Any suggestions

[headlight]

You might want to take a close look at the lightweight, economical Shimano Charter Special.  It has plenty of line capacity, good retrieval rate, and should give you plenty of drag (ESP.  If you upgrade the drag material w/HT-100 from Dawn, and a thicker set of Bellevilles from Shimano).

Here's Alan's tutorial:

http://alantani.com/index.php?topic=12.0

I actually have 3 Charter Specials that I use for downtiding.
I have upgraded the drags as per Alan"s tutorial & fitted his slightly larger 3/0 handles.
Although I find the reels excellent for downtiding I don"t feel they cast well & the retrieve is slow for picking up the big bow of slack line we let out uptiding.

headlight

[headlight]

I watched a video on uptiding the other night. Very interesting. Your bass looks very similar to our striped bass.

Do you cast away from the boat because the boat makes noise in the water which scares the fish? I do a bit of cod fishing here in New England. This technique might work well here too.

Yes the perceived idea is that in shallow"ish water there is a "scare" area around the boat partly caused by the boat & partly by the anchor chain & warp & the idea is to cast away from this area.
Also where I fish has some extremely fierce tides as it has the second biggest tidal range in the world.
The uptiding method also allows a lighter weight to dig into the bottom due to the bow of slack line pulling the weight with grip wires horizontally into the bottom a bit like the way the chain works on an anchor set up.

headlight