Westcoast

I too can’t see the dark green braid at all. Most of my reels have switched to the yellow. I always fish a leader but will darken some of the braid with a black sharpie as well. Just gives me more confidence that the yellow is out of the fishes cone of view.

I went with the 2024 twin power 2500. It feels great in the hand and is smooth as ever. Can’t go wrong. Buy from Japan and price is great too.

I’ve tried them all as I like mono for my salmon and steelhead ,and bass. I’ve always wanted a line with the least stretch and greatest durability. Hands down I alway go back to maxima ultra green from 4# on bass dropshot to 40# on heavy chinook leaders, it never fails.

I find electrical tape works fine too. In fact , pretty much any tape works.

I love the alpha platform for a small jerkbait reel. I must have half a dozen of them, all ordered direct from Japan.

If your back lashing often. I’d suggest using the features of your reel such as the adjustable mag or centrifugal brakes. When adjusted properly it can make it difficult to backlash, at the expense of some distance. So as you get more proficient slightly loosen the brakes as you go and you’ll have your thumb trained up in no time at all. And line makes no difference, just mono is cheaper to refill with.

I like my Curado dc. It’s a smooth and great casting reel. There are better reels in refinement and performance such as the new 24 met dc. What keeps me using the Curado is the extra capacity as I use it for salmon and steelhead.

Noodle rods used to be the rage for east coast steelhead. They were made for small hooks and light line. Hook sets were reeling up slack then a long sweep of the rod. When fighting fish you have to lean all the back to get into the rod butt before you have any power and when you do you can land some large fish quite quickly. They are not nearly as effective in the west coast’s steep and fast rivers and even in the east they have been replaced by modern more effective rod designs.

To cover weedy areas fast, I like to swim a worm like a zoom ultra vibe speed worm. You can buzz it on the surface over weeds then let it drop into holes or crank it just under the surface with a wake. Next up would be a toad, even if you don’t hook that many the toad will let you know where they are so you can follow up with something slower moving.

I lost interest after my divorce for a few years. I have always gone fishing as a way to keep the outside world out of my mind. I find the act just consumes my mind, that’s why I prefer more technical fishing. Like fly fishing on water that fish are educated and very specific in the tiny bugs they eat. It’s all about the perfect presentation with the right pattern, in the right place at the right time. Same in bass fishing , I never just like to fish randomly, I want to be able to figure out what bait and presentation that the fish will key in on. This clears my head immensely. But for that period of time the outside world would find its way into my train of thought and took away all the relaxation and enjoyment. As I began to get over and accept the divorce, my mind settled and I was able to get back into fishing again. What really sucked is for a couple of those few years I took a job in an area that the fishing was spectacular and I missed out on such a great opportunity. I still regret that.

I really like the x80 for my smallmouth fishing. Great action and does get down even though it’s not a deep diver.

I’ve fished small beavers like the baby rodent for smallmouth all the time. I either put them on a small football jig with a finesse skirt or on a shakey head. The shakey head is definitely the killer of the two though. Seems to get big ones too.

I’ve had no problems with mine. Should cast those Jerkbait a just fine. I’d spoil it up with 10lb sunline fc for that. It has a pretty big capacity so I keep mine filled up with 14-16lb to fish jigs etc. Or filled up with mono and use it on a rod for steelhead and salmon.

I find that sunline super natural has a crazy amount of stretch. I use maxima as my mono. Not the least and not the most stretch but has great durability and lack of memory. Or at least it loses it memory easily with a good pull on the line at the start of the day.

I just picked up a pack of the new megabass curly tail worm/grub bait. Looks like it’s gonna be a great trailer.

I gotta second this. The slammers are my go to drop shot bait. The smallmouth here love them. Also the finesse craw makes a great small jig trailer. And they are made in Canada!! I gotta second this. The slammers are my go to drop shot bait. The smallmouth here love them. Also the finesse craw makes a great small jig trailer. And they are made in Canada!!

For fluoro leaders, I’ve found to really like the seaguar steelhead/trout leader material to be excellent. It’s semi stiff, abrasion resistant and fairl inexpensive. For mono leaders nothing has yet to beat maxima ultragreen for my use. The more different monos and copolys I’ve used the more I’ve found how good maxima really is.

The alpha ctsv 70 is my smaller crank and squarebill reel. It’s mounted on a kistler feel n reel 6’9” medium rod. The soft tip makes for excellent casting and fish holding abilities, yet has back bone to pull them away from cover. For the true tiny bfs cranks, I have the alphas air on a triza aello.

I like the net bait tiny paca chunks, zman trd craws, the reins 2.5” craw and the zoom creepy crawler double tails. Tons of great options out there depending on the action you want to create. One thing I’ve noticed is with the rage products, the lighter jigs don’t fall fast enough to activate the bait, so I only use them on larger jigs.

I tried it, as I was lured by the ‘less stretch’ claims. It’s diameters were large, it tended to have a bunch of memory and I really didn’t notice the lack of stretch. So for my copoly needs I’m back to maxima ultragreen. If it ain’t broke don’t fix it....

I prefer a spinning rod for drop shotting deep water with 10-15gram weights, the brigand is excellent for this. Also does well with dark sleepers and small under-spins in deep water. I like the way spinning rods feed slack to facilitate getting down deep faster vs a baitcaster.

I too use the nrx 803s for skipping 5” senkos into cover. In lighter cover with lighter line I’ll use a megabass brigand.

They sure have some out of whack power ratings. The 1 power dropshot is listed as way less powerful than the new 0 power. Same with the sj736 and sj725, the 6 is lighter powered in the ratings. Nice blanks and a great deal for $80 though.

Pretty much all the X-ray blanks have the “ squiggly” lines on them. It’s raw I sanded graphite so you get the marks and colour differences from the manufacturing process.

Pitching into cover it’s always the ragebug on. It’s definitely a confidence bait.