derds126

Since I fish mainly smallmouth I use a mix of swimbaits and conventional. Typically a one two punch working swimbaits then the conventional finesse stuff. I throw a lot of jigs, small plastics, dropshot and jerkbaits. Swimbaits are definitely a key tool in the arsenal, especially for finding where those big ones live. I fish those and jerkbaits when fish are active and the finesse when I have them located and need to really goad them into feeding.

I typically use gammy round bends for mono and st-36 for fluoro/braid

I'd try it with lighter line and rod like ceaser said. I just switched to using my deep diving crank rod spooled with 12lb fluoro for smaller glides and have noticed a huge improvement over the 15lb mono and okuma mh. Better action on the 168 even on the straight reel it glides almost an extra foot and stays down in the strike zone better for me. Might drop down to 10 lb. Glides are affected a lot more than other baits by line diameter, density, etc. Just keep switching around until you find what works for you. Colby Pearson has a video on the gan craft 230 that touches on this as well.

+1 on the dream smasher. JSJ also makes some really good baits that I don't see a lot of people fishing. That shad has reaction smallies written all over it.

Chunk dude!

Big scale carp looks much better for a strictly carp imitator. Carp have big scales. Butch you gotta show us at least a few teasers!