edwin

Brian Hayter at Ulrich Marine is fantastic. He's 'ssimpala71' on the bassboatcentral.com Mercury forum, on top of it for sure. Worth giving them a ring and seeing what's the going rate.

hola

I've got 8 fishing days under the belt with the Symetre and am quite pleased. I like it so much in fact that I just bought a new Shimano Cumara drop shot rod to go with it. No foul weather fishing with it yet but seems like a typical, fantastic Shimano product.

sold

I had some decent success flipping a green pumpkin tube up in the bushes when the sun was lower in the sky...both am and pm. Once the sun was up in the sky, I was able to get on a drop shot bite with the fish being suspended in 25-40'. I was fishing some of the humps up by Baxter along with a bunch of boats...seems my shot was catching way more fish than the guys ripping the spoon 8-10' off the bottom. Finesse seemed to work better for me in the high skies. No K or white feeding frenzy for me but ended up Fri and Sat with about 30 fish each day. Most were shorter fish with 3-4 keeps per day. All things considered, it was a great weekend for me. Got to get acquainted with the new Bass Cat and catch a few fish too!

Thanks for the input folks...made a long road trip and picked up a new boat today. While on the way back, went ahead and stopped by the Macon, GA BPS and got a Symetre to go with it. Feels like a great reel.

Great feed back Bill..tnx!!!

I've never had a single problem with any of the Shimano reels I own...bait caster or egg beater. Looks like the Stradic is it. Thanks for the input.

Thanks for the feedback folks.

I currently have a bunch of Shimano Chronarch baitcasters...they're 10 yrs old and I love em, love em, love em. I also have a few lower end Shimano spinning reels, one's a Sahara, the other is a Sedona. Both work fine, but I'd like to add a nicer Shimano egg beater reel to the stable. Anyone have suggestions on how high I need to go in their product line to get a Chronarch-like product? Tnx in advance, edwin

I bought a Zebco Omega for my wife...seems like a nice product. I also picked up a Pflueger Cetina for my daughter that seems like a nice reel too. As the others have mentioned, they still are spincast reels but seem like decent products.

I've fished on trips with Eric Prey and Don House...both were fantastic trips. Eric was on TR, Don was on Taneycomo. If I book another trip on TR, I'd like to set up a trip to bring my girls (5 and 9)...Don would get the call.

I have Sirius on one of my boats...works fantastic on any body of water I've been to. Highly recommend it if you like to listen to tunes.

Lots of properties for sale in our subdivision right now. I don't have a huge issue with leaving my boat on the lift...just make a habit of getting things out of sight and locked up. Personally, I love the aspect of keeping a boat on the lift.

Spent the day working my way up the James, focusing mostly on transition banks in the wind. Chrome shad McStick continued to produce good numbers. Better quality fish came after the bait suspended for a bit, smaller fish took it as it was being twitched quickly. Swimming a grub on the gravel to chunk rock transitions worked quite well too. Best quality fish came on a jig, mostly in 15-20' of water. I was about to call it a day around 4pm when my jig got a slight tap. Set the hook on what ended up being the biggest bass I've had on my line. It was in about 20' of water, took some time to get it to the surface. As it shook it's head at the surface, three things came to mind - 1) this is a really, really big LM 2) I need to get the camera 3) wow, that bass took that jig deep in it's mouth. After fighting it at the surface, I knelt down to lip the fish and yep, you guessed it...the line snapped and away it swam. I have no idea of the exact weight of the fish but it was clearly the largest I've ever almost caught...ugh.

I had great luck today up the James, transition banks in the wind...all on a chrome shad McStick. My largest was a 4.8 LM, as well as a half dozen solid KY keepers...16 fish in total. I don't know how much longer the stick bait will work but it's worth rigging one up.

Drop an email to Don Weed, owner of European Marine at Parts@europeanmarine.org. He's a rockstar with Merc's and likely can help. (864) 421-0444

I saw high 50's wayy up in the spoon billin' zone a few days ago...

Regarding private docks, I can say that we have more things (electronics, life jackets, rods, skis, cans of gas, etc) stolen during rain storm than just about any other time. Thankfully, we have lifts in all our stalls and the dock right next to ours has an open slip on the end so most 'visitors' seek cover over there. I have no issue whatsover with folks fishing around our dock as long as they're courteous. Slinging a 3/4 oz jig into the back of a boat on a lift isn't such a great thing to do. Doing it when boat owners are on the dock and not apologizing seems to be the perfect recipe to start an argument...which have been known to escalate on occassion.

Buttermilk is just up the James from Pt 11

Found the exact thing yesterday afternoon, as well as today. The long pause was somewhat painful but well worth the effort

Glad to hear that I wasn't the only one having challenges with the fish over the past couple days, especially in the flat calm water. My kids and I did manage a handful yesteray wayy up the James, past Cape Fair. Today was extra quiet in the morning w/o a single hit...nada. Around 2pm or so this afternoon, the wind finally started to blow. I focused on windblown banks between Pt 11 and the slalom course in Buttermilk Spgs. I was able to manage 4 shorts on the grub on the chunk rock bank. I switched to the McStick along the bluffs with as slightly longer pause between jerks than I really wanted, ended up with 15 more, 4 of them keepers (1 3.4lb LM, 3 decent spots). The water warmed almost 5 degs this afternoon in the windblown areas. I can't ever recall catching so few fish over a couple day period, only to catch 19 in a 2 hour span.

They said yesterday that it'd be on Versus, April 19 at 11:30am central.

I took my kids to the weigh in today. Dan Morehead weighed in a Spot that was nearly 7lbs...never seen anything like it!

I got out Saturday and Sunday. Ended up with a handful of KY's each day, all about the same 1.5 - 2lb size. Only baits I could get to work were the jig in 25-35' of water, and a dropshot in 40-65'. Lots of lookers on the dropshot but not many takers. I was really wanting to spend some time focusing on the jerkbait and wart in the wind but I couldn't stand the cold. Only saw a couple other brave (crazy?) folks out there this weekend.