Tokyo Tony

Jewel Eakin's jig. That's all I use in the thick stuff. You might not like it because the skirt is pretty thin, but pair it up with a Gary Y Flappin' Hawg and there's no need to make the profile bigger

I forgot to add that this fish was caught before the spawn, about 2 to 2.5 months ago And it's in a fast-moving river, but there are a lot of slackwater areas, and this fish was hanging out in one of my favorite eddies (along with several smallmouth, brown and rainbow trout, and rock bass).

I'll never forget the first cast I ever attempted with a baitcaster - I was probably 10ish. I just got back from K-Mart with my dad who was nice enough to buy me a 20 or 30 dollar combo that came pre-rigged with blue mono. I thought the reel looked cool, and I figured out how to free spool it. Seems easy enough right? I tied on a big DOA swimbait and was gonna fish one of Miami's freshwater canals for "trout". First cast I hauled back and let her rip...imagine the biggest birds nest you can imagine and me, having no clue how to untangle it. Needless to say I didn't use that rod for the rest of the day ;D Funny thing is, now I know that there are big peacocks in that area, and if I knew how to fish that bait I could have caught a nice peacock.

x2 - paired with a Pflueger Trion and 5 lb test Power Pro 8-)

Speaking of Carrot/Crucial comparisons, which would you guys say is more sensitive? I recently bought a Carrot jig rod, and while it's really nice and sensitive, it's not quite as sensitive as I imagined it would be. Is the Crucial more sensitive? It may just be that I have to get more used to the Carrot...

Nice job man! It's pretty money that your first fish on fly was a snook too. My first fish on fly was a very small barracuda in the FL Keys.

That doesn't sound right unles you went from 8# mono to 50# braid. Braid should cast better. What # suffix are you using? x2 - you might just be using braid that's a lot heavier than the mono you were using, but KVD will probably help castability a bit. You can spray some on a rag and clean up the guides too. Lastly, in my experience, Power Pro is noticeably softer than Sufix, so it casts a little better.

She was so fat that the stripes on her sides were distorted

100% for me. If you look at the design of a trick stick, it is cigar shaped. The tapered ends make a shimmy kind of wiggle when it is presented vertically (wacky) When wacky'd, BOTH ends wiggle and it has a slow, STEADY vertical fall. IMO, this is the way the bait was designed to be fished, getting the MAX wiggle out of it. Not saying t-rigging doesn't work, sure does, but wacky rigging maximizes the baits potential. That's a good point. You know, I almost never wacky-rig senkos, but it makes sense that the action would be more wiggly when wacky-rigging. I guess I'll break out my wacky hooks and try it out next time. The only thing that worries me is hookup ratio. When t-rigged, I miss maybe one in 10 or 20 bites, and that's probably because it's a dink. I just don't have confidence in those teeny hooks. LBH - would you please pass the confidence?

Matt, it's the 7'3", and I'm a pretty big fan of the rod. Light, sensitive, and sexy :-* neBassin - it took me about a full 5 minutes comparing the Crucial and the Carrot side-by-side in Cabelas before I finally went with the Carrot. I think the two rods (MH fast ~7') are pretty similar. It seemed to me like the Carrot had just a little more backbone, and I wanted the extra 3". However, what really sold me on it was...the color

Bottom view... Have you ever seen a fish so full of eggs? She hit an LC Pointer 65, ghost minnow while I was goin for smallmouth.

First view...

Good-looking schoolie from a spot my boss told me about. I think I missed the major striper run by about two weeks, but there were some little guys still feasting on alewives.

The lure in this pic is a size 1 Blue Fox spinner ;D

It's funny how all it takes is a few fish (or even strikes) to gain a lot of confidence in a new bait. Try just going crazy on the fish after you get a hit. What I mean is setting the hook hard, and furiously pulling the fish to the surface, water skiing it back to the boat. If it doesn't work there's a chance you might look like a fool, but when you get it down it's a lot of fun. And a good cardio workout ;D

I think spinnerbaits around the pads sounds good. An absolutely fail-proof pattern is to throw senkos onto the edges of the pads, pulling them off, and letting them sink to the bottom on a slack line. Focus on points and "coves" within the pad fields, as well as anything else that seems different. If you're not getting the size you want, move into the pad fields and flip a t-rigged plastic w/ a bullet weight into the holes. If they're active (or at least not comatose) you can try a hollow-bodied frog or a toad. Make sure you let us know how you do, and good luck

Here's the pic - this combo is a real treat. Went out with fishizzle on Sunday and caught a bunch of jig fish.

Yeah, it is definitely tough to tell from that picture. If it helps, and if any of you guys are golfers, my hand is a cadet medium I forgot to mention that this was my first fish on my new Revo/Carrot Stix setup. Got to test out the drag too, which I realized was a little too loosely set.

I'll probably post more pictures in the future, but for now, the last pic is a small largemouth with smallie eyes. The only one I've seen with red eyes...

This was my first smallmouth (over 8 ounces) of 2008, caught at my favorite smallie pond in NH. I think this was mid-April. Bone-colored LC Pointer, and I was pretty psyched about this fish

My other dog, Buddy, waiting for me to catch the next fish.

This is one of my dogs, Rigs, who loves diving for rocks. It's the funniest thing - anytime he goes near a river or lake, he dunks his whole head underwater for up to 30 seconds searching for rocks. He then comes to shore, makes a little pile, and goes back out to get more rocks. It's hilarious ;D

Another picture of the mist - if you look closely you can see two people in a canoe. Beyond them are about 8 fly fishermen.

This was from 6/28/08 on the Farmington river. It was steamy hot, then a thunderstorm rolled through. Right after the storm, there was a thick layer of fog on the surface. Pretty eerie

Well I finally figured out how to email myself pictures from my cell phone, so here are a few from the past few months. Unfortunately, photobucket recently stopped working on my computer so I'll have to do one at a time. Actually, this first picture is my brother's PB 6 pounder caught early spring '07