ww2farmer

Translucent greens and browns for plastics, and translucent baitfish colors for hard baits. Thats just my .02, I know guys who catch plenty of fish on outlandish colors in clear water. If the fish are biting, color is the least concern, IMHO the most important thing in clear water is not color but to NOT be seen an/or spook the fish, thats the real challange of clear water. If you can see them in 25 fow, guess what...............they can see you too. Clouds and wind are your best friend in those situations, as is heavy cover, or something that blocks the fish from seeing you.

For those of you who have never pegged a 1/4 up to 1 oz. sinker in front of a texas rigged 4", 5" or 6" senko, and flipped heavy cover with it, you don't know what your missing..............and I will say no more.

I am going to be in the minority here, but I like 20# braid, it's equal to 6lb mono in diameter so cranks get to there max depth on it, you can feel every thing, super long casts, and I get the hooks in the fish on one of those super long casts. I use a 7'9" MH power, moderate action graphite cranking rod, I have not had any trouble pulling the bait away from fish, pulling hooks out, or any of that other nonsense you hear about when people tell you need to crank with mono or fluoro, and glass rods. When I need more abbrasion resistance than the braid offers I tie a 2' fluorocarbon leader on, usually 10 or 12 lb test so I can still get the cranks near or down to the max depth.

Some times it takes me more than 2 hours just to figure out what is going on that day, a bad 2 hours don't mean anything. Now if you only have 2-3 hours to fish, don't worry about finding a solid pattern, let the pattern find you. Go with your gut and just junk fish, hit high % spots, with productive baits you have confidence in, and cover water, usually works for me. When you find something good, stop and fish it like you would if you had all day to fish.

I agree, he dropped his glasses and broke them, now he's PO'ed at Costa. You should feel lucky they are fixing them for $100 and not telling you to pound salt, I am not sure if "owner stupidity" should be covered by warranties, but many companys do just to avoid a hassle.

All braid, but I add a fluorocarbon leader when I feel I need to. I used to have fluoro on half my set ups, but after 4+ years I got tired of managment issues that never went away, so I ditched it as main line. I have not used mono, except for ice fishing, in years.

I use the Kistler Magnisum 6'9" MH power/fast action "all purpose special" for most of my squarebilling. I toss SK KVD 1.5's, 2.5's, 4S's, and Rapala DT fat 3's with it. Great rod for those cranks. When it's not tossing squarebills it's a great spinner bait, soft jerkbait, and senko rod. I love that it has a shorter rear handle, makes roll casting a crank way up under over hanging trees easy for me. I don't like tossing smaller 1/4 oz cranks like SK series 1's, or Bandit 100's as much on the Kistler, I usually go with a longer rod that those small baits load a little better, but I have fished them on that rod and it was ok.

People give themself too much credit , and place too much blame on the line when breakage occurs. I have seen it a 100 times, someone will say line brand "x" sucks because they break off 20lb line on a 2 lber. I know guys who have fished for 30 years that lose way more big fish than they catch, yet we use the same line and I never have any trouble with it.

I have never had a problem with Vanish either. I use 8lb tied to 10lb braid on my spinning rods, 14lb tied to 20lb braid and 17lb tied to 30lb braid on some of my casting rods. The only break off I have had are on hook sets to pike when they have choked the bait. Many,many 4 and 5 + pound fish on Vanish with no problems. I will say I do not like it, or any other fluorocarbon I have ever tried as a main line, but even when I used it as a main line, breakage was never an issue, managability was.

Good idea, I did the same and couldn't be happier, to be fair to the MG, I went from a 12v 5 speed 46lb thrust MG Pro series, to a 24v variable speed 70lb thrust MK Maxxum. Make sure you go with the variable speed, I can fish all day in the wind and still have battery power to spare. Best improvement I have put on my boat.

The lakes I regularly fish gets very clear in late April/early May, up to 15' of visability on bright sunny days, and stay that way till the water hits the 70's and then takes on a green stained tint for most of the summer/fall. When it's flat and calm during this clear period, flick shaking, shaky heading, 4" senkos, tubes, finesse jigs, and drop shotting finesse baits fished around the deep weededge, or hard cover out deep (rock piles, boulders, etc...) produce fish. I also fish the same things shallow around docks, and wood cover and catch them but those shallow fish are super spooky and you'll go insane trying to catch all the fish you can see. Cruisers rarely bite (for me) so I target fish that are holding on cover, they can't see you comming if your beeing sneaky, and are more willing to bite. Once they lock on beds those shallow fish get easier to catch in that super clear water. If it's cloudy and calm I'll mix in some top water, or soft jerkbaits, if the winds blowing and braking up the surface, hard jerkbaits, and silent crank baits get the call. Greens and browns for plastics, natural patterns (bluegill/perch/crawfish etc...) or translucent colors for hard baits.

My biggest walleye, 8lbs, came shallow on a Red Eye Shad. As have most of the bigger walleyes I have caught. I have also caught them flipping weed holes in 8-10 FOW, drop shotting the weed edge, and............yes.............on a senko LOL

I wouldn't do it with unfaulty, perfectly working gear. If you buy something use it for an extended perod of time (more than 3 days IMHO) and don't like it thats on you, now if it has a flaw in any way, yes I can see taking it back, and I have returned stuff I have used myself, but have always been up front about it. I bought a Gander Mtn rod once, and used it for a month, the reel seat needed to be tightend every other cast, I finally had a enough, so I took it back. They exchanged it no problem.

I foolishly breathed in some fumes one day when I was welding some old galvanized guard rails to some steel pipes in the barn to keep the cows out of the feed ally. For two years after that certain foods and drinks tasted bad..............I'm not kidding, the worst was, any chocolate, Pepsi/Coke and cola products in general, they started to taste very bitter. Then one day...........poof they tasted normal again.

Never mind what lake it is LOL

I think it did end..............the bass fishing sucked for me the last 2 days, I only caught 6 last night, and 4 this morning.

I have been fishing the same 4" SK 3x finesse worm on my drop shot rig for 2 weeks, if rock bass can't tear them off nothing will.

The guy now whacks frog fish all over the lake we fish , before I had them all to myself LOL.

The Lews may be lighter, may have more "cosmetic" bling, but in 10 years when I am still fishing my Citica's and Curado's that I bought 5 years ago, where do you think those Lews will be? Will they still be in business? I went through the phase of buying reels based on looks, price etc.... now I buy reels that work as they should, all the time, and will for many years to come, from a company thats been building reels along time, and will be around for a while. It's cheaper in the long run.

They are not made by Shimano, thats all I care about, so I won't be buying one................sorry just had to.

I love these posts that blame the frog for missed hook sets, short strikes etc...... it's not the frogs fault. I have fished just about every frog made, THEY ALL TAKE ON WATER, it's the nature of the design. I will take a Spro frog over any other frog any day of the week. I'd offer to show some of you WNY guys how/when/why I fish a frog, but the last time I did that I regretted it.

I can help with your bait selection, seeing as this in NYS, NO LIVE BAIT for bass untill the 3rd Sat. in June.

Keep it simple, get some 3.5" tubes, and some 4" senkos in a greenish color, like green pumpkin or watermelon/red flake etc... Fish the tubes on a 1/4 or 3/8 oz. open hook, insert style tube jig head. And have a few rigging options for the senko. My top choices would be weightless wacky, or on a 1/4 football shaky head, and/or wacky rigged on a drop shot. If you can't catch SM on those, your not around them.

I have a few Revo S's as well as a few Shimano Citica E's and older D's. The Revo S, and the Citica E both sell for about the same, in hind sight I wish I would have bought more Citica's, they are better, no contest. The kind of cover your going to fish should dictate the rod power you choose. Open water and light to moderate cover a M power wil be fine. Any kind of heavy cover, go with a MH or even a H power. Personaly I would go with the MH, it will be more versitile, you can fish just about any kind of cover with it, except for maybe the very thick of the thickest weed mats. As for length, I prefer 7' (or longer) for most all my plastic and jig fishing, but I do like a shorter 6'8" or 6'6" rod for pitching in tight spots, like around docks, or in narrow creeks around laydowns/ thick brush etc... I use St Croix, and Kistler rods, but used to use Fenwicks, in fact my 7'6" H power flipping rod is still a Fenwick HMX, I just have not found one from Croix or Kistler I have liked. I never had a problem with any Fenwick I owned (Eagle GT's, HMX's, HMG's, and Technas AV's) The HMG's are very close to St Croix Avids, but I have not used any of the newer ones, mine were the last generation.

On the flip side I primarily pitch my drop shot out from the boat, cast it, or drag it while drifting with the wind. So for me a 7' rod is better, but I can drop in the cone and fish effectivly this way as well, if I did that more often a shorter dedicated DS rod would be in my boat. As for my choice of rods, I too use an Avid. I like the 7' Med. light power, fast action mated with a 2000 size Daiwa Exceler. The rod is plenty sensitive, light, just the right ammount of power for DS'ing and has a soft tip which IMHO is important when using light lines and smaller hooks. For the last few years I always had this reel spooled up with Trilene 100% fluorocarbon in 6lb test, loved the abrasion resistance, knot strength, sensitivity, and reliablity of this line, but I hated the managability of it on the smaller spinning reels I liked. This year problem solved, I use 10lb Power Pro braid as my main line and tie 4-5 feet of fluoro. to it with an alberto knot. I am still getting the same ammount of bites, have had zero issues with big fish and the alberto knot, and now no more line management issues.