The Baron

For what the op listed… Jigs - straight braid flipping cover or in stained water. Straight fluoro in clear water, especially for dragging finesse jigs for smallmouth on Lake Ontario. Chatterbaits - 12-14# copoly Cranks - 10-12# copoly for square bills and medium cranks, 14# fluoro for deep crankin’ Topwater - 12# Big Game mono on a dedicated popper, whopper plopper, spook rod. But will throw the same on my medium crankbait setup with 12# copoly. All my spinning gear is braid to 8-10# fluoro leader for everything. Dropshot, ned, tubes, shaky head, and small keitechs on a ball head or underspin. The oddballs are when I’m throwing a bubba shot setup on a baitcaster with braid to a 12# fluoro leader, or for Carolina Rig which is braid to 12# Big Game mono.

I’ve never used a Bantam. But I have two Curado DC 150 size. They’re fine, but I don’t know if I’d buy another. I’m more impressed by the SLX DC, which feels better to me and is less money. As for the DC feature, I don’t know if it’s necessary at all. And the 4 settings seem more restrictive than adjusting a non DC reel properly. I think the root problem might be I’ve just really come to prefer Diawa reels.

Nice. You’re gonna love it. 👍🏻

I bought a 600yd spool of FC Sniper 14# and it's been good for me so far.

I can't speak for heavier crankbaits on a fast action rod, but I fish square bills on a Fenwick Elite Tech 7' medium/fast. With 10# co-poly on a Diawa cc80, it works very well for me and is a pleasure to fish. I fish medium crank baits (up to about 12ft.) on a Dobyn's Fury FR705CB crank bait rod with 12# co-poly. For heavier crank baits (16ft.+) I've gone to a 7'6" H/moderate glass cranking rod with 14# fluoro. I like the glass rod a lot, and would say the specialized cranking rod is definitely worth it for several reasons.

I like the VMC twist lock hooks, usually unweighted but sometimes with the 1/8oz. belly weight. VMC stuff is readily available around here, so it’s a brand I use often.

Absorootry. 👍🏻

Just re: the rust… I don’t put wet baits away. But the lockers on my little Bass Tracker are extremely humid and will leak so I’ve had tackle boxes get totally fogged inside. Once was after a few days of rain that even with the boat covered some boxes were wet inside and I lost several packs of hooks, a few jig heads, some spinnerbaits and chatterbaits. Not a big loss, but want to avoid that ever happening again. Perhaps the new boat (a Lowe Stinger 195) will be dryer and I can get by with many of the boxes I have, and silica packs. 🤞🏻 I do still plan to try the Plano Edge jig and bladed jig boxes, maybe some of the 3700 flex for my expanding crankbait collection.

We’ve got a brand new boat for this year, with a ton of storage so now’s a good time to start upgrading my tackle storage system. I’ve been using cheap Plano and even dollar store boxes, but they aren’t waterproof and I’ve had some rust losses. Buzbe stuff is crazy expensive, so I’m thinking the Plano Edge boxes are the way to go. For those using the Edge stuff, are they proving to be waterproof and durable? Do you have any favourite or hated boxes in the lineup? I’m also looking at the BKK terminal tackle box, for hooks, weights etc. Soft baits likely in bags, sorted by type. Any other ideas are welcome. 🙂

We fished smallmouth often with a Rapala F13 or J11 when I was a kid. Almost always in gold, or silver but sometime orange or chartreuse. This was in the 70’s-80’s. I guess I never paid enough attention to articles in the In Fisherman though, because we didn’t know the F13 was a jerkbait. We’d either troll or cast/steady retrieve and give a flick or speed up/slow down occasionally. We caught fish, but I wonder how much better we might have done if we fished it properly. Mister Twister was the other big deal when I was a kid. Beetle Spin with a 3” grub was one of my favourites. Of course a hula popper, jitterbug or a Heddon Dying Flutter spook for topwater. Come to think of it, I’ll bet the fish haven’t seen those last three in a while - might be worth a nostalgic topwater outing this year. 🤔

I do have a couple lakes now I’d call home lakes, but I still use my electronics to find deep weed edges and a couple humps/ledges that usually produce most of my fish. I’ll also sidescan and watch for interesting things when I’m just working along the shore. Not really looking at it, but it’s on. On less familiar lakes, I will idle around and look/do some QuickDraw contour mapping either to find a starting spot or whenever I want a break. But usually as soon as I see something interesting, I’m fishing it. I know I could speed up the lake learning process if I spent more time idling, but I like fishing too much. 🙂

I’m looking at a few lakes north/east of Charlotte, probably try High Rock, Baden, Lake Norman… maybe explore some smaller lakes. Most likely catch and release, but good to know spots are considered invasive. For sure we’ll be carefully reading all the regulations.

It’ll probably be mid-late April before we can get on Lake Ontario for the early bass season (open now, closes May 10). We’ll try for smallies with finesse football jigs, dropshot, jerkbaits and underspins. But I’m more looking forward to some fat prespawn largemouth with squarebills, bladed jigs, spinnerbaits, a compact jig and likely a wacky rig. But first we need to pickup the new boat and figure out a whole new tackle organization plan now that we’ll have about 3x the storage space. 🙂

That’s an epic trip! 🤯😎 When our season opens, I’ll be hunting for a Canadian DD (that’s 5 pounds on the metric system 😝)

I'm panning a trip to NC for March break next year, with my son and a couple buddies. We'll be after "bigger than here" LMB primarily, but might take a moment to try and catch our first ever spotted bass. Are spotted bass likely to be caught while we're after largemouth, probably fishing shallow or cranking points? Or are they more of a deeper water fish? I don't feel a need to go after them specifically, but would be fun to say we caught some. Or are spots special for some reason and maybe someone out there will say spots are their favourite to catch?