jimmyjoe

St. Croix Avid-X 7' ML/F with Shimano Stradic CI4+ 2500 FA, with 6 lb. Stren or 6 lb. Magnethin. Best wacky-style rig I ever saw. I said I was gonna give up soft plastics for this year, but after thinking about this rig, I may prove myself a liar. ? jj

When I was a kid, Dad would butcher a hog every year. Mom would NOT use hocks. Only shanks. I guess that attitude has held over on me even after all these years, and I still use shanks, but not hocks. I'll be 70 next year; funny how things from so long ago can stick with you for so long. ? jj

the "Rolaids" comment was kind of a joke. I like things spicy, but other people in the extended family are sometimes not so tolerant. In 40-some years of cooking, I've come to find out that there are some people who absolutely and incontrovertibly cannot stand heat. jj

Hocks .... or shanks? jj

My wife is a fantastic cook. I drive her absolutely bonkers because I look at a recipe, write a list of the general ingredients, then start throwing things together .... literally. It almost always (almost!) comes out good, but it NEVER comes out the same way twice. ??? She says my specialty is lasagna. I don't see it. I think my specialty is Chicken Chili .... with a side of Rolaids. ? Second place is Woodcutter's Steak. jj

Shallow cranks (like the Rapala balsa minnow) are the right idea. I would also use lures that resemble crayfish. If you use a spinner, a design like the Panther Martin might be best. On the spinning reel, I would try a light (7g - 10g) spinnerbait. It will resist hanging up better than an in-line spinner. Good luck! jj

I would use mono. There are people on here who are fanatic (and successful) braid users. I was, once. I've moved on. I use 6 lb. Stren on my ML/F setup, and have Magnethin in the background. Mono has stretch, mono is consistent and reliable with knots, and mono is inexpensive. Fluoro can be difficult to manage on spinning gear; it benefits from a large diameter spool. Knots on smaller-diameter fluoro are less reliable than on mono. That being said, you need to learn the knots that you may find necessary. It's not that hard. Once you have that skill, your confidence level will grow, and you'll be a more capable fisherman. Good luck! jj

I agree with @Throwafrog. When floodwaters take over new territory, it seems the best attractant is water displacement. Rattles have never done it for me. Neither has flash or color (alone). Big thumpin' spinnerbait blades and/or big spoons seem to have been the best lures. jj

I tried this a few years ago. I caught fish, but it wasn't anything spectacular. Rig a worm neko-style or a senko wacky-style under a slip bobber. Use a much bigger bobber than you need. You'll have to try several depths to get just-at-or-above the weeds. Then start twitching the rod, which makes the worm or senko wobble. It is a modification of the float-n-fly type rig, but much heavier. Hope this helps. j

Unless you're worried about fashion, try Servus, Tingley, Dunlop or even CLC. Cheap and serviceable. jj

Ah ...... yesssss! jj

All you guys are only halfway there! What's a beer good for without a shot sitting beside it? jj

These might help. https://www.ebay.com/itm/Fish-Gripper-Fishing-Pliers-Floating-Saltwater-Fish-Grip-Grabber-Lip-Grip-HI-/153404058947 jj

I got an extra spool. Be very careful! The spool is soft aluminum, and if you drop it on anything other than a featherbed, you will have a nasty gouge that you'll need to sand out. I also bought a carbontex drag washer from Smoothdrag. I don't do that for larger reels, but I tend to do it for small ones. Other than that, no problem. jj

I think you mean the BG1500 and BG2000, not the 1000 and 1500. The difference is the spool. I don't see the reason for the 1500, but then I have my ideas and other people have different ideas. I consider the reel to be a good design, solidly built and easily serviceable. Good luck, and have a ball creek fishing! jj

I have that rod. I don't know what @newyorktoiowa57 thinks of it, but I named it "The Rod That Doesn't Need To Exist". It's the typical fast tip from SC3 rods, but I think it's not strong enough for a true MH nor flexible enough for a M+. Perversely, it's excellent as a twitchbait and/or bottom contact rod. Lots of competition in that genre, though. jj

6 lb. Magnethin. jj

If "realism" were high on Nature's scale, why would men go after women with push-up bras and lots of makeup? Creatures in general aren't motivated by "it is what it is", they're motivated by "it is what I think it is". If that weren't true, you couldn't lure geese with colored rags in a field or corral horses with cardboard. jj

If you're fishing timber or weeds with the Senkos, you might benefit from a M/F rod. Other wise, I use a ML/F Avid-X for what you describe, and I wouldn't say I'm undergunned at all. jj

Absolutely true. When I said I "was experimenting", I meant that I was trying to match 1) the weight on casting, and 2) the resistance on retrieve to 3) what I thought was close to the max flex of the rod, and 4) what felt good to me. So I'm trying 3 different weights of spinnerbaits, 2 weights of traps, 3 weights of in-line spinners, 4 weights of spoons, and 3 weights of floater-divers. It's been interesting. I went to the river for about 20 minutes today, and caught one reasonable-sized bass (about 2 lbs). The thing is, I caught him on a 1 oz. Dardevle .... in black. There were 3 deadstickers there, and they were pretty surprised. To tell the truth, so was I. I had thought last year that the 1 oz. size might be good for bass, and it is. I tried the 1 oz. because I had it in my mind that this was the rod I wanted for exactly that spoon. Since I "twitch" spoons, I wanted to make sure that the soft tip on this glass rod would be firm enough. It is. ? One other thing: I had always been told that glass rods kinda lose their "oomph" towards the upper end of their rating. This rod holds true right up to the 1 3/8 top of the rating. I would guess that this simply means that someone decided to rate it a little more conservatively. Anyway ....... tomorrow, more spinnerbaits. Wakebaits as well as low-n'-slow. Life is good. ? jj

Thank you, gentlemen. Yeah, I'm aware of that. When I first picked up this St. Croix, I was surprised at the light weight. I remember the Heddon glass rod I learned on. This is very different. I appreciate that you have no trouble setting the hook, A-Jay. That had been my biggest doubt. As for the casting performance ..... well, let's just say there are several reasons I love this glass rod, and that's one of the most obvious. It's funny how soooo many articles emphasize how a rod feels on the retrieve and hookset, but almost none emphasize how a rod feels on the cast. How it loads and the feedback you get are important. I also noticed that this rod makes it easier to kill the spinnerbait at the end of the cast so that it enters the water quietly. In fact, as I was experimenting, that was the thing that I noticed most, and it made me want to continue experiments with other spinnerbaits. Yeah, I know glass rods feel "dead". And yes, @J Francho, I know they're "noodly". ?? But I'm finding out that there are some things that glass rods do better than popular opinion would indicate. What was that Michael J. Fox movie ..... "Back To The Future" ??? ? jj

I've always liked a MH/F rod for spinnerbaits. But I recently bought a H/M Mojo Bass Glass rod, and I've been experimenting with it, including using it with spinnerbaits. It does well enough. Some of my friends had conniption fits about my using spinnerbaits with a fiberglass rod, but this article on the history of the spinnerbait ( https://lakerecord.net/2019/01/17/the-history-of-the-spinnerbait/ ) states that spinnerbaits were used at least in the late 40's, and that Don Fuelsch made the Strike King design in 1961. Those lures were used on fiberglass rods. Fenwick didn't bring out graphite rods (the HMG) until about 1975. Anyone else out there using fiberglass rods to throw spinnerbaits? If you do, how good is your hookset? Any problems? Thnx. jj

Holy cow, man! Thirty years ago? Don't you think that improvements have been made in plastic spinning equipment since thirty years ago? You said that baitcasters have improved. Don't you think that maybe plastic spinning reels have improved right along with them?? So let me get this straight: thirty years ago, you tightened the drag down too tight on several 4000-size plastic spinning reels, and then you tried to haul big bass out of weeds and ruined the reels. So now, thirty years later, you stomp on plastic reels out-of-hand, even to people who show no signs of using them the same way you did. As for the musky, they are stocked in a lake that just so happens to have a good population of great bass, and sometimes the musky get in the way. I have to deal with that. I'm not targeting them, but you might say they're targeting me. . I think @BaitFinesse and @Big-Bass are pretty close to the point: plastic has improved, but people always need to use a reel within it capabilities, whether it's a spinning or a casting reel, and whether it's plastic or metal. jj

I see. So the graphite reels develop gear issues but .... the aluminum ones don't? Interesting. (See below.) When those necks snapped, it sounds like there was a pretty good amount of stress on the reels, what with the weeds and all. Can you remember the model number or at least size of the reels? Like, was the first one a 20 or 25 size, and then your second was the same size so you up-sized, or did you up-size immediately? Or did you have 30 or 35 size reels from the git-go? I've been looking at a new reel. It would be used for bass, but in water where there are musky have been stocked. Not only that, but the shallow end and north side have fairly good weed beds. In the past, I've avoided those conditions. Now, however, I've decided to tackle this lake aggressively, mostly because it has really nice bass. One salesman I know (he's a good fisherman) flat out told me, "Use your drag. That's what it's there for. If you lock it down you'll have trouble whether you're using a spinning or a casting reel." Another salesman simply told me, "If you need high stress on a graphite reel, just go a size larger." He meant use a 40 instead of a 35, etc. One of the reasons I need to get this clear in my mind is that I've had both graphite and aluminum reels in the past, and I've had geartrain problems with BOTH of them. And I had bought the aluminum to avoid the problems I had with the graphite. Bummer. So any light you can shine on this problem would be appreciated. ? jj

Please tell us more about that. What was the brand of braid, and what was the test? Which reel was that? Was the drag on the reel all the way down? And you used the plural ; "necks". Did this happen more than once? This sounds interesting, and I'd like to know more about it if I could. jj