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A spinnerbait is a year round lure for me. They work differently in the winter and summer than they do in the fall and spring, but hey still can work. Especially if you can get them knocking into submerged wood. That being said, there seem to be years when spinnerbaits don't work for unknown (to me) reasons. Some years they're hot. Some years they're not. But when they're working, there isn't a time of year I won't throw them. Usually, this time of year, I go for heavier, single Colorado blade baits that can stay lower in the water column. Just kind of slow roll them like I might in winter. But sometimes, smaller, double willow blade baits, buzzed just under the surface in shallow water also work this time of year. It depends. This year, in particular, spinnerbaits aren't doing much for me. In fact, nothing with a skirt has been doing much for me since last fall.

It doesn't necessarily mean much, other than to the people getting laid off, of course. This is happening across most sectors right now. Companies laid people off in mass during the pandemic because they miscalculated the affects of the pandemic on the economy. Then people retired in mass or just didn't come back to work. The economy quickly rebounded and people started buying like crazy, though manufacturing and shipping wasn't able to keep up. Stockpiles of products had vanished. Prices skyrocketed due to high demand and no supply and companies needed to hire more people to both cover the people they lost, and to meet the increased demand. Workers were scarce, so they raised wages. And they over hired due to how difficult it had become to find new employees. Employees became a product of supply and demand, and since supply was scarce and people were retiring or quitting so quickly, it made sense to CEO's to hire more than they needed to cover those loses. Then the economy (and demand) returned to normal. Now they have too many employees. So they're going back to how they were situated before the pandemic. In other words, this doesn't mean that demand is low. It probably just means that demand is returning to normal. These days, employees are generally considered like a commodity. So companies add or subtract them as necessary in the moment, rather that trying to keep a useful average employed to ride out the ebbs and flows of the economy, as they had in the past. It's a result of the problem of having too much and too immediate data. It exacerbates the problem of separating the signal from the noise to extract useful data. So the more you zoom in on the timeline, the greater the noise affects the signal you want to measure. Or, in this case, the faster you react to changes in the economy, the more likely you are to make mistakes because the data you're basing your decisions on becomes less reliable. And human nature is such that if we make bad decisions based on data, we tend to demand more data, rather than less, which of course will have the opposite effect of what we desire.

I don't know what my exact counts are, but I do know that the thicker the line, the fewer the twists. I usually just twist until I get about 1/4" worth of knot running up my line once it's tightened. I don't know if it's right or not, but it seems to work for me.

It doesn't matter to me. My frogging reel is an Abu Zata, which oddly enough, has a plastic frame. But it's held up wonderfully for a few years now, so I'm convinced that isn't an issue. Some people like the lower ratio for stuff like this. Other's don't care. It's up to you. Make sure you don't have any grease or oil on your drag washers, as that can cause them to slip even when you really lock it down. Also, make sure your line isn't slipping on the spool. Though, at some point, any reel with drag is going to give when your pulling lily pads out of the bottom. I'll often do that thing where I thumb the spool and lift the rod, and then reel up the slack while I drop the rod and repeat to work through dense salad. Even if the reel didn't slip, it would be hard on my wrists to put that much force into such a tight turn.

It's pretty close to neutrally bouyant with a slight lean towards sinking, about like 832. It tends to float on top of the water when you first cast it, and if something draws it down below the water, like the weight of a lure, it tends to sink once it's broken the surface tension. It's a good line for frogging, in my opinion, as pretty much all braids are.

That's totally normal. None of them actually engage immediately. There's a ratchet plate with only a few teeth on it, and you have to move it until the teeth catch the lever to disengage the casting release button. There might be a slight difference in this reel that's make you notice it, but all modern baitcaster reels do this. It's nothing to worry about.

Walmart Everstart batteries are made by East Penn. NAPA batteries are made by either East Penn or Clarios. So they could both be the same battery. Either way, they're both made in the USA (Pennsylvania or Michigan), and probably nearly identical.

In Oklahoma, we've largely passed on the job of water quality to private industry. That does two things. It allows the private industry to do their own water tests, which means they can test the water where and when they want. And it largely removes liability for failure to meet minimum federal guidelines. So we have a pretty serious pollution problem that no one talks about. Especially since the oil industry pretty much runs our economy here, and it's political suicide to accuse the oil industry of anything other than being a fairy godmother that sprinkles money benevolently onto the people. On the plus side, virtually all our lakes a man-made. So I guess we're not damaging nature, but rather infrastructure. And most of our lakes aren't infested with housing. It helps that a lot of them are out in the middle of nowhere, where jobs, grocery stores, and healthcare are scarce. And a lot of our city lakes are owned by a city or county, which also owns the surrounding land. Often times, this gets designated a state park. The best ones are owned by a power company that just uses the water for cooling, and doesn't otherwise touch the water, but does allow people to use it. The downside to all of this is, there are no docks to fish, and since they're water reservoirs or power plant lakes, care and quality of fish is not a concern. So good luck finding any vegetation on most of them. But I can live with all of that. What really gets my goat, is some yahoo, ameba brained, politician went and made white bass the state fish. So now, every lake is infested with those aquatic cockroaches. And anytime there's an event that hurts a fishery, the white bass take over.

They've made a lot of improvements in reels in the past 10ish years, so I'd be tempted to just buy a new one. But, I'm still using some reels that are over 50 years old. And they still work. They've needed a lot of care and a few parts. And they don't work as well as my new ones, by any stretch of the imagination. But they have sentimental value that my newer reels don't have. My point is, it kind of depends on what's most important to you. The service life of a good reel is as long as you want it to be.

I don't need confidence because I'm not afraid to fail.

I politely disagree. Full disclosure, I print magazines for a living. Not this one. But others. And while the print business has certainly shrunk since it's height in the early 90's, it is now doing very well. It's growing at a considerable rate. Especially among the younger generations. Basically, people have just gown tired of being stuck to their devices 24/7. They like having something tangible in their hands and on their shelves. Something "real". Print is easier on your eyes than a computer screen. And they like the feel and smell, if you can believe it, of printed paper. It's visceral and "analog". And like vinyl records, cassette tapes, and camera film, print is making a strong comeback. It'll never again see the numbers it saw in it's heyday, when it didn't really have any competition. But it's very, very far from a dead platform.

I don't understand exactly how customs works. But I do know I've purchased a lot of stuff online from all over the word through the years, and never had an issue. It usually goes through a customs office at some point and might sit there for a week or so. But then it clears and I don't have to pay anything or do anything. I've heard of people having to pay duties on things they bought online, but it's usually big and expensive stuff.

That looks like a trailer hook for a jig, buzzbait, or spinnerbait to me.

It's just an experience thing. And backlashes never go away completely. You just get to the point where you know when you did something to cause one, so you thumb it to stop it from getting bad... most of the time. A lot of preventing backlashes comes from casting smoothly. Trying to cast too hard will usually result in a backlash. Learning how to properly load the rod, so it releases at the exact right moment, takes some experience. Eventually, the rod becomes an extension of your arm, so you don't even have to think about it, which is one reason why it can be hard for experienced anglers to teach beginners how to cast. They don't necessarily know what they do anymore. It's all second nature to them. A really good angler won't hardly need any brakes on their reel to cast with. Partly because they can use their thumb, and partly because they know how to keep it smooth and stay within the release of the rod. But just start off making sure you don't try to overcast anything. Stay within your limits. Get the feel for what a good, controlled cast feels like. And eventually, you'll add more and more distance without losing control or risking a backlash. And you can slowly begin to back off the brakes as you gain control, to gain more distance.

The Navarro 145 isn't a fishing kayak, so stability will probably be an issue. It being an inflatable would probably compound this issue. So I would limit the gear I take with me, just in case you roll over. And there are other issues, some stated, that would make this less than ideal. But, at $186, ideal isn't to be expected. And that's cheap enough, that it shouldn't be too hard to get your money's worth out of it! So have fun. Be safe. Enjoy the ride!

Don't beat yourself up too much over it. It's part of fishing. Sometimes, you're gonna gut hook fish no matter what you do. I've gut hooked plenty of fish while burning or trolling a crankbait, so you'd think they had no time to swallow it, but apparently they do. Sometimes it's something you can adjust to correct. Sometimes it's not. But yeah. Watch your line. Sometimes you can't feel a bite, but you'll notice something going on with your line that's not right. Like maybe it should have hit bottom by now, but didn't, or the line is slacking faster than it should. Basically, anytime you see or feel something that doesn't seem right, set the hook. As they say (or something along these lines), "I don't know what a bite feels like, but I know what not a bite feels like. So anything that's not not a bite, gets a hookset".

The rod has more to do with how light of a lure you can cast than the reel. That being said, spinning reels do cast light lures better. Spincast reels are basically a modified form of spinning reels. They also make BFS baitcasting reels specifically designed to cast lighter lures. To cast a lighter lure well on a regular baitcaster, assuming you have the proper rod, it requires a careful setup of your reel. When casting lighter lures on a baitcaster, I will often have to set the reel so it backlashes, just a hair, on every cast. And if the wind kicks up or changes direction, or something else goes wrong, I'll often get a nasty backlash. It's just the nature of the beast. Which is why I prefer spinning reels for lighter lures. I don't have as much accuracy with spinning reels, so there's a tradeoff.

14 gauge is probably fine if that's what Garmin recommends. You could go to 12 if you wanted, but I wouldn't suspect you'd gain anything, other than piece of mind. I wouldn't go beyond that, as thicker wire is not only more expensive, but takes up more space. Sonars aren't like trolling motors. They'd don't pull high amounts of current for long spans of time. So just barely thick enough is plenty thick. Anything beyond that doesn't improve performance. Though, it doesn't hurt anything ether, other than your wallet and maybe some space, if you your wires get king of cramped. You could do inline fuses or you could use a bus bar. They both do the same thing. The advantage of a bus bar is it keeps your fuses all in the same place. So they're easier to access and a little more organized. But functionally speaking, they're identical. And really, how often do you need to access them? How many times have you blown a fuse?

I believe it. The bass in my local lake don't fight worth a darn. But the bass in a smaller lake not too far away fight much harder. If I were to hazard a guess, I would think it has something to do with the dissolved oxygen levels in the water.

My favorite part is looking forward to going fishing. There's nothing more exciting than waiting impatiently.

A bajillion? If money's not a factor, then money doesn't matter. Though, I probably wouldn't buy a $1,000 Megabass rod, even I was the richest man in the world. Not because of the price or on principle or anything, because if you're worth a billion dollars, $1,000 is nothing. But more likely because I'd have to special order it, and I'm not convinced that I'd catch any more fish with a rod that expensive. So I'd probably just walk into BPS and buy the best rod they had in stock that was also in a color that matched my hand sewn, Corinthian leather boat shoes. Or more realistically, I probably wouldn't be bass fishing at all. I'd probably be doing some saltwater fishing from my yacht off the coast of Lanai while shooting fireworks at Larry Ellison's mansion because why not? Then I'd try to remember the name of that super model on the bow and wonder if I should take her to this great little Thai restaurant I own in Bangkok, or have cucumber sandwiches and Tom Cruise flown in to do a live action remake of Terminator 2, while I laugh on the inside, because he doesn't know that I know he wasn't in that movie.

It can depend. But most modern chargers are designed so that they can be left on, and they have circuitry to stop charging once the battery is full. Same with most lithium batteries. They have circuitry built into them to cut off the battery off to prevent overcharging or overuse. That being said, it's still a risk. I definitely wouldn't leave it plugged in outside in the extreme weather. You can ruin a lithium battery if you try to charge it below freezing. And charging it in high heat will shorten it's lifespan. Plus, there's always a risk the circuitry fails and could start a fire. But, having said that, I do leave mine plugged in sometimes for several days, sometimes even weeks, at a time, if I forget to unplug it. And it hasn't done anything bad yet.

I don't think rod length really matters on a kayak. I think it's one of those things someone thought of, said something online, and it just took off without anyone really questioning it. It makes sense, but only if you don't really think too hard about it. Space is limited on a kayak and a smaller rod does take up less space. Unfortunately though, a short rod doesn't really give you more usable space or make things easier or less cumbersome. I have a few old 5'5" rods that I've used on my kayak in the past. I didn't find them any easier to use than a 7' rod. I think you've have to drop down to something like a 3' rod or shorter to really gain any serious advantage. Something that wouldn't stand up above your head when seated, and something that you could point down towards the water and not touch the water while standing. And in a kayak, you're going to need a crazy short rod to do that, unless you're a center in the NBA. And a rod short enough to create an advantage would create other problems in the process that would most likely outweigh any advantages you gained. These days, I prefer 7' rods, exactly, when I can get them. The reason being, I find that keeping all of my rods a consistent length makes casting more accurately a little easier. But that's just me. From the bank, boat or kayak, I use the same rods.

Match the hatch, if you can. If you see some fish running around in a particular size, throw that size. Otherwise, I'd just try one and see if it works. If it doesn't work, try something else. Though the size differences you list aren't enormous. So I wouldn't worry too much about it, unless you want to buy some of each. There's no good way of knowing what the bass prefer on any given day. However, I suspect most days the bass won't be too particularly picky about one a 3.3 vs. a 3.8 or whatever. Some days they might be. But I probably throw the 3.8 50% of the time. Not because it's best. But because I'm lazy, and if they don't hit that, I switch to something else entirely.

I boat flip small bass. For larger bass, I'll often lip them. Sometimes, if I can't lip them and there are treble hooks, I'll run my hand down the line and grab the lure itself and lift them in that way. I don't recommend that, but it is something I do. Sometimes, I'll belly grab them. Especially if they're in a position to make that easy. Sometimes, I'll run my hand down from their head and grab them by the back or sides. So long as you move head to tail and get a solid grip (and hold them head up), you shouldn't have issues getting poked with the spin or damaging a fin or gill or whatever. And I always expect them to thrash. If a fish isn't moving, I expect it to "surprise" me at the worst possible time, so I'm ready when it does. But really, I don't think about it. I just do it. I've been hooked several times before, but never while trying to land a fish. And I know I'll get hooked again one day. And when I do, I'll remove the hook and keep on fishing. Just like last time and the time before. It's just a part of fishing.