Airman4754

Yep. Run it shallow too, like to the point where it is making the water boil above it. You'd be surprised how far they will come up to get it. Also point your your boat into the wind and roll cast so it doesn't effect your cast as much.

Z-man are Elaztech, it says on the pack to not store them with regular plastic lures. If you do.....well, now you know.

I fish them April-September up here. I rarely ever get to fish for largemouth anymore though.

I'm 5'10" and use Bub's punch rod all the time. It's a very versatile rod. I would recommend it.

My main one is a Phenix Maxim 7' Med and I love it. It's well within your price range. I fish up to 3/4oz heads on it all the way down to 60ft and it does great.

Thanks for the heads up! I've never heard of them but I figured at those prices it can't hurt to give them a try! $32 for 12 cranks and two spooks is a hard one to top. You definitely have to pay shipping and it's not cheap.

Chigger Quads have some crazy action.

One of my best friends growing up had a lake house on what I'm pretty sure is the same lake you are talking about. We were there for the weekend during the summer back in the early 90's and at about 5am we hear a young child screaming bloody murder from down the shoreline. We all roll out of bed like fireman and ran towards the screaming. We get there and it was a little boy with about a 5lb bass laying on their dock. He caught it on a little Zebco push button setup with a piece of hotdog. He was pretty excited to say the least.

Was thing even able to fight? Did you have to cut the wall out of its house to transport it to the boat? Did it have a half eaten Twinkle in its mouth?

I've said this before in one of your previous posts but shakey heads for Spots in the winter is some of the most productive fishing you will get. As it warms up use your favorite reaction bait to cover water and once you catch one grab the shakey head and fish that area for at least 30 minutes.

That's a snake, and a nice one at that!

I have the 7'MH with the Lew's Lite baitcasters that I use for C & T rigging and I absolutely love it. It's such a light combo you can feel everything on it. That is a smoking deal!

I use a Lamiglas Pro X 735. It has a rating of 1/4oz up 1.5oz and it does cover that range. I throw from unweighted horny toads to the huge SPRO frogs on it with 65lb braid and they all handle really well. The shorter butt section makes it really easy to walk without getting fatigued. It's slightly above your price point but it's worth it. I've read nothing but good about the Powell 735's also.

Jet skiers. They literally come find you. The annoying thing with every wake board boat now is they all play music at a deafening level once they start pulling. So, you have twenty boats blaring different songs all at once. It's a cacophony of awful.

R2S 168 in Rainbow Trout

I've kind of went through it all and I'm in the process of going braid with a flouro leader on pretty much everything but my punching and frog setup. One spool of Maxcuatro 50lb had me sold.

I don't use it on a jig head, but it's the same thing. In the summer when they are 50' down or farther during the middle of the day I peg a 1oz tungsten, put a punching skirt on and run a 10 or 12" Power Worm on it with a 5/0 straight shank. I've yet to find anything that works better at that depth. I long line it and let the wind drift my boat out and drag it along the bottom. When you have to fish stupidly deep water with Northern strain fish creativity it key. I just picked up some 11" Hightail ribbon worms that should give and even better action. I'm excited to try them when the spawn is totally done and they go back into hiding.

I buy quality casting/flipping jogs because I'm fishing around limbs, docks, pilings, etc. Those don't get hung up very much. Footballs on a rocky bottom get hung up like every five casts. For those I use the really cheap 1/2oz Danielson football heads, find the cheapest skirts I can find in the big four (green pumpkin, Bama craw, black & blue, PBJ) and just add a trailer. A brush guard does nothing in rocks so it doesn't matter that they don't have one. With this route I can make a jig for about $2.50 a piece. That's still a lot for the cheapest stuff you can get, but after a day of losing a bunch of pretty tungsten ones it's not that bad.

I just don't know when the hell I would ever be able to use them. Other than the one time I go to Clearlake every year I'd never even get to use them. Everywhere I fish here is steep canyon reservoirs. Even when bed fishing the back of my boat is usually deeper than 12 feet. I'd love to have a set, but they'd be more for looks than actual use.

The Zoom worms need to be in current or moved to really keep that solid standup appearance that works best. The best standup jig head out there are the Megastrike's. As for worms you can go the Z-man route, but Elaztech is a real pain to screw into the head. The Kicker Fish Hightails are a normal plastic that will float completely while you dead stick it.

A Shakey Head works very well in deep water.

This is a great example Tom. The lakes over the hill in the valley are around 500ft elevation and the three local lakes are over 4,000. Two of those high lakes are smallie lakes and one is largies. The two high smallie lakes run the pre, spawn, and post around the same time. The pre on the one high elevation lake starts when the spawn is basically over in all the others. I caught my PB in mid June on it as she was moving up to spawn. I like the "Fish your ass off from President's Day to Memorial Day." rule.

I use a couple different things. No matter what, if possible I throw my lure onto the bank so there is no splash then work it in. That's too much of a hassle with a drop shot so I cast it to a spot where the fish still has escape lanes so it doesn't spook. For baits I use pretty much what everyone else does. A spinnerbait is my favorite, weightless Senko, weightless swimbait, a C-rig lizard, and a drop shot. I use those Jackall crappie and bluegill looking baits for the drop shot. I tried a Shakey Head once last year and it worked. It might not be a bad one for it either.

I have about every type of frog out there from hollow body to plastic to Elaztech. The biggest fish I caught on one last year was one of those cheapo popper ones from Wal-Mart. I don't frog fish open water very much, so if you're throwing them into the trash primarily like most of us do it won't make any difference what you get. It's just a disturbance up above that resembles something they can eat.

If you can find a used Lamiglas "Senko Special" it couldn't be more than $100. About as good as you can get and it's made in the US.