midnightbite

1 on a swimbait. 6 total. Really helps to have lived close to Castaic for 15 years.

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Clear Lake giveith and Clear Lake takeith away. When you live far away, it's such a huge gamble to make the trip because you just don't know what you'll end up with. February before last everyone was out there whacking the crap out of 'em on glide baits so I loaded up the boat and took off ... arrived literally 1/2 a day too late. Cold front moved in, it rained, cleared up, and the swimbait bite croaked. I fished 3 days straight and literally never got a bite (on anything). Turned out there was an okay bite on drop shot in the tules the whole time, but I can get my fill of drop shot fish here in SoCal. It's literally the last thing I ever want to pick up when I'm on Clear Lake. Anyway that trip tookith away my confidence across the board and started me into a prolonged slump which I really didn't break until midway through the summer. But I went back in early September and had one of the absolute best fishing trips of my life. Wake baits, jigs and cranks for good numbers and good size. To the point about Clear Lake advice (and I noticed another poster asking in a separate thread), Clear Lake is big, but fishes very small. If you have a secret spot nobody knows about, then you truly have something special. I certainly can't make that claim, but I do know they exist. I have my go-to spots in the south end and mid lake but they are the same go-to spots that most others know about as well. My goal over the next couple years is to become more familiar with the north end, where Rodman and Byron's Corner are the obvious ones but I'm sure there's more out there. So my advice for anyone looking to hit Clear Lake for the first time is to go ahead and invest in a guide trip. At a minimum, you need to learn all the community holes because they are community holes for a good reason ... sometimes they're the only places you'll get a bite and they are a consistent litmus test to help you figure out what's working and what's not. In terms of swimbait selection, I think it's safe to say you want to carry a Rising Son / Osprey style line through (I like the top hook weighted RS bounced on the rocks), a weedless option of some sort to throw in the Tules, a wake bait b/c nothing's better than a wake bait blow up, and the glide bait of your choice for weed edges and docks.

In

Yup. Had mine almost a year now and I still like it better than my Lexa (which I also like).

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Great Black Market transaction, as per the norm. Christian took care of business super fast. Don't hesitate to buy from him. -Dax

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Yeah I saw he was out of the weightless when I ordered so I figured I'd just buy them on TW. Wrong. All the usual online tackle shops are sold out. Ditto for eBay when I searched. I found an Amazon seller that claims to have them but I'm not holding my breath. Hopefully they will actual show up at my house. Kind of frustrating looking at these new rising sons knowing that I don't have the hooks to fish them yet. I think that Owner sells the screw locks with center pins separately?? Feel like I've seen that. If so then a Trokar 10/0 plus the Owner screw lock should do the trick.

This is the only Youtube video I found on it. Gives you a basic idea. Doesn't look too bad for the price point. https://youtu.be/9WJ90O2lprY I might pick one up b/c I'm always looking for a cheapish glide and have never been a huge fan of the S waver's action. When I get the chance to go back to Texas and fish at my dad's place, that lake is so full of stumps the idea of throwing my 250 out there is a little sketch to say the least. Those big girls know exactly how to wrap you around a stump and break you off and they waste no time doing it.

Thought I should take this opportunity to pile on Yamaha. I haven't owned one of their outboards and I never will. However, 5 years ago, I bought a Yamaha sound bar and receiver for my entertainment center. Cost me like $500+. F'ing POS didn't last 4 months before it started shorting out and going into auto-shut down mode. Took to repair center under "warranty" total joke. They claimed to have fixed it after they kept it for 3 weeks. Got it home, same problem. Started calling Yamaha's customer service center and started getting what is to this day, the biggest run-around I've ever personally experienced. They literally jerked me around and lied to me and passed me off until the factory warranty expired. Moral = They do not honor their factory warranties and will take all measures to get out of them. 2nd experience is more recent and more on topic. Got a bug up my ass last summer and decided I wanted to buy a jet boat to take the family skiing. I just had it in my head that it must be a jet boat and must be twin engine. So I looked into the Yamaha jets and settled on getting a used LS2000. Didn't do any research, just bought one on a whim. Then I start researching it and turns out these things rolled out of the factory with a laundry list of factory defects, none of which have ever been properly addressed by Yamaha. No recalls, no apologies, nothing. There's an entire online community forum dedicated to helping owners go through and fix all of these defects before they all blow their engines or cause themselves physical harm. It's insane. In general, I've found the little Yamaha LS2000 to be a cute little boat but very cheaply made. You can just tell that the hull material is very thin. Everything rattles and vibrates like crazy. So I'm going to fix all the defects later this month, try to enjoy it for a full season, and then sell it. But unlike the guy I bought it from, I'll be explaining to the next owner exactly what they're buying and what I've done to fix it. It will be the last Yamaha product I own. No doubt. </rant>

Thanks Swimbo! You're the man. I kept hitting refresh on the homepage wondering what was going on.

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Mickey cracks me up man. He takes not giving a sh** what people think to a higher level. That rant he goes on about this not being the right bait for you if you're on a budget was classic ... "go to Walmart and get some baits," lol. He then goes on to top that in this video with his sidebar about smoking crack, drinking beer and having "dancing ladies." The end result is that I'm sold and will for sure be ordering several of these, and to his credit, his straight forward approach to the sales process means that I know exactly what I'm buying and why. It was a bummer when the bait making industry drama or whatever it was caused him to stop posting here. Also sucked for those of us on the west coast when he left SoCal, but as a native Texan, I can honestly say he belongs in Texas and I mean that in a good way all the way around. With all of this said, what's his new approach to bait releases? I follow him on FB and IG but he's so cryptic there I'm like clueless. That's what was so great about him posting here ... I was able to know when to go on F5 over-drive. Since then, I've lost the bread crumb trail. Please PM me if you know what's up these days. That freaking shad glide needs to end up in my hands one of these days, somehow. -Dax

Congrats guys. That picture is timeless. It doesn't get any better than that.

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Can we arm wrestle or maybe have a rock/scissors/paper tourney ahead of time to decide who gets to rent the boats? Or will we just pile up and start kicking eachother's asses to see who gets in first? Seriously though, do they have a large enough boat fleet there to potentially accomodate everyone, if we cooperate and put 2 people in each boat? I love these SoCal meetups. We should do more of them. Pyramid should be a solid choice this winter for the LA area as well. -Dax

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Huge fish. Over before it started. So strictly for the sake fish porn here's a five pounder that made my night Clear Lake Dax