Tim Kelly

I know that feeling!

They're good fun to have around. He really likes going fishing too. Took a long time to warm to him after my previous spaniel who was much easier, but I wouldn't be without him now.

You can have a 3 shot semi on a shotgun certificate. If you want a bigger magazine you need to apply for it on a firearms licence, which has a far stricter level of control and you need to be able to demonstrate why you need one, rather than the police effectively needing to say why you shouldn't have a shotgun certificate. Two different levels of gun ownership. All rim and centre fire rifles, airguns over a certain power and large capacity shotguns or slug firing shotguns are on firearms licences.

The FG/FJ/ whatever else people call it knot is undoubtedly the strongest and thinnest, but it is a bit of a fiddle to tie. Once you've got it down you can tie it in 2 or 3 minutes, so it's not a quick one but I've never ever had the line break at the knot. Ever.

I love my Atkinson SXS and use it for all my "rough shooting", as we call it here. Walking around in thick woodland behind the dogs, spaniels mainly, is the ideal environment for a side by side gun. You can walk with the gun broken without the cartridges falling out. The angle the gun opens to is not as wide as an O/U, which makes it easier to carry and faster to deploy. The weight is less than a similar O/U and with the limited number of shots I'm likely to fire in a day the recoil isn't an issue. Double triggers are very handy too as you can instantly choose the choke barrel or the open barrel when snatching a shot through the trees. I also have a long barreled O/U and a semi auto for other situations, but walking the woods with the dogs, no contest.

Matthew 2000, a man of great taste. The only fancy car I could ever imagine wanting to own or drive would be a Maserati.

Really? A beetle?

It's an interesting test, but I don't think it is as relevant for actual fishing simulations. What you're testing is the elastic limit (breaking point) pretty much. Fluoro seems to stretch until it fractures and when it gets near to it's fracturing point the line is very degraded. Mono tends to be able to stretch and bounce back much better. If you are pulling for a break you are aware of this, but when you're fishing the properties of FC and mono are very different. Fluoro feels much more direct. I would guess it resists stretching for longer than mono and when it starts to stretch it starts to get damaged. Mono doesn't resist stretching at all so you get a linear amount of stretching at all loads, which is why mono feels less connected.

2015? That's optimistic!

Thank you. I think that's the best reason I've heard yet.

Back the hook hanger out and twist the blades a bit, so they're at an angle, like a propeller blade. If it still won't turn take the back hook hanger off and enlarge the hole in the prop.

I use quite a few two piece rods as they're easier to transport on planes. You really don't notice they're two piece once you're fishing them, the only disadvantage is the narrow choice of blanks you have compared to one piece blanks. I wouldn't bother gluing them together myself, you never know, you might want to travel sometime and having a couple of two piece rods could be very handy.

I have one and it's very nice. Not a very good bfs reel if you want to throw anything under 3/16, or maybe 1/8 in good conditions though. With the fast retrieve rate it's fantastic for 4" senkos, shakey head worms or lighter Texas rigs. Very easy casting typical Shimano style.

Surely it's 25% thinner, or 25% stronger? Otherwise it would be 50% thinner or 50% stronger?

Tuffy x-190 or skeeter MX series.

Get some mend it and all your baits can be repaired! Just set them aside and glue them back together when you get home or while the fishing's slow. Stuff works really well and the repair is 100%, unlike a superglue or welded repair.

That's my only thought too, but even a 1/4oz jig head is pretty tiny and most people don't use drop shot weights that heavy fishing in lakes.

Thanks Sam, but a plastic on a jig head is going to hang pretty horizontal too. I agree that a texas rigged one wouldn't.

OK. What they were doing on the program was fishing vertically and dropping down in 30ft of water to fish that were at 20ft. Seeing the rig drop on the sonar and stopping it when it got to the fish. The DS weight was nowhere near the bottom. I'm wondering why you'd fish a drop shot rig for that circumstance, rather than the same plastic on a jig head.

Yes, but I still don't get what the advantage of a drop shot rig is over the same bait fished on a jig head.

A good haircut would help keep you cooler.....

Can anyone explain why people seem to tend to use a dropshot rig vertically, especially for suspended fish? I use the DS rig quite a lot for casting and love it, but if I'm fishing vertically I tend to use a jig head in the plastic, especially if I'm off the bottom. I was watching MLF the other day and Brent Ehrler was using a DS rig vertically. I've heard many times people saying the smallies were hitting the weight, not the plastic, but if you use a jig head that can't happen. Can someone explain what I'm not understanding?

You're right, but the point (sorry) is the same.

Aaron Martens had a great deal of product endorsement credibility as he used the reels he liked, without sponsorship (though I'm sure he didn't pay retail for them) and fished with Megabass rods, which are widely acknowledged to be fine quality rods. The VMC hooks are undoubtedly good quality too, so no real obvious "he's only doing it for the money" stuff in his fishing sponsors line up. That credibility can be easily lost if he's gone to a company just for the paycheck. I'm sure they'll be perfectly fine rods, but he could easily over play his hand and lose a lot of sponsor value with all the companies who sponsor him if they turn out to be unexceptional fishing rods (other than being exceptionally ugly of course!). Good luck to him, he's no fool so I hope it works out well for him.