dlegg96

Interesting, does this body of water have regular fish & game presence to police this area?

Ethical? As touched on above, I believe it is about as ethical as the rest of the sport of bass fishing. Personally, I have never enjoyed looking at 1 bass for an hour, hopping the same bait into their bed over and over. To each their own. I do not particularly like when tournaments are purposefully scheduled to hit a body of water during the spawn. I believe the big tournaments should avoid this in order to allow the bass to have a successful spawn. Luckily bass can adapt to angler pressure during the spawn. They either get lockjaw and will ignore what fisherman are throwing at them or they move off the bank and spawn deeper where they are harder to target. There is no reasonable way to stop people from bed fishing. However it is still lame. From a swimbait underground perspective, the nature of how our tournaments are run allow us to release a fish immediately after being caught. Bed fish usually return to protecting their bed shortly after being released as long as it is in the same spot. This helps minimize our impact. Great poll!

Thanks guys, I will look him up!

I have a Daiwa Ryoga 1016 that needs service. The drag is no longer exerting any pressure (may have crushed the drag washers from leaving the drag tightened down?). Do you guys know of any individuals or shops who will service a high end daiwa reel? Or is the best bet just to send it to the Daiwa USA service center?

Assume you are talking about the Citizen? I have found if you are using the lightest beast hook as recommended by WCZ it usually requires some nail weights to get it to run straight.

Beast Coast Creep is a good weedless option rigged on an 8/0 beast hook. $9.99 for a 2 pack 6in Magdraft is my number 1 softbait overall. 6in Magdraft freestyle is another good option. Just ordered a the Bass Mafia Daingerous swimbait to test out. Heard it can be reeled faster than the magdraft freestyle without blowing out. I have also had good luck with. Both the 5in and 6in Burritos. All of these options are readily available and affordable. I would not recommend Working Class Zero baits to someone just starting out. My experience, especially with the Citizens is the take a lot of tuning, and you must be adept at making on the water repairs to prolong the life of the bait.

Love this topic, especially since still consider myself new to “swimbaiting”. I had been fishing for 20 years before I ever picked up a true swimbait. That swimbait was an S-waver 165 and once i got bites on that bait it truly gave me the confidence to throw big baits more often. After spending 4 years in college absolutely obsessed with tournament bass fishing, I was burned out and was no longer enjoying fishing for bass. Getting into swimbaits was a way to make fishing fun again. 2 things remain true no matter what type of fishing you do: 1: the people who spend the most time on the water tend to be the most locked into the the current patterns of the fish 2: it is more important to know where the big fish are/what they are doing at that specific time in your body of water, than throwing a “big fish bait” My current lmb pb is on a dropshot, my current northern lmb pb is on a hollow body frog, my current smb pb is on a River City lil’ Basturd glide. One common theme is I was locked into what the fish were doing when I caught all of them. Last time I lucked into a pb was when I was about 8 and took my fist cast ever with an artificial lure (pre-rigged creme worm) and caught a 2lb bass. My advice to new fisherman is never what lure to throw, but to tell them to fish 1 body of water for an entire year (and take notes). That will help you learn about what the fish are doing in your local area at any given time of the year.

I personally would rather just use lighter wire hooks that would hopefully straiten out. I feel like a split ring that light would be highly stressed being opened up and put on to the hook/bait. Also there is the possibility of quite a bit if leverage being created if your bait does not have swiveling hook hangers. A good quality and heavy bait knocker with chains has always worked well for me. Although i mostly fish rock and dont loose to many hard baits.

I am still somewhat shocked he stopped making them even if he is trying to increase the durability. Seems like plenty of people were still buying them. I am actually most upset because i would cut the tail off a brand new citizen to repair battle shads that got the tail bitten off. Damn pickerel are notorious for that in my lake.

Fair enough, the Yamamotos still get bit the best even though they are the least durable.

According to tonights newsletter, the WCZ Citizen production is being put on hold. I would assume it is largely do to the latest durability issues, although I am sure quite a bit of money was invested when production was revamped and increased. The increase in production definitely helped a lot more people get their hands on these baits. It will be interesting to see what happens to the Black Market price of these as supply dwindles. Still some limited inventory on the website at the time this was written. Personally I am not too upset with the production hold. I was usually reaching for a battle shad or other competing softbait over the citizen to begin with. Will probably save my little stash for very specific occasions. I am interested to hear what other people think, especially those who view the citizen as a go-to bait. Do you think production will ever resume or is the Citizen truly “Dead”?

I have used the daiwa lexa wn which is a 200$ in the salt quite a bit. Prefer the lexa Hd. I think a 300 size with 50lb braid is prefect for striper.

My best smallmouth bait has been the RiverCity lil bassturd (6in) in perch. The honorable mentions are magdrafts in 6 or 8in. PB Smallmouth came on the lil bassturd last year at 4.92lbs.