Molay1292

I like baits with white, dark colors, and others with chartreuse or a little orange. All baits do not float horizontal when stopped, many will float at a vertical angle and the back and sides are exposed then, also other baits expose the sides in the water when walking the dog. Don't think it is fair to say that only the bottom of the bait is seen by fish.

Two that catch fish and are hard to fish wrong are the Ned Rig and the Senko.

Keep a file on hand and keep the hooks sharp, with the hooks always being exposed they can become dull faster than a guy thinks.

When you catch a fish don't take it for granted. Take the time to try an understand why that fish was there, why it bit the bait you presented. Look at the depth, water color, temp, wind direction, shadows, structure, cover, try and take in as much as you can about why, why, why. It can really help you start to understand some things, and find a pattern. Trust your instinct and don't let anyone talk you out of them, find out for yourself.

I have NRX's and 3 different versions of the Legend Elite and Extreme, they all have filler in the cork. While the cork is better on these rods than some of the others I own there are still small imperfections that have been filled. Cork with no imperfections is almost impossible to get, the best cork never makes it to the fishing industry or anywhere else. The wine companies have the best cork purchased before anyone else ever has the opportunity to own it.

I seal every cork handled rod I own, top end St.Croix and Loomis rods get the same treatment. I clean them a little with magic eraser and then apply a coat of U-40. I do it to protect the cork, keeps it from ever becoming stained and prevents any filler from coming loose and leaving pits in the handle. Typically I repeat the process over the winter for the following season. If you prefer your handles to be dried out, pitted and dirty I would not mess with it.

Yes the chicharonnes chips work like magic. Make sure to get the spicy ones.

Granny

The further back from the nose the line tie is the more they will spiral.

Why not just purchase one of the many commercially available stills on the market? A small 5 -10 gallon still is reasonably affordable. Keep in mind that in most states it is legal to distill essential oils, but the distillation of alcohol is a no no.

For me is was Big Foolish Spending, it was fun but wish I would have just put the money into a good spinning combo.

Kind of that whole feed a man fish or teach him to fish thing ......

finite

OK, thanks for sharing. Welcome to the Forums, I am sure you are going to be popular.

Met him in an aisle way at BPS in Broken Arrow, OK right after the 2015 Classic. We spent a good amount of time just B.S. ing about fishing and his performance at the Classic. He was nice, funny and very down to earth, hard to not like a person with those type of traits. I am happy for him.

Interesting idea, care to expand on the thoughts a little.

Your rod, reel and line all work together to create a system. There are a lot of other variables as well, water color, distance you're casting, cover you're fishing etc. This makes it very difficult to provide a one line fits all answer and what you end up with is the person who is replying giving his preference based on his system and set of variables. Put the time in, do your own testing and determine what works best for you.

Bass can definitely see line and hardware,whether or not it makes any difference is a subject that has no consensus.

Either work well, I have some of both

While many spinning reels have a lower gear ratio, their IPT is actually higher than many baitcasting reels with higher gear ratio's. The reason being is spool diameter of a spinning reels tends to be larger than that of a casting reel. So many times you are actually retrieving more line.

It's all good my friend.

While I like what you're preaching, I am going to disagree with you. I own all of the reels in the list that you mentioned and have them supertuned with spools and bearings and polishing and everything else you can throw money at. With that said the best of the bunch you mentioned is the Pixy. The Fuego is a cheaper version of the TDZ-100 and the stock spool is the equivalent of a Stock TD-Zillion, good at heavier baits around 3/8 oz but not a finesse spool by today's standards. You can upgrade the spool if you can find one to the Giggas 100M, hypercast or PE longcast spools and gain a little performance but not enough to touch many of the modern reels in terms of finesse. The Sol never had an easily replaceable spool without using spacers and even then the option was the Pixy spool, while the Pixy was the leader in finesse casting at one time it has long been surpassed by lighter spools and better braking systems. Today you can upgrade the spool of the Sol with an SV105 and it makes for a very nice little reel, but even with that the SV105 is far from being in the league of some of the better BFS reels today. So that leaves the Pixy in all of its configurations, one of the best reels of all time but not up to today's standards. We have to face it Tom, as much as we love the reels that ruled the roost only what seems like a few years ago, they have been surpassed by lighter spools, better bearings and more advanced braking systems. I truly love all of the reels you mentioned, but time marches on brother. Let one of these young guys share some information on some of the new BFS gear that is leading the game.

Being a retired member of the Military I had the opportunity to visit many of the States in our great Nation. The friendliest people that I personally have met as a whole reside in South Carolina.

Thanks for sharing, I am familiar with the history of the Ned Rig but always like hearing what others can share. What I am confused by is a couple of different posts in this thread. "The z-man trd (otherwise falsely known as the ned rig) in either the coppertruse color or junebug. " "The ned rig really means any soft plastic bait (usually made by z-man) four inches and under threaded on a mushroom head jig weighing 3/32 ounce down to 1/32 ounces, with the most popular and versatile weight being 1/16 of an ounce. " Anyway I understand your point about some may be confused about how the term Ned Rig came about and think that it refers only to the TRD.

Looked into the same thing not so long ago. I finally come to the conclusion that my best option would be to go the custom route with a rod built on a spinning rod blank.