I really like my dobyns 742 dx for great lakes smallmouths. I has plenty of power to fish a 3/8 or 1/2 oz dropshot weight in windy conditions yet has enough tip still to work the baits well. I have had cumara's , loomis DS series and a fuego ds model but the 742dx is a perfect fit for me.

Lucky craft gunfish 95 in ghost nishiki, pointer 95mr in chart.shad and bds 1.2 marty in chart. shad are the 3 mani smallie baits for me.

Take a look at the Dobyns Champion 704cb glass.

Dobyns Champion 735C Awesome frog stick! It perfectly suits my needs in the upper midwest as a frog rod and doubles as a heay jig rod too.

Gunfish as a smaller bait and Evergreen Amazon as a big bait with the punker coming in a close second for me.

Lucky craft bds 1.2 and rapala balsa fatraps.

10lb sufix performance braid with a 8lb flourocarbon leader seems to work well for me.

My take on the bevy is that it ran like a shadrap with a little wider action on the swim that could be stopped and twitched like a pointer...deadly on prespawn fish around me!

Has anyone tried this bait and does it run decent? I can't see myself throw the megabass version at night in rivers for spring walleyes, but the lcuky strike is affordable enough to lose one every once in a while to a snag.

Run storm wildeye swimshads. They are fairly cheap and come prerigged in packages.

I do best on smallie beavers in green goby and mossy mud on every smallmouth water around me.

Dobyns 795 ML swimbait rod or the St. Croix legend tournament series swimbait rod are both good choices. I have fished both for stripers in TN. The slightly softer dobyns excels for topwaters and swimjigs while I preferred the St.Croix LTB for true swimbaits and umbrella rigs.