txchaser

A bottle of mend-it will probably double the life of your senkos. As will owner CPS hooks if you are fishing them texas rigged. And silicon tubing or something like that for wacky. Worth trying before you switch. And, all of the above will do the same for yum dingers (their senko knockoff).

I have a tat sv that doesn't have the retainer and it does the same thing. Nut is just constantly loose. I bet when you have a nut that fits the retainer it goes away, even with the threads torn up a little it won't be able to back out unless it's just totally stripped out. And the load bearing part of the handle is the rectangular cutout and the similarly shaped part of the shaft. So I think the nut's just holding it all together, and making something for the drag star (through a couple of parts) to push against. Anyway I don't think threads are making it fall off like that - the one I have has great threads but I have to tighten it by hand every few casts. It's on the desk now waiting for me to get off my tail and order a replacement retainer.

For me the fat impact is awfully soft on a swimjig, and is made to go slower than I'm fishing it anyway. So I go to slightly harder plastic/less wag like the biospawn; trying out the d-walker too, but their GP is a dark brown, and they are a little bigger than I like too... So I'll probably stay with the biospawn. I think the 6th sense divine is probably a little tight of a wiggle, especially in the smaller sizes. The other 49% of me thinks I could probably jam about anything on there and get bit, it's moving fast.

Maybe this will spawn an idea for you - many things in the water are laminate - they have a top color and a bottom color. As an example you could have a GP brownish top and a lighter GP bottom, or a watermelon bottom. Looks more like a natural pattern now.

Covering the boxes with just about anything will make a huge difference as well as storing on end helps some too. Crankbaits probably more sensitive to it that soft plastics unless they are elaztech.

Monkey wanted me to tell you that now you also need: 6" Optimum Boom Boom 6" 6th Sense Whale Underspin and regular versions of the hooks in multiple weights. Eventually you'll need a bigger rod, and 8" versions of all of the above too.

+1 on the geecrack neko hack

So after fishing this SDJ minus the last step for a year now, I haven't had any problems with it. I only use it when there's slop or stringy weeds likely to get caught on the forward tag ends, but it's doing what I hoped it would do. Generally I'm fishing in that kind of stuff on heavier (17-20lb) line so I've got some slack to play with especially if I run the drag on the light side of correct, which I usually do.

Some random thoughts; I mostly fish smaller waters. The most important new gear you could buy is a sonar. Garmin striker 4 is $120 new. Helix 5 is 200ish on ebay. +1 on getting the musky gear out and see what you learn When in doubt, cast the opposite direction from where you are catching smaller fish, usually the same spot but casting to deep water vs shallow. If you get on a topwater bite, there's something about buzzbaits that just seems to draw big fish. I don't think night fishing will be a big deal, doesn't sound like you have a bunch of pressure. What's the biggest juiciest slowest forage in the lake? Might be somethin better than a gill presentation. Find the deepest spot on the lake and just sit there for a bit and see what you start to notice being still. There's one or two prime directions from that spot aimed towards great spawning. Maybe a point leading out to that deep water. And hopefully a couple of interesting features on the way, but you'll have to fish around to find them (like dropoffs and flats). If it's pretty regular/featureless, there may still be small changes in bottom that make a difference, or changes in the shore cover.

For size, post spawn has been outside weed edges, flats (right) near deep water, submerged wood near creek channels, shallow standing timber on a flat near (you guessed it) deep water. Mostly in 6-7 FOW. I have a bias towards fishing the intersection of (relative) deep and shallow water though, with deep water within a cast length. Except in the morning chasing shad spawn up shallow. It's fun but nothing of size.

What happened with the fish?

The inexpensive cooling towels on amazon really do make a difference vs a regular towel. And my wife bought me a similar electronic cooler that went around my neck; I thought it was kinda goofy but.. it's really hot here in the summer so I tried it. It really works. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermoelectric_cooling

Ivey is close, on a DD per hours in the car basis. 8 hours at Ivey is better than 12 hours at whatever other lake you were going to. Just went a week or so ago, was mad at myself for not going sooner. It paid off.

So far I think GSM has done a great job with Yamamoto, so I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. And +1 on the "at least it's not pure fishing".

Chatterbait: +1 on the gold (sun is out) or black/GP (sun isn't out) blades. And I've never seen the opposite, where the blugill eaters want a silver blade but wouldn't eat the gold or black. For underspins they don't seem to care near as much, silver works fine.

IMO five hours with a good guide (and the right asks to the guide) is worth hundreds of hours of time on the water. Tell them you are trying to target bigger fish and you want to learn where and how to fish for them. Based on some @WRB commentary I started treating big bass like a different species. For me, that helped.

This says a lot...

Thanks for all the comments - my biggest take away is it fits a good spot when the mode is "trying to figure them out" since it can be fished in a few different ways (more like a worm at targets or more like a paddletail) and likely at a wider range of speeds as well.

Did these turn out to be winners, or just meh at that price point?

What ever happened with these? Everyone ended up back on Keitechs? I have some but... they just sit and I'm thinking about culling them out unless I can figure out when I would use them instead.

When is a swimming worm a better choice than a paddletail? I don't hear much about them anymore except maybe in Florida. What would you see to lead you to stop using a keitech and start swimming a worm?

I'll stop using a bait that is working almost immediately when I get a pattern. I'm more interested in seeing what else works than I am in running a pattern.

My 10a lithium will barely run a helix 7 all day if mapping is on. I agree with @casts_by_fly - 30ah.

This one leaves a little bit of white sheen on my face and hands, but that goes away after a while. I can put it on without getting on my hands. It's a little hard to wash off at the end of the day, but that's more of a bonus as I don't need to reapply. Big hat, long sleeves, etc. And I really don't like gaiters at all. Gloves go on as we get past spring though.

I have a stack of Heliums and keep buying more. NFC blanks and the new ones. Can't tell the difference between them. At the sale price there's nothing I can find even close to it, even if that stuff is on sale too. The rods I have that fish in the same class - Poison Adrena and St Croix Legend X; and I have a Conquest that's certainly another class above it, with the price to go with it. I have one z-bone which is great but the helium its so good the zbone wasn't better enough to buy more. A nitranium because I had to know; it's an MBR-style rod and fishes lighter than the rating. I have a two complaints - I like the old open-style hook keeper, and I'd really like a mod-fast (like daiwa "Regular") in this blank. Anyway Trey is really available and it's nice to be able to talk to an actual human responsible for the business when you are trying to figure out what you want. In fairness, Daiwa has been really solid dealing with issues and the new Zillion rod has a lot of promise. I don't have one though, and they are a good bit more expensive. Shimano was the opposite - I knocked a ring out of a poison adrena and the best they could do is "go buy some on mudhole and find a local guy to fix it"