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A fish with many firsts. My... First fish of 2023. First glide bait/swimbait fish: Baitsanity Antidote _ 7.5in _ 2.7oz _ Super Slow Sink _ Bread Color. First fish on my new small/light swimbait setup: Daiwa Tatula 150HSL _ Okuma Guide Select Swimbait A 7'11" Heavy Mod Fast _ 40lb Daiwa J Braid Grand _ 14lb YGK G-Soul DFC Fluorocarbon Leader First fish ever in raining conditions/weather. First fish post/pic on SU! Hoping there will be more to come.

Had Brett at BNA Custom Lures on IG repaint a TK, K9 and Ghost for me -he absolutely killed it. IMG_1010.MOV IMG_1011.MOV

There are no paid advertisers on SU, we do not make $ on traffic alone. The only time the forum is compensated is when members click through the banner and purchase from TW. The forum has been up for about 12.5 years now and we try to keep it running 24/7. In those years we’ve probably been down a total of 20 days. We regularly have to update the forum software and servers. This update just took longer than most.

I can tell you first hand… the new LDC standard issues are straight fire…

Got 8 in 3 hours. Top two a little over 6 and just at 5.

WOW....

Use the website “pirateship.com”. Use a 98” pvc tube that’s 3” in diameter (price goes up exponentially for anything wider than 3”), and it should be less than $40. I shipped 2 rods using that site based on those dimensions and it was $37 each through UPS

Got a 10 “ Hoog blank and had Brett at BNA Custom Lures lay down his killer perch paint on it. Brett’ s perch has killed it for me with bass, pike, muskies and tigers and the hoog trout has killed it for me so why not combine the 2

In my opinion the only time you should drop down in line size is if the thicker line is not allowing you to get the most out of your baits action. Of course there are exceptions such as if you’re throwing more finesse swimbaits, 20lbs is a little over the top. For example, I fish the deps 145ss on 15lb mono. “Stealth” doesn’t come into the equation of line choices for me. If you’re fishing your baits to the best of their ability, the fish aren’t ever going to be looking at your line. Some people fish straight braid. Like @Bud95 said, I think the way to go is by modifying the bait, not by modifying your line if you want to fish it deeper. This also allows you to change your baits action on the fly if you want to quickly change from a faster sink to a slower sink, vice versa, etc.

I’m sure there’s other opinions on here but this is my two cents. I’d be terrified of going any lighter than 20 with any swimbaits. I’ll even run 25 with some of my larger glides. Can’t say I’ve heard of anyone going lighter than 17 but I could be wrong. If your main concern is getting a bait to run deeper there’s a bunch of ways to do it instead of downsizing your line. Lead tape, grenade weights, etc. Do a little digging around on here and you’ll find a ton of info. That’s all I got, I’m still figuring this stuff out too haha.

If they're making money on random clicks to TW, without further interaction, it's going to be much much less than you think it is (fractions of a cent). Generally that's not how the advertising relationships work.

I may be wrong here but I’m gonna chime in: From my perspective, like most forums, S.U. is a free discussion forum, which offers a sub forum where members can buy, sell and trade swimbait items at no charge. No fee whatsoever. This is not a bidding, selling or marketplace site. So seeing these post asking (some demanding) answers to why they were not communicated any information during scheduled maintenance seems a little unreasonable. Yes I get it, people were in the midst of transactions and were not prepared, including myself. It is what it is and I had to be patient. But what I learned is next time, I take an extra step and ask the other party involved for a 2nd point of contact, in case this happens again unexpectedly. To complain and / or expect answers to something that you get for free is a little unreasonable in my book and comes off as being ungrateful. I know of some forums that would charge a fee to buy, sell, trade on their sites. Some even charge membership fees to do such transactions. I am not pointing fingers, just trying to put it into perspective that some people may have forgotten. But, who am I, I came to the forum for the swimbait and fishing conversation first and foremost. Some members are here just for the Black Market. To each is their own.

9 weeks later…

New bait works, got 6 all about this size.

I haven't had success prying them out, but have also had some that just fell out on their own without assistance. For the stubborn ones I used my Dremel to basically drill them out and then made new weights with 1oz lead sinkers and a hammer.

The box actually came with 28 blanks so that was cool. There’s a good assortment of stuff from ultralight all the way to blanks rated on their website up to 2.5oz. No full swimbait models but plenty of options that have good power/taper for baits up to probably 3 or 4 ounces. Overall for $500 I’d do it again. Makes me wanna pick up a couple of their dedicated swimbait blanks too.

As a fellow Marylander I can respect the work it takes to get a fish like that. My pb went 7-0 about 10 years ago. Haven’t even broke 6 since, but have 2 at 5-13 lol. Congrats man you earned it!

T mobile isn’t that ghetto after all!!!

The site still throws an error message every 2-3 page changes, and you have to spam refresh for like 30 seconds for it to work again. Same error message that was thrown when the site was down.

Exactly - a few grams of weight does quite a bit

Not trying to be rude but I don’t discuss finances on a public forum honestly just reach out to Justin from at Nameless Custom Rods and he’ll get you set up

@TroutHunter15there's the combo right there - Tatula Coastal 200 and a 795sb. My buddy has that combo but with the DC795SB and the color of the rod and reel matches up perfectly.

I used to catch a bunch of fish, of all sizes too, on the medium sink and the floater. The floater can be fished all sorts of way. There's a trick to fishing the sinkers- don't recall who I learnt it from. Let it sink, then sweep the rod to the side (like a hookset but much slower); you'll feel the thump. Then reel down, and repeat. Might want to mix in a few pauses and twitches.

This. It's a free forum. They don't owe you ish. You owe them for putting in thier own time for making this the best swimbait forum ever created. They could shut it down tomorrow and very few people, if any, would be owed a reason why.

As someone who stares at an IT Error Log all... day.... long.... this isn't surprising to me at all. Sure, SU makes money off of this site. The store part of the site, not the forum. The forum is a free perk which keeps the customers around. We like to think of SU as a community, but from the business end of things, the forum is just a way to keep traffic flowing to the SU site and keep relevant. Notice this in the bottom right of the screen? I'd go to Invision Community and ask what's going on, not SU. SU pays Invision for the forum.

Yes sir! Nice crank down to a few feet as well. First fish of the year on her a couple days ago! IMG_0108.MOV

The gangs all here! Getting more refined every year...yet still have so many things to try. March and April are torture in Minnesota.

Old baits given new life.

We’ve recently updated the Black Market rules. Knockoffs, KOs, Rips, or replicas are not allowed in the Black Market. Whether baits are built 1 at a time in someone's garage or produced by a factory there are countless hours and dollars that have gone into getting a bait ready for production. We want to make sure all bait makers are protected under the new rules. We feel allowing knockoffs stifles creativity, takes money away from the builders that have spent time creating/building and is just a bad look for the forum. What if someone here has a revolutionary new bait idea but does not want to come out with it due to fear of being knocked off? As a group, SU supports makers large/small and this community as a whole.

We are talking knockoffs in general. There are far more than just DRTs being knocked off.

Its deeper than that, I had a conversation with someone from SU a month or so ago on this exact topic, they respect and cherish their relationship with DRT and do not support or respect knockoffs of their products or anyone else's products. By them banning the sales of them on their site they are at least trying to do their part and support those that support them in my opinion. I guess thats a hard topic to understand if you support knockoffs.