Mbirdsley

Thanks for the responses. I just ordered the dots should be here Tuesday. Now I just need the wind to cooperate and lay down a bit.

Who makes the the little strips that are attached to jerk baits that adjust the sink rate or that helps a jerk bait suspend. I’ve tried looking but, I’m either not using the correct name or the correct key words when searching.

Went to sportsman warehouse in traverse city and picked up some spring lures. Spro RKcrawler 55 phantom green. I have one of these in the same color in a size 50. The size 50 only go to 8 foot max and it’s been a good medium diving lure. Hopefully the success translate to the 55 missle baby d bomb in ballistic cruiser, rage ned bugs in morning dawn and blue craw. Strike king 1/8 oz tube jig heads, Mustad ultra point 2/0 and 3/0 with soft plastic hooks. Hopefully these will work well with t-rigged tubes, and a smaller adjust a bubble bobber

Some stuff I’ve been working on. 1/4 and 3/8 oz arkies and poison tails. I’m going back to rubber collars. I tried the whole hand tied thing last year and didn’t really care for it. I use good rubber collars and have never had one rot out.

I could literally probably fish the entire year with out buying anything else. Only issue maybe certain specialty things. But, I’d just have to find another way to do it. I just wouldn’t be as versatile but, I could do it. I have enough stuff.

Here’s my update. Everything is wrapped. Turned out pretty good I’m happy with it. Surprised to how light it is for being a big fiberglass rod. I’ll probably put color preserver on tonight still. the epoxy on the threads next Sunday. Hopefully be ready to fish next week.

Only other thing I would add is maybe a chatter bait. this time of year especially up north I am interested in finding the warmest water I can. Generally speaking that’s where the fish are at. At least the ones that want to eat.

Lurenet order arrived while I was fishing. Sonar minnows in ayu and natural shad . Spine craws in arsonist red and green pumkin blue flake. Norma’s deep little N chillie bowl and spring craw and a Norman DD in chillie bowl

12 lbs suffix advanced flouro for general cranking 2-12 ft. On my deep cranking rod I’m running 15 lbs Berkley 100% flouro just because, cabelas has great price on the 400 yard spool and my round reel abu pro rocket takes a lot of line to spool up. I will occasionally throw square bills on my spinner/chatter bait rod which, is spoiled with 10 lbs big game mono

Maybe if I put that little chuck into the bearing in the wood. Bottom the butt on the chuck, l clamp it on the butt just enough just to hold it. Use a dowel or mandrel the size of your rod. epoxy the 2 pieces together. I also had to make a tape arbor for the butt cap as it was .650 my blank OD was .629 at the butt section. I didn’t want to put a whole in the butt. I think shaping grips in the drill press is the best way. In this instance I wish I could chuck the rod just to fix that one part. I don’t know about turning the rod that fast. That could get exciting really quick. Eventually, I’ll probably build a rod lathe of some type.

I turned the grips on my drill press with the exception of the butt knob . It’s just I had no way of sanding the butt knob into the rear grip. It’s fine just a glue seam is little uneven on either side. The rear grip measures right around .750 all the way down. the butt of of the blank is .620 i tried to get the OD of the rear grip to the exact shape on the butt knob which is the same color. Hard to do each separate piece when the EVa was a little out of round to begins with. if I chucked them into some sort of lathe I could have sanded them together while glued to the rod.

Trying to work on cold water finnesse stuff more. I bought some sonar minnows. I bought a mold to cast smaller jig sizes with bigger hooks. 2.8-3.3 paddle tail swim baits. I’ve had success with the bigger 3.8-6 inch paddle tails. Another thing that I can use the above mold to make jig heads. I’ve bought about a dozen spro float N flys to try also

I have the handle assembly epoxied to the blank. In the future, I see that I can buy a cheap chuck to put into a hand held drill. I’d like to shape up the section where the butt meats the handle. It looks decent and is what it is as I don’t have a way to turn it while, it’s glued to the rod

I don’t know about unusual material but, he explained the whole red thing pretty well. What I got out of the the talk is The red cranks are 40-50 degree thing and after that put them away. That you don’t need a whole tackle box of red. than always if the main plan fails have a back up to the back up plan. I liked the spine craw vs chunk talk. When to use what types as a trailer. The spine crawl a more streamlined craw with a tite flapping action while,chunk has flappy arms. That type of stuff isn’t just related to just those 2 soft plastics. I started catching fish with Norman cranks last summer. They are affordable with decent paint jobs. They work. I change out hooks though. Depending on April up here the most of the bigger lakes won’t be 50 untill the end of the month. The bigger lakes havnt even hit 40 yet. Supposed to be warm this next week. Im hoping some of the smaller lakes will be in the low 40’s

Lure net has free shipping on orders over $35. Found a code online for 15% of Debo15. My total order was 37$ which went to $32 after the code. I saved something like $12 total once the free shipping was added. they don’t have the best selection. It’s all Norman, bomber, bandit hard baits and mainly yum soft plastics. After listening to BTL Thursday episode with frank I bought some Norman red cranks and some yum spine craws.

What hooks come stock on the deep-six 300. I generally always swap out hooks to kvd triple grips. However, I feel like I shouldn’t be messing with a good thing. I’ve got 2 bent hooks on one of me deep six cranks that I need to replace.

Ok I see it now. Thanks that looks cool Next project started. This is my rod geek dark blue glass 7ft8 heavy deep cranking rod 1-2oz. I’m on a EVA kick since I’ve learned how to shape it. Next build I’ll probably go back to cork. im using fugi ecs-17 real seat, crb guides that I salvaged off my broken Bushido deep cranking build from last year. The Eva handle and matching butt is a dark blue and black camo. I’m going to try using some A size thread. I’ve got pro wrap colorfast cfs-A 434, pro wrap blue Electra metallic and color fast grey 813 I think I’m going to use as an under wrap for the hook keeper. I don’t know if I’ll take the easy way out and just put a black for grip on it or shape one from the left over EVa stick that I have

Any of the gel ones seem to dry the quickest. Seem the less messiest too. I’ve tried gorilla glue and lock tite super glue gel. Both worked good

I do prefer smallies. IF given the choice I will fish for small mouth. In Michigan smallie fall from the trees that’s how plentiful they are. I still enjoy fishing for large mouth though. generally speaking smallies are in deeper lakes and every river/creek with faster current. Though I’ve caught them in lakes that average less than 5ft large mouths generally are in shallower lakes and slower rivers. you will catch them hanging out with each other in the same spots though any where.

Usually chatter bait. But, I’m going t be throwing a lot of lipless, jerkbaits, OG’s and shadraps as well

That chart blue back has been on my want list for a while. I love not paying shipping for items. fishing show’s in Michigan have been traditionally all about Great Lakes walleye and salmon. Starting to see more bass stuff every year.

Grand Rapids fishing show purchases. Lt day I could make it was on today ( Thursday). A lot of good deals to be had. mega bass deep six blue back mat chart crank 3/4 oz sleeper gill 1/2 oz dark sleeper wakasagi diawa / Yamamoto 5.8 Neko straight worm in baby bass og slim 6 in Helsinki shad 2 bags of 4 inch extreme bass tackle tubes in blue illusion and goby 3.5 inch kietech swing impact in sun gill also bought a telescoping ranger net with rubber net 920T

reels I use all the time I service once a year. Reels that don’t get much use 2-3 years or when problems arise. I use penn reel grease. It’s blue in color. I’m pretty sure it’s just blue lithium marine grade grease. For oil I use the Lucas reel oil. I’m servicing my brothers okuma trolling reels at the moment. I going to try using gear oil for the bearings. As a rule these don’t get serviced every year or ever. so my thinking the heavier gear oil maybe better. I was also given two bottles of Lucas gun oil. It’s red I’ve been thinking of using this also for bearings as it seems a bit heavier than the Lucas reel oil. With that said I’ve never had an issue with Lucas reel oil. I think any quality grease will work. I don’t grease carbon tech washers. I just did a for hire tear down and lube on a slx DC. It still had the greased felt drag washer. Since it was already greased I did add a couple drops of oil to them.

Usually I try to stay in the middle of the weight range. Only 2 instances that I go at over the range. 1st being punching heavy jigs in the 1 1/4-1 1/2. I believe my Bass-x 7ft4 heavy rod is rated to 1 1/4 ( I’m not near the rod to check) I only throw 1 1/4-1 1/2 oz jigs on it punching heavy cover. 2nd: cranks I don’t go over very often lot but, when in a pinch I’ll go a little heavier than what the rods rating is. However, that’s more determined by a crank to crank basis between differnt mfg. some cranks pull more than others

Latest ebay winnings. Originally I was looking at purchasing a diawa tatula or BG spinning reel. How ever, I found these 2 quantum accurist s3 AT25SPT’s from my fav eBay vendor for a winning bid of $80 shipped for the both. These are $90-100 a piece reels. im a big quantum fan. I’ve got a quantum accurist spinning reel from 12 yrs ago still going strong. I’ve also got a accurist bait caster with the flipping switch ( bargain for a $100 bait caster). The accurist line dosent get the attention it deserves.