NavyVet1204

What are your chosen flavors of color with these baits? I picked up a few recently on my last trip to BPS like baby shad, black and red glitter and motor oil.

How do you fish yours? Weighted T-Rig with a straight retrieve? Hop it on the bottom?

I’ve seen these online and on YouTube when the bait monkey would lure me around the inter webs dissecting the lowest prices on things. I would like to try them for sure.

My pond hopping back pack may as well be a bowling bag. I feel that if I don’t have at least....everything....I am hurting my overall chances for success. I do have a small slinger style back pack that I would like to move to by downsizing and I will make that my goal.

That is my exact experience with the chatterbait! I wanted to love those things from the start because everybody and their brother were slaying bass with them even without a trailer. For me....crickets. Rain or shine, sleet or snow. Nothing until some grass couldn’t fix.

I’ll also add to the “small load out” category again by saying that I truly suffer from fomo when it comes to narrowing down my choices to carry smaller amounts. Two or three packs of shakey head worms, a chatterbait(with trailer), a jig(with trailer also) and a couple packs of senkos and a pack of craws(with terminal tackle) will cover me. Oh and I always carry at least one extra spool of line. I WILL NOT, and I repeat, I WILL NOT ever go fishing again with a bait caster and not have an extra spool of line. My wife and I went to a local pond during COVID and we had one bc a piece and a small tackle tray of lures and nothing else. I ended up with a bird nest of biblical proportions and she was just burning the large mouth up on a red crank bait while I struggled for over an hour to fix my situation. I would’ve rather cut the old off and spool on new line than have done that again. Lesson learned.

Same here! I feel like my full pond hopping back pack is my equivalent to a woman’s purse. Gotta have everything I can fit in it. And then some.

I’ll keep an eye out for you.

Yeah I am the same way and I really prefer hands on before the actual purchase myself. I was just seeing if you guys pulled the trigger on one yet.

I’ll attest to the loud reels when it comes to lews. Both of the ones I have are very noisy, but are dead nuts reliable. Yes, several of the YouTube reviews I ha e seen have said the same thing about the similarity to the MP. I have the location saved in my favorites already.

I can relate friend. All week long at work there’s not a cloud in the sky with mid to high 70’s temps. My days off are 70-100% chance of rain all day long each day. It’s been that way the last month. My wife and I are expecting too with an August birthdate so my fishing time is winding down right now and she and I have been trying to get to the water and wet some hooks before then. We all know a lot of time goes into the care of a child so I’m fairly certain that some time around August I’ll be hanging up my rods and reels for the season which I’m not complaining about at all. Mother Nature just isn’t making it easy lol

I’ve been eye hustling the reel on YouTube reviews and it seems like a pretty solid reel for the money especially having an aluminum frame and double bearing supported pinion. My boss at work picked one up at release and he said it has taken a permanent place on his boat deck as a cranking reel that he paired with a Dobyns fury and he loves it. As per my previous gripe thread about Abu Garcia, I have been looking at different lews and diawa reels to configure my next rig before the baby gets here in August and for some reason I thought these reels were retailing for $179.00 and when I saw the price tags online my mind quickly changed gears. Seems like a lot of reel for the $130-$140 price tag. What do you guys think? What has been your experience with the reel?

You did well sir.

See....my wife and I stop at an occasional yard sale and I always look for two things. Hand tools(wrenches, ratchets etc.) and fishing gear. You know what I never find at those yard sales.... Joking aside when I do luck up on a yard sale that has fishing gear it’s always too rough a shape to justify me buying at any price. Good job sir.

I just checked out their website for the first time just now and added it to my favorites list.

And free doesn’t count... I wasn’t sure whether to post this in the tackle or reel section so I just landed here with it and I guess it could be either or. The wife and I went to the local mom and pop tackle store the first week COVID shut everything down and I was able to pick up not one, but two Old but well maintained Abu 5500 round reels for $50 in the used reel cabinet by the register. Also setting next to the register was a cleareance bin full of soft plastics and I helped my self to eight packs of Yamamoto senkos for $2 a pack(various colors) as well as several Yum dingers and Missile bait creatures for the same price each. I spent over $100 that day on just a simple “let’s go see what they have and kill some time” trips, but made out like a bandit. That was a good day.

I spooled my wife’s Mach crush combo with 15lb Seaguar red label and it’s does just fine. I have only went above 15lb test FC once and that was with P-Line at 17lb on my Revo SX and it didn’t cast well either. 12-15lb FC seems to be the sweet spot for my applications though. I’m still trying to figure braid out and where it fits on my rigs lol

I’ll second what bluebasser said on the chatterbait because that’s the most recent example I can give. Last week as a matter of fact. Didn’t catch the fish, but I did get a couple good bites when I previously had never gotten anything. Just that little bit has restored my faith in the chatterbait.

I use all three of those brands and they all work very well. I do have a good bit more of the rage swimmers due to being readily available locally. You can confidently fish all of them.

We kept the cooler in the base exchange empty of PBR weekly.

I was literally typing that!!

Don’t discount the “weird colors” either. My first trip out on the lake with my wife’s boss’s husband last spring was unique in that he was throwing neon lime green colored Zoom finesse worms on a shakey head setup in clear water and was literally pulling fish into the boat every other cast for at least an hour straight. I was using Yum cranberry worms on the same technique and he was pulling in three to my one. Ever since I have stocked my plastics in some of those colors.

SAME EXACT THING HAPPENED TO ME ON APRIL FOOLS DAY THIS YEAR. Nitro Z18 looking mighty fine on the lot and had already gotten the wife’s approval. One week later we are pregnant. I wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world either.

Any luck?

Welcome friend! This place has been a true blessing for me and I know it will be for you as well! Tons of great people on this site that will give the shirts off their back to help you.