Hook2Jaw

My cold heart just thawed. ?

Agreed. I like the smaller profile of tungsten to match my typical soft plastic presentation when Texas rigging, but only past 1/4oz. I don't see a reason to switch from lead jigs, however. I can feel enough and I'm not trying to finesse with a jig, I'm trying to be a big profile that gets a big smack. Love that jig bite. Set the hook and have a bass torpedo headed to you.

Definitely. Very nomadic on herring lakes, though!

I've caught a few on a 3.5" YUM Pulse.

Savage Gear Shine Glide, some Huddleston 68s. Lucky Craft Pointers I bought at retail, Lucky Craft Staysee 90 v2s I found at Ollie's for $7ea. ?

Gun on me and without demoing, I would go with the Bonafide, and I'm not even a fan of those boats.

I can't catch crap on these things. Are you drop shotting them?

All the beds. I'm gonna try to limit on bucks real quick and then slay the ladies. Chatuge has smallies, right?

I'll be on it in April trying to win a KBF Open. I'll let you know what I figure out then.

The only table I use for fishing is the kitchen table. I use it to help rig the night before and to put the occasional redfish, seatrout, or flounder on.

Combining BOSS components to make jigs, spinnerbaits, and buzz baits puts a quality lure on the end of your line for around 2.50ea.

I use a Daiwa DXSB 8' HF, 2-8 ounces. As people have said, go ahead and divide the rating by two. It is definitely a 1 ounce to 4 ounce stick, with leeway on both sides of that rating. 3/4oz is a tad difficult to load without lash, 4+ ounces needs a bit of care. It is excellent for one to four. The action is, in my opinion, on the slower end of fast. I feel it is a great piece of gear if, like me, you're swimming on a budget and need to throw trebles and single hooks. I have not yet thrown bama rigs on it, but I am confident it will do well. If you want to make it dedicated to a single type of bait, it does well with single hooks. It's not as light as sticks in higher price ranges, but with my own Daiwa Lexa 300 Type-WN 6.3:1, it balances well. It's a plainer Jane type of rod, which is right up my alley. I don't want my sticks to look flamboyant and it is pleasing to my eye. I've been rather impressed with its sensitivity, it's the most expensive rod I own and feeling everything my Huddleston 68s contact is a good feeling. I highly recommend your choice of setup, and think it will last me a long time as a swimbait rod. I've logged quite a few 8 hour sessions with it, landed some nice fish, and tore up some Hudds with it. It fishes very comfortably for me and is a pleasure to use.

Depth, conditions, and cover really dictate how I select my finesse approach. My go-to method for making fish happen is junk fishing a Texas rigged YUM Dinger, but I'll opt out of that when the wind picks up and I can't line watch well. I also don't like to wait for a weightless worm to hit bottom in 10+ FOW. When the wind picks up and puts some chop on the water, I start throwing 1/8oz shaky in place of my Dinger. When I start getting into deep water, I start throwing a 3/16oz shakeyhead. Around smaller fish I will throw on a Ned rig. As I get into 20 FOW, I start throwing a dropshot. That's my little system for catching fish when the bite dictates finesse plastics. It may not be perfect, but it works for me.

I feel like most surf fishing is done with treble hooked artificials or chunk bait on circles, either hook being an easy set. The idea of setting a 4 or 5/0 jig or worm hook at the distance a good surf rod can launch one worries me, but I bet, just maybe, it might be a decent possibility. Getting into it this year. I have this problem already and I'm not even tourney fishing! I'll be on Lake Lanier in April though, trying to ****** big spots off beds and trying to win that KBF Open.

Fish offshore. It's fairly difficult to do from a kayak.

40 hours on at this point and at the last slight touch, no epoxy came off with my touch. She's drying.

My connections are not wiggly or prone to water intrusion, and Humminbird Mega Imaging operates at megahertz levels of frequency -- I have two friends, one who switched from Garmin to Humminbird, and another who switched from Lowrance. Those two persons would tell you that the Humminbird has better imaging than the units from other brands in the same price range.

That's wonderful to hear, thanks, @.ghoti.!

Thanks, Tim. We're departing for GA tomorrow so I don't think I have enough time for fresh epoxy to dry. I'll keep this in mind in case it ever happens again. Good old 16 hour drive cutting into my plans.

As of 8 A.M. my epoxy was still sticky to the touch, and that was the 30 hour mark for being on the rod dryer. I am certain I mixed resin and hardener to a 50:50 ratio. The room the rod was drying in was probably 55-60 degrees, I had no idea ambient air temperature would influence things that greatly. Do I have any hope of my epoxy drying correctly at this point or do I need to strip everything down and start fresh?

YUM Craw Chunk.

I don't know the specifics on upgrading transducer models with the units themselves, all I can tell you is I've seen fish fins using my Humminbird Helix 7 MSI G3. I have a friend who used to use a Garmin Echomap, his terminals got destroyed by saltwater and he was not very pleased with the image quality. From personal experience, I can tell you my Helix and the base transducer can give you awesome imaging.

As of midnight, my rod is spinning on the dryer with grips, guides, and a layer of epoxy over the thread wraps. It looks 5/10, to me, anyway. I did a lot of moving my wraps via pushing on them with the burnishing tool, which lead to some waves on the start of the wrap. I've got a few gaps, especially at a foot or three where the thread slipped under as I aligned guides. I've got some epoxy overrun on the first guide I touched. The metallic silver in my build kit is too flashy for me as far as thread goes, and the next time I'll be going with a flat black or white. I like simple colors. At any rate, it matches the accent parts on the Tatula 100 the rod is paired with. My first through ninth guide aren't perfect, but it looks pretty decent for my first go. I'm very proud of my work and I can't wait to use this stick. I'll make a post about it tomorrow. I feel accomplished.

Just fished something just like you're describing at McKinney Falls State Park near Austin, TX. The only thing I can make them eat is a Ned rigged Z-Man Craw. It's pretty tough, I am not a clear water fisherman. By just I mean I'm still here so y'all keep rolling suggestions. ?

I lost a lot of jigs. I'm either pretty bad with getting jigs in and out of cover or pretty good, I'm not sure yet.