ZoomFluke

Just to update/ in 2013 yall were saying the vigilante rod was around $40 at wal mart….its 2025 and they are all on clearance for $17!

I’m looking to add more stupid tube setups to my arsenal & I don’t want to waste any more money getting the wrong sized stupid jighead or wrong sized tube. (See pic below, having trouble finding a good tube to go with these) I’m wanting a weighted weedless presentation for my tube setups and I’m wanting to know what brand/size tubes people use and what brand/size/weight stupid jig heads to pair with them. I need a finesse (2-3”) weighted weedless tube setup and a normal (3.5”+) weighted weedless setup as well. Sometimes I’ll even use a shaky head setup with tubes and use a a little under 1” of plastic worm inside as my base. If anyone does this and has a favorite set up let me know! Im going to try out the V&M pair on tacklewarehouse. Sounds like their 1/8 3/0 will pair well with the 3.5” tube. As of now, the owner phantom is the only one I’ve found to work well for me. What are some favorite stupid tube set ups you all like to use?

I’d like to bring up an ever important topic, which is more relevant now than ever. Why is it necessary to put these fish through tremendous stress during a tournament? From fighting for its life after being caught, if caught deep; maybe getting fizzed if it’s “lucky”, thrown in a live well, often taken in an out of the well throughout the tournament, weighed, weighed again, transferred to a suffocating bag, taken out of the bag to get a photo opp, then thrown back in miles away from its bed or territory…most of which don’t survive. I love to fish and maybe I’m sounding naive but I’d love if someone could explain how tournaments work & what individual tourny anglers do to make sure their fish survive. Electronics have taken over too & it’s added even more pressure but I’d like to leave electronics for another forum because that’s it’s own issue now, unfortunately. Everything I read tells me tournaments absolutely destroy fish populations. What do y’all know? Thanks

Trying to to stretch line and get the most use out of it these days. Can I get away with keeping my older 6lb test flouro as a base for my spinning reel and tying on a slightly heavier 7lb test flouro on as my working line? I cut down the older 6lb line to make up about 15% of my total as my base. Then filled the top 85% with the new 7lb test flouro line. I’ve got it tied on to a solid leader knot which is buried deep in the spool. I know that it’s not usually, or maybe ever practical to tie on a leader that’s heavier than the line behind it, but in this case the base line will never get close to touching air, or even seeing sunlight. With that being said, I still want to present the issue to everyone here because I don’t want to end up wasting more line by doing this… if it ends up causing me issues with casting distance? or my line to just break? Would it be safer for me to go ahead and take this base/leader line off and string only the 7lb on it? Of course I should of asked this question before I even spooled it…better now than never I guess 🙂. Thanks everyone!

I always assumed that I did. But that’s something I’d like to try checking now that you mention it. The reel size is slightly smaller than the Abu but I have even smaller reels casting same size lures further. I’m gonna re spool it to its max recommended and try it out. I’ll let ya know what I find. Thanks for your feedback!

I bought a brand new 7’ Lews Mach Smash spinning combo recently. From everything I’ve read & been told, it’s one of the better bass spinning rod combos out there around the $100 mark. I bought it because I broke the rod on my Abu Garcia Jordan Lee 7’ spin combo. I was expecting the smash to be somewhat as effective as my abu, or even better. Yet, I can’t get that lews to make a decent cast. I got wal mart Shakespeares to cast the same lure even further. So I put the Jordan Lee reel on my lews rod and it casts like a charm. I’ve re-spooled my lews reel multiple times with good line, lighter line, … compared casts with different lure sizes, tried everything. Why does this $100 combo reel cast worse than a $20 wal mart combo? Obviously the reel is the problem. I don’t see any obvious issues with the reel itself so I’m really curious to find out what’s going on with this Mach smash reel. Is it just a bad reel? Am I missing something? Very frustrating! Anyone else own this combo? If so, How is it working out for you? Also, I am new to this forum. How do I edit a post? I spelled “Lew’s” wrong in my subject title. Smh, how can i change it?

Just got done with an evening of fishing at a small 30 acre lake. It was cloudy, and just got done raining or still drizzling from time to time. So of course I bust out the spinner bait. It is the infamous $1 wal mart spinner. I saw about 10 largies close to the shore and the bass were definitely active, in shallow water, & on the move. As the light got dimmer I used the spinner exclusively and every time I brought it in I could see water ripples from fish dashing away from my lure. The spinner scared the crap out of em! It was functioning fine and had good action and spin on the drops. The bass I saw were around 2-3 pound range. That being said, I can definitely see how the choice, range, style, size, etc of spinner bait can be important. I don’t know if it was too big or if I just suck at spinners but I do think the size of the bait may have been to big in this case. Also used a heddon baby torpedo and had no success. Think I just need to find the right lures (type, brand, color, style etc) for the right time and body of water. Not to mention more practice. Just wanted to share that. Tnx for the insight everyone.