deep

Gman is a great guy. Plenty of cool people on either forum..

Great post Infidel. I'd say that there's a fourth group of anglers; the trophy hunters. The guys who want to catch a trophy fish by whatever means is best suited to the job- swimbaits, live baits, off the bed. This is the group I hope to belong to someday. Bill Murphy doesn't talk a lot about big baits. He does talk about catching trophy fish on conventional baits, presented in an unconventional manner.

I haven't caught a swimbait fish in the last 30+ hours on the water.. Going out later today again to the lake that beat me over and over again. I did get my fix of catching though. Caught a few on jigs yesterday from my local puddle. Keep the faith.

Definitely a 2-piece (billed floater) wake if you can find one.. And a 2-piece or 3-piece slow-sink. PM bassdaddy too.

That thing looks huge! Congrats.

I have a Curado 301E. It's on my MH swimbait rod; and spooled with 15 lb Yo-Zuri Hybrid. The baits I throw most often on it are Matt's gill's, 68 hudds, 9" slammers, 8" TTs etc. Anything upto 3 ozs really. It's too fast for slow-rolling baits effectively. Maybe that's just me. Reel is holding up fine though. I bought it used, back in late 2010.

Nothing wrong with the Cardiff unless you don't want a round reel. It's no Calcutta, but the two I have have held up well to a year's worth of hard fishing with minimal maintenance. I have a Curado 301 too. It's too small and too fast for 8" baits IMO. I like bigger and slower reels for most swimbaits.

Maybe 75% of the time I'm fishing.. Bed fishing with a swimbait is not included in that 75% I love to throw jigs too. And sometimes I just want to catch a mess of small bass on a senko, or a rattletrap or whatever.

The Okuma 7'11"MH will throw all/ most of them fine. If you have the money to spend, of course, get a better rod, maybe even custom. Not long ago, I was looking to buy a musky rod myself (for swimbaits). I might have been misinformed, and someone correct me if I'm wrong, but the idea I got was that musky rods in general have a faster taper than swimbait rods. In particular, my preference is for moderately tapered rods. The 4 swimbait rods I have (2 Mattlures and 2 Okumas) have a moderate to moderate-fast taper, and I like that. Good luck.

I don't have any mojo to spare (1 follow, 0 bites, 0 fish in my last 20 hours of fishing); but good luck man. Stick a big'un!

Great review Jfish. I got more than a few ideas when I first read it back then. Tried them out, and worked out great! Thanks.

I'll say check if the harness etc are straight. If they are, boil the hudd, and let it cool in a vertical position. Most of my hudds take on water too, and some of them do run a little crooked. But, the ones that swim tilted have been that way since the first cast.

I'm thinking that an 80" hudd would be pretty badass..

PM sent. I have a few soft baits, and a hard bait I'm trying to sell

Awesome. Congratulations!

Great write-up! That's why we do what we do.

Thanks guys. Just to clarify, these fish were caught over a period of two weeks, not on the same trip

Nice fish Marbles!

Didn't get a weight on the first one. If I had to guess, probably a 7+ The second one went 3.75#. The third one was 8.25#. All 3 ate ROF5 hudds; and none of them were caught "sight fishing". They may or may not have come up from beds to bust the hudd; but I have no way to confirm or deny that...

Thanks.