J Francho

Pickup truck. All I carry are coffee stains and dog drool. There's also an old tube TV in the bad I keep meaning to recycle. At this point, it's just weight for winter traction.

I will continue my road to recovery through the pain and wreckage fishing a Carolina rig causes.

Most Strike King jigs are $3-5. I buy hand made in the USA jigs from Siebert Outdoors. You should, too. http://www.siebertoutdoors.com/ My favorite are Dredge Brush jigs with wire tied skirts. They're $3.90 a piece. None have ever failed.

It's from the sulfates in the wine.

Electronics should be run off you cranker, not the deep cycles for your TM. You might consider a hybrid cranker or a separate battery altogether for electronics. But not your deep cycles for the TM, which is what most probably assumed you were asking about.

my Optimas were five years old when I sold the boat. Still kicking, as far as I know.

That would depend on locale. There are no 9# fish in my waters. There are 5# fish. They aren't easy, but one shows up almost every tournament as the lunker. Sometimes it's a 6# or even an 7#. I've even seen a 8-5. Rare. You could scale a curve based on the largest and smallest keeper caught. All of this is just basic statistics. If you really want to measure the "largest" fish or catch, then we should be using displacement, lol.

That's way too big a gap between a 3# fish and a 5# fish. I don't feel like it should take three 3# to overtake a single 5# fish. You need a curve in there. I like the idea, though.

Hydro Turf, Sea Deck, and Sea Mat are three well known brands of deck padding. I have Sea Mat in my kayak and love it. Way better than carpet!

Anything with an aluminum frame and a strong drag will work fine. I like anything medium to high speed for frogs.

Not sure your math works there. If a 1# is worth 1 point, and a fish five times as big is worth 25 times as much, then a 9# fish should be worth much, much more. Exponents and mathy stuff aside, not a terrible idea, if yu can get the math right.

These aren't the only two formats out there for competitive fishing. I'm including any level. Time and time again, it's a few of the same few that are always at the top, whether it be BPT, BASS, FLW, KBF, or even local team format opens. You always see the same names at the top. This tells me that the better anglers are able to adapt and conform to the format, and be successful. It's up to the organizers to decide what they're selling, and who's buying, and see what shakes out. You can watch a much faster tournament evolution play out if you follow kayak fishing tournaments for the past decade. BASS/BPT/FLW are too big to make sweeping changes. Small adjustments, and see what happens. Bottom line, you don't see bass nailed to a "leader board" anymore, and that's a good thing.

There's plenty of reasons, beyond getting bites, to use leaders, but that's for another thread. I prefer not to use them, if possible, but I can tell you many of the arguments against using them due to extra knots or weakening line causing break offs are bunk. My salmon and steelhead terminal rig has no less than FIVE knots. Break offs generally occur in the line itself, or caused by user error, not letting the fish take line when needed. Two more confessions: I rarely, if ever wet my line with saliva anymore. With the lines I use, it seems unnecessary. I used a poop jig this past season. I did catch fish. Mostly yellow perch and dink bass, but it worked, and was fun on a light spinning rig.

Like watching paint dry, while being glued to your spouse's favorite cooking show.

Well, there's that, but we don't discriminate.

I actually love fishing a Carolina rig...

Another vote for @RichZ Also, no love for @Glenn for Washington?

What does "correct water temp" even mean? It's just a parameter; an observation. You may be able to assume some things about activity, but really it just is.

5 I wish I understood he words, but oh well....

This reminds me of conversations about skateboard sizes. People go on and on about the difference between an 8.0 width deck and an 8.125, lol. I skate an 8.25, 8.125, and a 9. I can pretty much do all the things I can do on all of them, as long as I have wheels on the ground (or most of the time, anyway). Really the more important stat is wheelbase. It's like that with rods - it's all about the bend. I'd buy that AVC70MM off the shelf, and be done with it. Mine is probably more than a decade old now, still catches, and works for so many things that are cranky.

Jump up on the Sure Life site and get educated about their products and methods. I've been using Catch & Release for almost two decades, with great success. http://sure-life.com/pro_CATCH_AND_RELEASE.html

A three hour tour....

I don't have that particular model, but I have a few TCS rods, and they are some of my favorite sticks, considering their value priced.

I like to go steelhead fishing in the ditches on X_mas morning, if I don't have the kids. This year, I do, so no fishing for me.

We had some ice, not safe to walk on. It'll be gone by X_mas. gonna be in the 50s.