Fishes in trees

In my opinion, the correct answer to this question is yes and no. True fact - jig designed for one situation CAN be used in differing situations, however they won't perform as well as a jig designed for that situation. Case in point - the football jig. Football jig heads excel at dragging through rocks and not getting stuck as easy in crevices. Football jigs suck at going through vegetation. Swim jigs, (one of the design features is the line tie eye is at the nose of the jig, another is the more cone shaped head of the jig) excell at going through vegetation. Swim jigs normally have a lighter weed guard than most other jigs that have week guards. In my opinion, there is a difference between flipping & pitching jigs - the difference being that the flipping jigs have a stouter hook. Lots of guys say the an "Arkie" style head is an "all-around jigs - I wouldn't know, I don't think any jig goes through brush as well as a tx rigged soft plastic does. There are guys on this site that are much more knowledgable about jig head shapes & usage than I am & I'm sure they will be chiming in at some point The jigs that I throw the most are Brewer Slider heads ( 99% of the time in the quarter ounce weight) and shakey heads, (most of the time with shakey heads I'm either at quarter ounce or 3/8 oz). Should I be throwing a Ned rig, I'm throwing 1/16 oz mushroom head. Ask Ned if he thinks that jig head shape makes a difference. To address the question - Do I have to buy them all? The easy answer is - heck yes, there is an epidemic going on, also an economic slow down - many small, medium and large sized tackle companies are counting on us to buy as much gear as we can. Do your part - buy plenty of gear & terminal tackle. It is the patriotic thing to do right now.

How old is the line? If there are no stuffs on the lip of the spool, or the roller or the guides on the rod, I'd venture to guess that old age could be the culprit. Or maybe, where have you been fishing? Abrasion against vegetation and woody/brushy cover can cause line fraying.

If your thumb is educated, your thumb is educated. Doesn't seem to matter much to me if I'm using my Curado DC or Chronarch, or any of the other alphabet Curado's, . I take it easy on the first few casts, making sure the line isn't messed up and then just fish it. It is possible to seriously backlash a Curado DC (to the point that you give up, cut the line & move on) if it isn't adjusted right, and getting it adjusted right is part of the learning curve. The key to learning any bait caster is practice. If you're a total rookie, I'd learn how to pitch prior to learning overhead casting, but that is just me. I was pretty decent at over head & side arm casting and then when I got exposed to the benefits of pitching, it took me at least a year to get half way decent and several years to get competent. I've always wondered if the learning curve would have been sorter had it been reversed.

Didn't know distance casting was an Olympic event. Probably ought to be. Make as much sense as jumping horses over obstacles - or golf for that matter. I'm pretty certain that fir it was an Olympic event, the gear would be pretty specialized - as unrecognizable from regular fishing gear as Olympic archery gear is from regular archery equipment. All that being said, the version of the A-rig that I'm currently throwing weighs around 3 1/2 ounces and I get what I consider decent distance with my Curado 300E. I'm throwing 20 lb test, using a 7' MH to Heavy rod. I could get somewhat better distance if I dropped the pound test of my line or went to a 7'9" casting rod, however I think I'd lose too many A-rigs if I dropped to 15 lb line or less and I don't like the way a 7'9" rod stores in my fishing truck. The 7' rod (a late 90's Team Diawa Muskie rod rated to 2 ounces) is a decent compromise and I like the way it stores in the rod rack inside the truck.

As older reels go, those are GOOD older reels. I'd clean them up a bit more prior to using them, (well, maybe a LOT more). I totally understand wanting to get some newer reels and I buy new reels pretty regularly, 2 or 3 or 4 times per year, when ever I feel my self esteem needs a boost and I think that a new reel will fix that for a while. That being said, I don't throw away or sell older reels just because they are old. I'd spend the money to get them professionally cleaned & serviced. Once that is done you'll have 4 reels that you can assign to specific chores. That smaller Morrum is a GREAT reel. I have something similar on my bubba drop shot rig. The other reels look to me like they'd be good reaction bait reels, once they were cleaned & stuff. Look harder, real carefully around that cabin. A guy with that level of gear wouldn't stop at just 4 rigs, unless those were just his "leave at the cabin" rigs. Where is his main stash of fishing gear?

My favorite square bills are the Timber Tiger DC8. They are discontinued also. I think that those baits excellent at coming through woody & brushy cover without getting stuck, better than any other crank I've tried. The vast majority of the time when they do get stuck, they get wedged in the V of a branch, rather than getting "hook hung" and they are relatively easy to retrieve, as long as you are able to get over them or reach then with your extendable pole. I also have a few of the old Bagleys - I don't fish them, they are " collector items " as far as I'm concerned. I keep them stored away in a box. I have to say "change over to hard plastic baits", however, should you choose to not pay the going rate for Bagleys, changing over to hard plastic square bills is your option. Other plastic square bills that I've had success with are the Lucky Craft square bills (the ones Rick Clunn endorsed years ago for a while ) and wiggle warts. I don't look at wiggle warts as medium divers. I look at them, especially the larger Mag Wart, as square bills that dive a little deeper than the average square bill, kind of like the old Rapala Fat Rap. Maybe that is an option, the old Rapala Fat Rap. It has a squared off bill and dives a little deeper than the average square bill bait. While we're on the subject, I have had some success with the Academy H2O brand of magnum square bills, the one that weigh an ounce, ounce & a quarter, something like that. For me they come through brush ok as long as you keep them moving. Using a stop & go retrieve is asking for it. These baits overpower my regular square bill rig. I use an older Diawa MH 7' Telescopic worm rod (circa early 90's ) and throw them on 20 lb line. They will get 5 or 6 feel down on 20 lb test.

In the early 90's I bought a Bud Erhardt crank bait rod that had the spiral wrapping on the guides. I used it for throwing lipless cranks, mostly. I feel like the spiral wraps gave me an extra few yards of distance, compared to guides in a straight line on top of the rod. I'd still be using that rod except the maker didn't use guides that were braid tolerant. I didn't know (or forget about) this one day and used the rod throwing lipless cranks with 65 lb braid all day and I wore a groove in the guides pretty quickly. That rod is currently in retirement, resting & collecting dust in the fishing shed. One of these years, I'll find someone who can put new guides on that blank, but in the KC metro area, those people seem to be hard to find.

There are things that I didn't know that I lost until I found them again. A couple of years ago, I found a Curado K that I forgot I'd bought. At a local tackle store, I'd saved up enough points ( that I got from buying other stuff ), that reel only cost me $20 and literally, I forgot I bought it. I found it underneath a whole bunch of other tackle when I was restocking all my gear to go to Truman Lake last fall. Filled with 20 lb Abrazx, it works well as a Biffle Bug reel.

I learned how to overhead/side arm cast first, and I think that hindered me learning how to pitch. I'd never seen anyone pitch until I started fishing BFL's in the early 90's. Seeing guys getting 5 accurate casts into a place where I couldn't put one motivated me to learn how to pitch. Fishing by myself, standing up in my little pond boat, it took me about a year before I felt anywhere close to confident and it was several years before I felt like I was competent and pitching became second nature and I didn't have to think about it. It takes a while to get the timing down and the more you think about it the less success you'll have. These days, distances up to 40 feet or so, I am much more likely to pitch at a target than I am to cast at it. Distances over 40 feet, these days it seems like I am much more likely to use a side arm/ roll cast than I am to throw an overhead cast. Of course, those times when I need maximum distance I'm most likely to use an over head cast. My advice is to practice in the back yard til you get good. Some guys are saying add weight. My opinion is yes and no. I think for a beginner, half an ounce is too heavy and quarter ounce is too light. For learning, for me, 3/8 oz was the sweet spot. Your rigs might be different and half an ounce (or heavier ) might be the ticket. Don't think of pitching as just a soft plastic technique. Back in the day, when Denny Brauer kinda known locally & regionally, but not really a name nationally in BASS circles, Denny won a tournament on Truman Lake - by quite a bit. Folks asked him how he won and he replied - "pitching". What he didn't tell was that he was pitching square bills into some pretty gnarly cover. Truman at that t time had many overhanging branches and pitching was the only way to get a bait into many productive places. Very few people, at that time, would have considered throwing any kind of crank into the cover he was throwing into. Also, if you ever spent any time talking with him, he used flipping & pitching interchangeably. These days flipping is flipping and pitching is pitching, it seems, at least according to terminology gurus.

Bass Pro Shops has ( or used to have) a color called puke in their 4" tubes. It worked good in clear water that had recently became lightly stained.

Last year I found some 1/16 ox mushroom heads with the correct size hook at Walmart, made by Arkie. Last time I looked when I was at Walmart they were out, probably to be expected, the tackle section has been decimated by rookies.

Huh, I've always thought of those baits as trolling baits. I got a dozen of them on a Walmart close out and I only took one of them out of the package. I didn't like how it ran and I didn't think that it casted very well. I put them in their own plastic shoe box, I figure I'll trade them out sometime when one of my Minnesota pals comes to town.

My rule of thumb with spinnerbaits is that if I can see the bait coming through the water real well, I'm fishing it too fast/too shallow. If I can't see that bait at all, I'm probably fishing too deep. I like to fish it deep enough that I only very occasionally see a flash from the blade. If I go 5 or 6 casts and never see the flash of the bait until it gets right next to the boat, then I'm probably fishing too deep/not fast enough

If I was out fishing and I wanted to throw a buzz bait and the rod that I grabbed to switch over had fluorocarbon on it I wouldn't worry about it much, BUT, If I'm rigging up stuff in my fishing shed, restringing line & stuff like that, my buzz bait rod will have some brand of premium mono or co-poly line on it.

For me, back when I bought my boat, my boat choices were limited by proximity to the dealer and how far I wanted to drive when something messed up. For me, the closest dealer was a Lowe dealer, back in 2002 Lowe was affiliated with Yamaha. Recently, that dealer. has retired and no one stepped up to buy his business so now I have to drive farther to get motor work done. I don't know what dealers are where in Lee County, Alabama, but that is what would drive my choice. If I had unrestricted finances, and I wanted to have an aluminum boat, I'd choose either a Vexus or an Express. I have a buddy who has the 20' Express with the 200 Yamaha 4 stroke and that boat is nice and it goes fast too. Last year, at the Fishing for Freedom event at Truman Lake, there were a few guys from Flippin Arkansas who were affiliated with the Vexus bait company and, just talking to them on the dock, those Vexus boats appeared to be nice boats. Both of those boats are somewhat more than your stated budget. I know that Lowe makes a 20' boat that is kind of in your price range. Like I said previously, my choice of boat was determined by my proximity to the dealer, and that worked out great for 16 years until he retired a couple of years ago.

I've ranted on this topic previously, so I guess I'll do it again. DON'T DO IT. DON'T GET A SCALE. SCALES LIE!! Seriously, all scales lie. Too many times, I've caught a fish that was obviously 4.5 or 5 lbs and then you put it on the scale and it weighs 3.7 or something like that. Scales are very disheartening. I don't carry one in my boat and don't want one. Should I ever participate in a tournament where catch/weigh/ release was required, I'd probably change my tune, but I wouldn't like it. I would have to be convinced that all the different scales that were in use lied the same.

There is a difference between OWNING a bunch of similar baits and USING a bunch of similar baits. For instance, I own way over a hundred jerk baits, but I generally use a half a dozen ( color depends on water clarity) Lucky Craft Pointers. The rest of the jerk baits are just to have them. I pull them out and look at and admire them from time to time.

Back in the day when BASS put on winter seminars and I went to one at the BPS Store in Springfield, MO, Shaw Grigsby was there and I asked him what his favorite loop knot was and he responded the King Sling. It is a challenge to tie and I don't always get it right the first time, but I think that it is a very strong loop knot. If I know I'm going to be throwing a lure that works better with a loop knot ( like a Pop-R or a Sammy ), I will double up the line and tie the King Sling with a doubled up line. Once you get that knot right, you have a very strong loop that will last all day.

My thoughts on shaky head jigs - It is windy more often than it is not windy. Shaky head jigs are fished on the bottom. I want my bit to get to the bottom asap, just to avoid wasting time. In reservoirs, I fish a 3/8 most of the time and I carry half ounce and quarter ounce as well. Jigs smaller than that, to me, are better suited for pond fishing, stuff less than 10' deep. I carry jig heads with "regular" hooks , for fishing standard trick worms & baits of that size and I carry jig heads with 4/0 or 5/0 hooks for fishing magnum trick worms and baits of that size. Most of the time, I'm throwing these 3/8 oz jig heads on bait casting gear with 15 lb or so fluorocarbon. Occasionally I will use spinning gear, still it is pretty heavy spinning gear, with a 20 lb braid/fluorocarbon leader set up. For me, jig heads lighter than a quarter ounce are for ponds & small rivers & creeks. (which I don't get to fish very often so all the lighter jig heads are in a separate box and I don't carry them in the boat. Even throwing Slider heads, which is kind of like shakey heads but different, a quarter ounce is as low as I generally go.

You understand that that Coleman Crawdad Ram-X is plastic and not fiberglass, don't you? Over the years, I've met a few guys who had that boat and fished with them a few times. I never felt comfortable standing up in that boat, and for the most part I wouldn't. The whole boat had just a little too much flex for me. The whole overall feeling was I didn't exactly feel safe. If you are the only boat on the lake, I think it is ok. There isn't a good place to put oar locks, so any secondary propulsion is going to be paddles. I didn't think that three was enough flotation in the boat, should you catch someone's boat wake and get swamped. That bothered me. I forget how much weight that thing is rated for, but as I recall, it isn't alot. So that limits the additions you can make to it. I haven't searched the crawdad boat mods, so I haven't a clue what can be done. What I would do would be to buy the biggest 12 volt transom mounted trolling motor I could find. I'd buy 3 of the biggest deep cycle batteries I could find and wire them parallel, using 6 gauge wire. I'd wire them together using wing nuts, so that I could take the wiring apart easily and connect the batteries to a 3 bank charger when I got home. Using that system, batteries should last 3 years, maybe more, and you'd have LOTS of battery power. Pay attention to placing the batteries, probably 1 underneath the back seat and the other two underneath the center seat, getting them on the centerline of the boat as much as possible. Some rod holders and beer can holders and you're set, go fishing. If any of the flotation in the covered compartments has come loose, rotted away, whatever, replace that asap.

Those blades on a jig head were a thing for a while in the 90's, ( maybe earlier ). That is when I recall Berkley marketed something similar. Didn't really take off, it was featured in the bargain bin within a couple of seasons. I've never seen one with that blade attachment system, but I haven't seen everything , either. I remember a bait marketed in the 70's, early 80's called the "Dirty Bird". Had a slightly bigger, more oblong blade attached to a larger head, which was some kind of plastic molded over lead and it had a fiber weed guard. It was marketed as a weeds/pads bait, and in certain weeds & pads it worked great, but if the vegetation got too thick, it didn't. It is obviously a fore runner of a chatterbait, IMO the flexible attachment of the blade on the chatterbait is a better idea. I have a bait that. is somewhat similar however there is a split ring on the edge of the blade to tie your line to and a flexible wire cable coming out of the head of the jig with a smallish Colorado blade. I fished this bait a couple of times with zero luck.

I'm still trying, in my head, to get to the point of this rant. I get it - fishing gear costs money and some gear costs more than other gear. Concerning the $75 fishing gloves, knock on wood, I haven't gotten skin cancer yet AND I do make a point of putting sun screen on the backs of my hands. Once upon a time, I had a buddy who didn't, skin cancer happened on the backs of his hands and the tips of his ears and while he is still breathing, it costs money to fix that stuff, money that didn't have to be spent had he been making a habit of using the proper gear and using sun screen, etc. A $75 pair of fishing gloves seems pretty cheap to me, compared to a couple of grand of doctor bills. Anyone with light skin, freckles, who sunburn easily, a pair of sun gloves is a smart investment, along with a good spa 50 or better long sleeve fishing shirt and you'll probably want that $25 hat mentioned as well. As mentioned a few posts earlier, you learn where you can cut corners and where it is dumb to. For me, using my fishing buddy as an example of what not to do, I choose to get all the high tech protective gear I can - AND - I want it to look cool too. I don't think this rant over the cost of gear is a new thing. It is my opinion that back in cave man days, one guy had a cooler club than some other guy did and club envy/ ranting about the cost of clubs ensued. I think that one of the cool things about fishing is that anyone can get into it at the level that they want to/ can afford.

Fiberglass rods are heavy. Graphite/glass composite rods are somewhat less heavy. It is my opinion that you can almost always find an action in graphite that is similar to any glass action you may want and you'll save several ounces in the process. Having fished with fiberglass rods in the 70's & 80's, having happily & successfully made the transition to graphite rods, I don't want to go backwards, technology wise. Every fiberglass rod I've handled recently I've thought it was too heavy, don't care if it has the right "slow bend" it weighs too much and I know my wrists will pay for it, so I don't buy them.

Even giving you a pass on the size, I still think that boat is a bad idea. You don't address how it handles in the wind at all. Don't address the paddling issue. You said you could put a trolling motor on it, I'd like to see how the weight of the trolling motor and the battery affects flotation. Even with just a 30 lb trolling motor ( which isn't going to do much in the wind ), I'd like to see what happens to the transom when it is flexed several times after a sharp turn. I'm thinking it is going to crack. Cracks in a hull with no flotation are bad. Point is if you are going to put a trolling motor on that flotation device, the transom should be reinforced somehow. There are more issues with this. How is the chair fastened into the hull? If you just have it setting in there, not fastened somehow, it is another accident waiting to happen. I hope you're never crossing a cove or something like that and catch a smallish to medium size wake coming from behind, where you can't see it coming. Over the side you go in that instance, unless the chair is securely fastened. How tight are the plugs in the jugs? In really hot weather, the air in the jugs will expand. Expand enough to pop the plugs? I don't know, but it doesn't seem like there is any redundancy built into your floatation plan. The best advice I can offer is be careful in that contraption.

Had these been available back in the day when I was a bank bound, meat fishing, bush hippie, I probably would have had one. They for sure give you an idea of how deep it is where. For a bank fisherman, that's important. For bank fishing, I think that they are more applicable to finding drop offs & brush, different kinds of bottom changes, I wonder if it would show transitions from deep weed line to sandy bottom, maybe more applicable to catfish & carp angling than bass. I think that you'd have to have a dedicated rig to throw it on, something on the lines of a 6' Ugly Stick & a Zebco with 20 lb line or so. Taking the castable transducer on & off your fishing rig would be a pain, and waste valuable fishing time.