bigpoppabass

Probably. Try using a senko with a black hook, and you will get fewer bites. Also, bronze gives you an opportunity to barb down the hook and to hone em razor sharp. The bronze material holds better than any chemically sharpened hook. Chem sharpened hooks rely too much on the barb. If you try to barb down a chem sharpened hook, the barb breaks

Yeah sometimes they hold some for the Sat crowd sometimes they don't. One year they gave tickets to purchase Lanciotti baits first 1-40, with 40 baits to sell. My buddy got number 40 arriving at 6 AM to get in line for 10AM open. Ticket holder #39 has a little kid with him and buys 2 baits. My guy didn't get one. Ouch.

Oliver from Big Bass Dreams is a draw for me. Always great to Mike Bucca too. I used to impersonate him until I learned at the show he is hearing impaired. I am little embarrassed and ashamed I did that.

This is getting complicated. Haha. Thanks for the info.

Got my golden shiner tk in mail. Pretty bait. It has a single goal of being a gold bomber on steroids. Going to hit it up with glitter. Haha. PS. Fyi, this bait design does not have super reflective gold foil in it or anything. It looks more like a ayu pattern in gold. PS.1 My design improvement would be to add the triggering flash that incorporates the silvery gold that the best golden shiner spinner baits have. This flash is accomplished by the use of alternating silver and gold blades on the spinnerbait. I don't know how you get that triggering flash into a swimbait tho.

I think you mean the original polywood models with the orange eyes. I have caught more 3lb+ bass on that lure than any other topwater. I even had Lloyd Findling RIP make me a batch of customs years ago. I can still remember his surprise when asking if I wanted the bass creeper or the bigger one, and I went with musky one. The bass creeper is decent but it was always made from solid wood and not the polywood. A polywood Hi Fin is a unicorn in the category.

Also a newbie with bait - my question is can somebody explain the different kinds of lips? There is stock lip and another different replacement lip available. I googled it and got more confused, since different names popped up including short lip, square lip, and roll lip.

Now onto the first ding phase. Haha. Congrats!

I like hearing about fans of fiberglass. I consider it a great choice for baits like crawlers which are best fished using braided line imo. Now if only the top tier rod makers would reduce their prices for use of this cheaper base material.

Never been a fan of the clack. Squeal a different story, that can often turn a decent jointed bait into a unicorn. The best example for me is the baby possum. Over time, the hinges develop an itchy scratch sound. It reminds me of the sound the best buzzbaits make.

You might need a pool noodle taped to handle to make it float.

I hope I don't conclude the same since I was going all in on em this year. But I can tell you from experience, you have to play around with swimbaits in general to find their proper cadence. Sometimes the rig is the issue, sometimes it just finding the sweet spot for the lure. Good luck.

I have had more success with the clip on cocoons than the fit overs. Go with the lemon tint, they are best for low light and work all around too. PS. Often the space between the fitover and frames creates an annoying distortion and they don't compliment each other. It is like using a pair of glasses to look into another pair of glasses.

From what I understand the jerkbait action is where it's at with these baits. So I am going with a medium action style rod.

In like flint.

Looks iffy to me.

Click bait! Haha.

I bought several spools of the 17 lb sniper a while back and it is the first all fluoro I have used on a baitcaster. I like it. It lasted almost a whole season. Peeps also speak highly of the invisix but have only used the 10 lb so far with success on a spinning reel. Both lines are still much stiffer than traditional trilene xl mono but more manageable than the early fluoro lines which made me a diehearted braid to fluoro leader fan. I still overall prefer a braid to fluoro leader to straight fluoro and find that both lines need some exercise each trip to get going.

Not sure it would be a great choice at night since almost all great lunker baits track straight generally.

Fish of a lifetime for most. Congrats!

Super clear waters often have dark baitfish so I see no reason it should not work.

That's awesome! So do you tie your line above the braid tags?