Ikaika

Fellow Delta fisherman here, I have a punching stick in my hand most of the year so hopefully this helps...punching is one of my favorite ways to catch fish and I think you're going to have fun with it once you get started. You're going to be limited by the 3/4 or 1oz weights you have if you fish them as a texas rig...on the Delta you're going to want 1.5oz most of the time to get through the mats efficiently. I go down to 1.25oz sometimes, but never below that. If you want to try it out without spending on tungsten, you can rig yourself a DIY Tokyo rig (aka punch shot or jika rig) using a little dropper off of your flipping hook. Nick Smith did a good video on this, but what this rig allows is for you to take two of your 3/4oz lead weights, put them back-to-back, and punch with that since you've got your 1.5oz. With that weight setup, some green pumpkin or black/blue beavers, and straight shank flipping hooks you'll be able to give punching a try on the cheap. Pitch in, let it hit bottom, pump it twice, repeat...don't go slow, don't let it soak, just keep moving and covering water. Good luck!

Thanks for pointing out that thread, great info there. I just pulled the trigger on a split grip kit from NFC...hopefully my luck is as good as yours! ?

Great looking builds. 3 questions for you if you don't mind: What's your take on the Xray 7109 blank? I can't find any common cents intrinsic power or action angle measurements for it so am curious to hear your thoughts on how reasonable the 0.5-2oz lure rating is, as well as how moderate the taper really is. Any applications besides jigs/flipping/punching you think this blank would excel at? I was torn between the Xray 7109 and the Point Blank 761HM; ended up going with the Point Blank after getting scared off of NFC due to customer service horror stories. How was your experience? How long did they take to ship? How would you describe the difference between the soft-touch NFC grips, the CFX grips, and the G2? Do you have a preference so far on texture/grip? What about weight?

Just to follow up on the comment about fishing a drop shot from the bank: the only change you have to make is to put a little more distance between your hook and your weight. Instead of fishing vertically, the line will be at an angle through the water and so the actual distance your bait is off the bottom will be decreased.

4.5" skinny Roboworm on a drop shot amazes me every time with how effective it can be in the highly pressured waters here in California. For clear water I like the prizm shad and salt river craw patterns depending on what's abundant in the lake. I like the drop shot because you can keep the bait in front of the fish longer and Roboworms are so soft that the action you generate by twitching your rod is dynamite.

:-? The farther away from the pivot point the less force it takes to move something...in this case the jighead is the pivot point.

I remember playing this game...you could see the outlines of fish from above in the water. I played that game a ton but no longer have it.

Just playin around, no harm meant. ;D

The part about working the bait...if you move your rod from 3 oclock to 1 oclock every time you go to hop your worm, the thing is gonna be zooming across the bottom in 6 foot hops. I like moving my worms 6-12" at a time, which doesn't take much movement of your rod. Too many people forget that their rod is 7' long and that moving your wrist a little bit moves your bait a whole lot.

Two words: SPELL CHECK

All I have to do is just cast a Lucky Craft and I'll find a tree submerged 30 feet down :'(

man you guys fish some big water compared to the little 1-acre puddles I'm stuck with. It sucks living so far away from good big lakes >

bahahahah!!!

Har har har...not cute and not funny.

Raul I'm with you...I only have one bag of Senkos and I've caught one fish on them. I'm much more successful with a lizard or a jig.

I have pictures of me with my first bluegill when I was about three. My little brother was one at the time, and he's there too sitting with my mom. My dad got me a casting plug to put on my red and white Mickey Mouse rod and spincasting reel(which I still have) and would let me go out in the yard and practice casting at flowerpots when I finished my schoolwork. Mom hated it because she had flowers in the pots I casted at, but thats how I got good at casting

Did I just read on there that you get 90 of those things for $4.99? Pretty sweet deal, too bad they're lead though...no more of that for me.

Paperclip...good thinking. How do the Gambler weights work? If it has a rubber core that keeps it from slipping, how do you get the line through in the first place?

Texas rigging lizards has become one of my favorite tactics this spring, but I'm getting frustrated by the fact that the toothpicks I use to peg my sinkers get stuck in there and render my weights useless. How do you all deal with this problem?

My dad was just telling me about Mann's Jelly worms...apparently he used to demolish fish with a purple one as well

Dude I live in Clayton too, about 100 feet away from Bally's...where are you at?

7 mph per foot? I'm not sure I follow... :-? Were that correct, the units for miles and feet would cancel out like so: (7 miles/1 hour)(5280 feet/1 mile)(1/1 foot)= 36960 hours^(-1). Without either feet or miles in the numerator, this cannot be a measure of speed. Can you clarify this? I've been curious about this since fish seem pretty speedy when they dart away from my lures

Its frickin freezing Mr. Bigglesworth! But seriously, good grief its cold. I just walked my dog in the same stuff I walked her in last night and I had to cut the outing short due to not being able to feel my legs.

the poor fish around here must be so puzzled by our crazy weather if i didn't have a huge marketing project to work on this weekend, i'd likely fish a jig as well. If you're fishing shallow cover, go for a lighter(3/8 ounce) jig so the fall is slower for the sluggish feesh. Let us know how you do, you're certainly more persistant than I am out there at Busch.

While I've caught a bundle of fish on spinnerbaits myself, I have buddies who cannot for the life of them catch a fish with spinnerbaits. Give them anything else and they do just fine, but spinnerbaits just don't produce for some folks or on certain bodies of water. Pscarbor, there is a lot of good info in this thread...fishing and not catching can be really frustrating, so hopefully your spinnerbait luck improves in the near future