads, but I think it's going to be tough to find a single rod that excels at everything you want to throw. You should take a look at the Loomis cr721c. It's outside of your price range new but they pop up on ebay pretty often. I have one and while it's not perfect at it's lower end, it will still load and cast a Ned well. The upper limit is a bit high as well, but it will throw 3/8oz topwaters very well and should be able to handle heavier ones with careful casting. I was trying to sell mine a while ago but decided to keep it. If you are not in a huge hurry we can meet up sometime in mid/late July and you can try mine out.

A Ned with a TRD and a 1/16ox head weighs like 3/16, so most medium rods should be able to load one well enough but the 3/4-1oz upper end is going to be tough. What are these heavier lures specifically? If they are treble hooked topwater or the like you can get away with a lighter rod and just take care with you casting.

That’s like my old car, where the tackle was worth more then the vehicle.

https://www.tacklewarehouse.com/catpage-MEGABTOP.html?from=basres They do have a new $60 topwater!

American Legacy is selling off their stock of Loomis CR rods. 6’ long with a short grip and cork forgrip. They also have a few used 6’6” mbr rods on their ebay page.

I am all Menace, no Bug. I find them to be very similar in action but the Menace is more durable so I go with it.

Boomerangs work great for braid but dull if you cut other lines with them. I try to cut braid with the tips of mine and all other lines with the back of the blades, it really seems to help.

If you can deal with the length, the iRod “Fred’s Magic Stick” is a great, powerful frog rod. I think they offer it in ateast two of their lines. I have the Genesis model and it feels incredibly light in hand for such a long rod.

It shocks me that there are people out there who don’t get excited about the opportunity to buy a new set of drivers.

Ah, this is the part that never clicked for me. I am a fan of short butts and have always held off shortening any of my rods because I kept reading that it would affect the action but I could never understand how.

100% agree, I go to both for work and LV blows Orlando out of the water for restaurant choice. The “best” spot I have found in Orlando is Lee and Rick’s Oyster Bar. It is a dive for sure but it’s ambiance and prices cannot be beat.

I rig the hook parallel to the plastic with the hook shank closer to the bottom. I feel like the this way keeps the hook point from snagging as I am hopping it along. It also keeps the hook oriented for a roof-of-the-mouth hookset. I use a single o-rig and rig the hook through the plastic behind the ring.

This is really it. I use mine for more or less any and all lures in the 1/4-3/4 range.

The 783 is a crazy good weightless plastics rod as well. I have a finesse reel on mine because there is a weightless Trickworm tied on like 50% of the time.

Got a nice one at my local pond this morning. I was able to pull 2-3lb bass out of it with good regularity last year and even got enough 3-4lb ones to make it worth the crowds, but this year I have not had much success there. After spending 90% of my time fussing with a chatterbait and a small glidebait I went and grabbed a finesse combo out of the car and within a few dozen casts I had that one and one just a bit smaller. It's the largest bass I have got on that rod so far (MB Phase 3 Criffhanger) and it was a hell of a fight. It took a bit to get her head turned and maybe 2 min to get her under control and landed. It's not a noodle rod by any means but I have been on such a big-bait kick of late that it took me a moment to remember what to do. I also think I have at long last found the perfect way to rig the 4" Easy Shiners: It's a 1/8oz-1/0 Sled/Draggin' head with a Medium Owner Twistlock screw on it. The Sled head shape is very very snag resistant in weeds, wood, and rock, it also really protects the lure-scewlock connection from impact with said cover so it gives crazy long plastic life. That head was new when I tied it on and that single plastic has caught half a dozen small smallies, a small striper, and the two decent LMBs today and just now is the keeper starting to pull out of the nose. The head shape is designed for bottom dragging and while it excels at that, it's also great for swimming, it does not swing as much as a normal weighted swimbait hook and keeps the plastic's action to a tight wiggle even at high speeds and in current.

Dispite the later then desired start, I had a good day on the Patapsco on Saturday. The river is looking great and the even the long shallow runs have a good rocky bottom, almost no silty areas. The scar from the old dam site is still very prominent but they did a really good job building the channel and it is some very good looking water. The river below the dam is much deeper and faster then I remember it, with some spots being easily 6' deep. I didn't come prepared to fish water that deep or current that fast, but I still managed about a half dozen of the usual Patapsco 7-12" smallies and a few rock bass mixed in. I didn't get any panfish, which is odd, very few machine-gun nibbles either. The high point of the day was catching a striper about 50y below the old dam. I know there is nothing stopping one from getting this far upriver, but it was a huge shock. I though I had a PB smallie on the line for most of the fight, I could not believe it when I saw it.

I have caught more bass on a Senko t-rigged with a 1/16oz tungsten bullet weight then with one rigged weightless by far. The little bit of weight lets them glide to the bottom faster but they still wiggle on the way down. I still catch most of them on the initial fall but the weight lets me work the lure back to me more productivity then when they are rigged weightless. I have a pile of 6” GYCB Kut-Tail worms that I am working through and I think I like them rigged weightless far more then a 5” senko. Unless I am sight fishing I prefer a weightless t-rigged Trickworm to a Senko most every time for my slow-sink worm needs.

Last spring I installed a paddle holder on the right side which I eventually realized I’m not entirely happy with the position of, so now I have a serious case of decision paralysis want to comes to putting any more holes in the hull.

Nope, it's a Siebert Shot Caller. I asked for a custom color to complement the KVD Magic RT color and bought like a dozen of them, I think they are going to last me a while, I only seem to loose them when a pick or turtle takes an interest.

Yea, I am excited to get it out to Widewater or RG where I can let it stretch it's legs.

I can wear sneakers at work most of the time and I have found that NB 990's are the best shoes out there for walking on hard surfaces all day. I will wear the treads off of them in about a year, the uppers would last longer but once they lose the tread I replace them. I can usually find them for around $150 when I start looking for a new pair.

This is my standard swim jig, a 1/4oz jig with a 3.75" Rage Swimmer trailer. It's the perfect size for where I fish, 1 pound bass can choke it but it's big enough to get the interest of larger fish. When I want a smaller profile I use a Rage Menace trailer and cut the skirt back to the hook bend. For tiny jigs I want to swim, I use various curly tailed grubs and I have never found a paddle tail with enough "meat" in the body to stay on a jig very well.

I have been looking for a combo to throw smaller 6"/2-3oz swimbaits on for a while now and had never found a rod that I really like for it. I didn't want a super long rod with a super long handle as I fish these lures from the bank and prefer accuracy to distance. I didn't mean to go quite this crazy but I got offered the rod at a price too good to say no to and the reel followed a few months later. The rod is a Megabass Super Red Demon and the reel is a new Ryoga 1520h. Right now it's spooled up with 25lb Sunliner Defier Armilo mono and the spool holds about ~80y, which is enough for my needs. The reel was very tight out of the box but after about 4-5 hours trying out a bunch of lures it loosed up a ton and my casting distance jumped way up from where it started fresh out of the box. It's still silky smooth and my only complaint is that the knobs feel a little dainty. I want to get a second spool for it so I can have a heavy braid option on hand for running larger "fast" paddle tails through cover. The rod is a monster and will put to rest any nagging doubts about the hookset issues I have been having with some of the larger soft swimbaits, with the SRD I know it's an issue with my technique, not a lack of power in the rod. What drew me too it was the reported sensitivity. I spent most of last winter throwing a 68Special on a Fury 795sb and I got almost no feedback slow crawling it across soft-bottomed ponds. This made it really hard to stay focused for bite-less hours and the few bumps/hits I got were all missed due to my mind being firmly somewhere else. The SRD is vastly more sensitive and I could not only feel everything the Hudd bumped into, I can also feel the tail thumping even at a very slow crawl so I have high hopes for my small-pond swimbating this winter.

I have a Yakattack kit, still in the box. I cannot decide what side I want to put it on. Maybe 2020 will be the year I nut up and start drilling holes.

They still have a few of the MagLight SJR rods in stock, I have a pair of them and they are maybe the best "small plastic on a jighead" rods I have used. I have a bad feeling that this is the end of the rod for the shorter IMX SJR rods and the Classic Bass line. They have been out of stock more often then instock lately and seeing them 25% off isn't a good sign.