shanksmare

I'm sure I'm missing something ... but I've watched the video several times and I don't see Jose 'mangling' the leader (he didn't seem to wet the knot before cinching it up - was that editted out to make the video shorter???). He used a spin off of a Spider Hitch (quicker to tie and almost as strong as a Bimini ... some say stronger) to form the loop in the braid and uses it to construct a 'modified' Bristol Knot. Bristol Knots are amongst the strongest of all the braid to mono knots. I'm sure if the knot he tied will hold up on a 30# permit it will suffice for a 5# bass.

another site seems to have the Christie Craws in stock.

The traffic reminds me of 4th of July or Labor Day weekends on Cape Cod.

Maybe if you read the post more carefully you would have noticed that I said MOST not ALL. By the way I went to a big sports school (at the time) and personally knew a lot of the athletes. Many of them went on to play in the NFL. It seems that the athletes were able to get tests before hand to study from! Even so many of them still couldn't pass the tests. If they were so intelligent, why was this a standard practice? Buzz, I also worked at many less than stellar jobs, but I didn't make a career of them. Did you?

Its just a great time of year when you get to watch people who are grossly overpaid for what they do, pledge alliegence to their current team, and then leave for another team that offers a dollar more. They say its not about the money ... but it pretty much always is. There are lots of "I's" in "team" at this time of year. Lucky they excel at sports or most of them would be working at the local car wash.

Prayers sent for a complete and speedy recovery from this heinous crime.

If you are fishing for larger fish in heavy cover the Owner Beast should warrant your consideration. A friend of mine (a former guide) used these hooks with large homemade Sluggo type lures on 10,000 sized spinning reels with 65 lb braid for casting to school tuna (up to 150#s). They should be fine with any bass you might encounter.

One

That certainly is an option. I did it that way for years and it seemed to work fine. However, bending the wire also makes the plain skirted/no trailer version look more natural also. I most often use a plain SB without any trailer and without any wire bending. A trailer often screws up the sb runs, especially in lighter weights. But its your call, do whatever you are comfortable with and works for you.

In most spillways don't they pull up the gates so the water passes under the gate not over the gate? That appears to be the situation here on the west coast of FL. I which case the snook and tarpon are free to swim past the spillway easily (at least in the summer during the rainy season when they are releasing freshwater into the creeks and rivers.

If you want the spinnerbait body and hook to run parallel to the line of travel, try the following: 1. Bend the wire where it exits the spinnerbait head straight out (parallel or in line with the hook shank) 2. With a pair of needle nosed pliers grip the wire about 1/4" in front of the nose of the SB body and bend it up at a 45 degree (or thereabouts) angle 3. Align the wire as you would normally do, so everything is in line 4. Test the SB in a swimming pool or clear water. With minimal ajustment your SB should run with the hook parallel with the line of travel. 5. add a trailer and it should exit the center of the skirt and run level rather than at an angle.

You could try watching the following 3 video clips to find where you have gone astray: Disassembly https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=noHY02Kof-U Assembly & Lube Part 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzMp2CDdoHI Assembly & Lube Part 2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L97-SyVrWg8 Good Luck!

If you want a reel that is built like a tank take a look at the Penn Battle. It will stand up to the rigors of saltwater fishing and the challenges that larger fish pose. I don't know of anyone who uses a Phleuger spinner in the salt, but I do know a lot of guys that have switched to Battles over the past 3 or 4 years.

I can attest to the fact that they work very well. They often times work too good on freshwater snook which can't leave them alone. These snook provide an excellent fight which often ends in a lost fish and lure if your line comes in contact with their abrasive lips.

I like Bluebasser86 use 3/8th oz bladed jigs most of the time. In shallow canals I frequently use a slightly smaller version (probably 1/4 oz, an old Bagley version that is not marked for weight). I have no trouble casting either on a BPS PQ loaded with 20# Sufix Seige. I also sometimes use the same setup with 50# braid. I know that I translate more bites to hookups by using a glass rod and mono line. I have witnessed on many occasions that I would pull the lure from the basses mouth before it was fully engulfed using a fast action graphite rod and braid. I guess I have too much of a hair trigger hookset. Your makeup may dictate otherwise. Just a thought to ponder.

The CRB stand looks great and the price is pretty reasonable. If you are only going to be using it to finish a couple of guide windings you can make a simple stand by cutting a couple of V notches in a cardboard box to lay the rod in. Place the rod in the makeshift stand and rotate it a 1/4 turn every 5 minutes for an hour or so. I have one that I made many years ago from an old electric barbeque grill rotiseirre (sp?) motor. It works great.

I did not know that. Thanks for the info.

Wow, I'm not sure where to begin. I guess the quickest lesson would be to charter a boat to fish for giant bluefin tuna and then judge for yourself. Bluefin tuna are constructed so that most of their fins retract into cavities or fit into recesses in their bodies. This makes them very streamlined and allows them to achieve tremendous speeds. They also have great eyesite and are exceedingly difficult to fool. A typical commercial outfit would include an 80 or 100# class reel, It would be spooled with 200# dacron with a 100' topshot of 200# mono and a 20 or 30' leader of 180# flourocarbon. The flouro would be wiped down with alcohol to remove residue and make it more transparent. You wear a glove and pull on the line to create more drag than the reel can provide (the reel will provide 45 or 50# or more depending on the size and model). The bait which is commonly used for tuna (at least on Cape Cod) is a 6 to 10# bluefish rigged with a bridle arrangement thru the eye sockets. The hook which is huge by freshwater standards is rather small (for stealth) by tuna standards. These hooks which look strong enough to tow a car are often bent and twisted during the fight. Fighting the tuna requires strict teamwork between the boat operator and the angler. The power of these fish is difficult to imagine. About 10 years ago I fished with a friend in Cape Cod Bay for these giants. We were using commercial tackle rather than sporting tackle (130# class). When you hool one of these fish it is like fighting a Volkswagen with a flipping stick. We landed the 700+# tuna after about an hour fight. We used an 80# class reel so I had to supplement the drag by grabbing and pulling the line with a gloved left hand. I regained feeling in my left thumb after about a month. It is a lot of work and I would never do it again. I had also landed a 723# tuna on sporting tackle in 1970. I vowed then never to do it again. I guess I forgot about the effort involved after 35 years and foolishly did it again. I've never watched Wicked Tuna but it doesn't sound like they are embelishing the process that much if at all.

A trick I learned from an angler fishing jigs for snook below a local spillway for dealing with snagged jigs (which happens frequently here due to the rock rubble on the bottom). He simply carried a 6" length of 1" dowel. When he hung up he simply wrapped the braid around the dowel and pulled until the line broke. I used 50# braid with a 2' - 40# mono leader (for abrasion resitance to the snooks raspy mouth not for strength). I secured the jig with an Improved Homer Rhode Loop Knot(probably only a 50% strength knot). When I hung up the rig always broke off at the jig. The dowel makes it easier to break the leader and you don't get line digin from pulling the line into the spooled line.

One disadvantage to a snap swivel is that if you're fishing a weedy environment it will foul more than a 2 ring swivel. It works fine for me because most often I burn a spinnerbait close to the surface but sometimes slow roll over rocks with sparse weed cover. I have heard the claim that spinnerbaits constructed with small snap swivels rather than double split rings foul more often in weeds. This has not been my experience. I started using spinnerbaits more than 40 years ago. I first got SBs from Bass Pro and modified them, then I started making my own. Naturally I was constantly tinkering with various blade, wire length and head weight combinations. To facilitate this tinkering I often used Imported ballbearing snap swivels. My experience was that sure they fouled with weeds, but not before the blade was fouled anyways. I guess the snap leads to heavier fouling than the split ring version, but its fouled anyways so your still going to have to clean the weeds off one way or the other. I still sometimes use some of my 40 years old ballbearing snap swivels and they don't seem to foul any more than the normal double split ring swivels. Instead of opening up the wire arm loop to change the swivel, why not just use the split ring to change it?

I've never ordered anything from them, but I've looked at the skirt materials and other stuff many times. I guess I'm not too observant because that was the first time I noticed the discount. That was the only discount/sale that I was able to find. Sorry for the false lead.

If you go to "Skirt Making Material", then click on the individual series the discount will appear. It ranges from 20% for 5 (10 tab) orders of a single color to no discount for some series.

I guess the best answer might be - it all depends. I've ice fished in Lake Winnipesaukee in NH when the ice was over 3 feet thick. So I guess any bass in a small landlocked lake near Winnie wouldn't stand much of a chance of winter survival if the pond was only 2 feet deep. I used to fishe a small cranberry bog reservoir that was 8 to 10 feet deep (maybe deeper in spots). The bass all perished during a very severe winter. There was ice on the pond for months. There was also heavy snow cover on the ice which I guess prevented sunlight from penetrating to the pond bottom. Many times in the heat of summer you will find bass in the shallows under heavy cover. Current may also influence where you will find the bass.

The alewives that occur naturally (not the stocked landlocked versions) spend most of their time in saltwater. In a month or so (depending on where you are along the coast) the adults will begin to travel up streams and rivers to fresh water ponds and lakes to spawn. The newly hatched alwives spend their first year in freshwater. In the fall these 3" to 5" yearlings congregate in the ponds where the streams exit to saltwater. They then swim down the streams and enter saltwater. The fishing near the mouthes of these streams can be outstanding in the fall. Blueback herring and alewives are indeed very similar. I once read a post or newspaper article by a biologist who stated that the only way to tell them apart definitively was to perform an autopsy on them. The stomach (if I remember correctly) is white on one species and black in the other. Unfortunately the great herring (alewive) runs that I remember as a kid are all but a distant memory due to overfishing and pollution. If you are going to try to keep alewives alive, I believe you need to use a circular aerated bait tank. As someone mentioned they have to keep swimming in order to survive. In the spring I knew some striper fishermen that had huge tanks in the backs of their pickup trucks. They used them to transport the live adult herring (alewives) to various locations to use as bait. They would keep the alewives alive for days using this technique. They also had pens in private creeks in which they kept a supply of alewives that would last them until after July 4th! I have fond memories of fishing the Cape Cod Canal in the evening 20 or 25 years ago for striped bass. My kids would catch me herring for bait as I fished. They always managed to get soaked during the process. Great fun!

I usually don't pay much attention to the commercials. I did however see 5 or 6 of them. Most seemed rather lame. I did however really like the lost puppy commercial. I found myself rooting for the puppy in spite of myself. I also liked the "when pigs fly" Dorito commercial.