HeavyDluxe

Zoom UV Speed Craws seem both durable and catch-y.

I've been interested in trying waterfowl hunting for a couple years... A couple summers ago, the local game warden was telling me that the backwaters of the little pond close to my house was actually a great spot for it - but my father's death made it so I'm just now coming back around to the idea. I'm a n00b at this, and having a bit of a hard time finding other waterfowl hunters in the area to perhaps hang around with and learn. Can anyone recommend a couple solid books on waterfowl hunting that someone like me should be reading? I've got some amazon bucks to spend, and am a heavy-duty book reader anyway. Would love any titles you guys have that might get me on the way. Looking to hunt out of my fishing kayak (a WS Ride 115) in Vermont, if that matters for your tip-giving abilities.

Bit of a threadjack, but I was just looking at the same kits as the original poster... so it's not a terrible threadjack. Can someone give me the 'why I might want to build a custom rod' pitch? From the outside looking in, the main benefit seems to be just the fun of mixing/matching components or being able to make beautiful cosmetics. At a function level, though, I can't see what buy a St. Croix blank and putting the guides/grips gives me that buying a factory rod wouldn't. The closest parallel I can think of is reloading ammunition for firearms where the main benefit is reducing cost (loading your own, if you don't charge yourself much for your labor, is cheap) and the ability to tune loads to your rifle or specific uses that might not be available in factory loads. I don't need another hobby but I'm way curious.

What's the bait/color in the fishy's mouth in the second picture. New England here... for the most part, crawfish I see are a uniform, muddy pumpkin color. They'll get brighter in creeks but nothing like some posted here.

Spinnerbait, Jig & Craw trailer, some worm-based soft plastic (wacky rig, t-rig, weightless, drop shot), and either a spook or hollow-body frog.

The 3/8oz Dredge or the standard brush head are, IMO, the most versatile.

Test, test, test. Get in as many boats as you can... You can (and will) adjust to anything, but you'll see/feel differences between each kayak you sit in. Get on the water in as many as you can and see what 'feels' right to you. I have a Ride 115 and love it (though I'll admit to a little jealousy when I look at the new boats). If I were buying now, the only thing I'd change is going for a longer boat. If I was on a budget I'd be looking hard at the Ride 135, or I'd be looking at the ATAK 140 if price was no object. Get as long/big as you can meaningfully handle...

Those do not live in Vermont. Yet.

I could envision the possibilities as soon as it was mentioned... just had never thought of it before. It's so cool to see what people hack together when they're forced to (or decide to) be creative.

The reason braid is more susceptible to bite-throughs from toothy fish isn't the line diameter of the whole strand, it's the diameter of each strand. The sharp teeth easily fray and slice each small strand in rapid succession until the remaining strands fail under load or slice themselves. If the line isn't in the fish's mouth (face full of hook and the line's clear), you'll be fine with braid. But, if you're targeting toothers, you'll be better off with a thick mono or fluoro leader. If you want to test this... Take some paracord and slide it across your knife to cut it. Then, take another piece and heat it until some of the strands fuse. Try cutting that bit of cord... You'll feel an immediate difference in how the knife has to cut to pull the line apart. (And I don't mean melt the paracord 'til it turns into a solid blob section... just enough heat to glaze it and fuze the smaller cords.)

Genius. I love this forum.

39 Hours is awesome... I wish Uncut and the other multi-species Canadians were still producing more regular content. The Uncut Bloopers, for some reason, slays me every time I watch it. ("That's what can happen when you're fishing with fluorocarbon.") I still watch the younger kids on Youtube, though I'll skip through if they're just vloggy... I also recently started binge-watching FLW videos, so I've been picking through channels by various anglers from there (Scott Martin, Gussy, etc).

FWIW, I fish some bodies of water that are grass/timber and others that are rock... Siebert's brush jigs seem to be a good 'all around' head for the conditions I fish. I bought some other heads at one point, but wound up going back to brush jigs for almost everything.

There are 'luxury brands' of mono... But, I use Trilene XL. There is a Trilene XT line that is supposed to be 'tougher' if you need extra abrasion resistance, etc.

If you want true mono, I have come to prefer Trilene XL. I know the XT version is supposed to be 'tougher', but I like the limpness and performance of the XL. I even use XL mono on my jig rod for throwing into timber (12lb) and it holds up fine.

3/8oz brush jig from @Siebert Outdoors will do just about everything well... You can pitch it in timber or grass and bottom bounce it. You can swim it if you want to do that. Here's the last order I placed with them if you want some ideas. It's my third order of jigs from that company, and I doubt I'll order anywhere else.

Usually, neither... If I think a fish is somehow exceptional, I'll measure or weigh depending on what's around. I do have a bump board I keep on my kayak. As has been mentioned, most kayak tournaments are catch-measure-photo-release, so I went that route. Also, our state's angling citations are measure/photo, too... If I'm with a friend who has a scale and think I have something exceptional, I'll weigh it. In the end, I'm not competing against anyone except myself... and I'm more concerned with figuring the fish out and catching than I am with weight at this point.

I fish strictly mono (2lbs on my UL, 6lb on my M/F, 10-12lb MH/F) for a lot of reasons. I'm cheap, and mono - even highly-reputable brand mono - is inexpensive. I also grew up as the son of a DuPont employee who worked on the machines that made Stren back in the day. I remember salt-water fishing with Dad on spinning gear and 14lb, yellow Stren mono. "If you can fight it in on 14lb Stren and a good rod and reel, I don't want it in the boat with us anyway." And we caught a lot with 14lb Stren. To be honest, I also am a sucky knot guy... and since I fish in mostly gin clear water here in New England, I do feel like a leader would be warranted if I was fishing braid. So, that gives me the willies, too. I tried braid with mono backing and had issues with it... I tried a full spool of braid with electrical tape backing, had more issues, and just didn't like the feel/performance of it. I think that, as @Bluebasser86 wrote above, there are better tools for certain jobs but you can make a number of different tools 'work'. So, choose what's important to you and see what best suits your game. Unless you're a pro seeking to make bank on your angling skills, this is only a (wonderful, awesome) hobby. And so, if you're happy, then that's a win. Full disclosure: I am definitely going to try punching really think mats/pads more next year. I'll probably try braid for that application and, if it works well, maybe give it a shot on another rig. I want to work on my knots this winter, anyway. So, next year I might be try to go back and delete all these mono posts and just act like a lifelong advocate for braid.

It's a bit of a threadjack, but... I am 100% certain there are days where the papaya-garbanzo swirl pattern of a bait catches when the green pumpkin seems to turn the fish off. In my case, a friend was getting bit on a stickbait that was some sort of "red shad" color and I couldn't buy a bite on green pumpkin, black/blue, etc. I borrowed one of his baits and, as the say, "it was on like Donkey Kong." Math says those days are exceedingly rare (and my limited experience confirms it)... So, I definitely wouldn't build my angling strategy around color. But, it can happen.

What @Senko lover said is spot on with one slight alteration... That 10% wherein the bass will only hit senkos is a little high. That's because there is at least some percentage of days where they will only hit a [BPS Stik-O, SK Shim-E-Stik, etc etc etc]. I have a friend who fishes with Yum Dingers exclusively... he swears by the whole F2 attractant thing. Every once in a while, he'll catch more than I will throwing the Dinger in whatever color while I'm throwing a Senko in the same color. It's a mystery why the fish want what they want sometimes... But, on any given day, any given lure can be the money bait. Most of the time, though, close enough is good enough.

So, not sure where I really ought to post this since it isn't focused on tournament fishing, per se. Mods, move freely! I've never been someone to watch a lot of tournament fishing... Much of tournament fishing on TV tends to be more about the suspense of the competition or the personalities/experiences of the anglers. That's all good, but I'd rather watch something more instructional that I could more readily apply to the smaller waters I fish here in New England. That changed this summer - and honestly it was prompted by some of the 'how rare is a 10lb bass here or there' threads that have popped up recently. I was curious to see how the catches of tournament pros stacked up in terms of average fish per day and weight distribution. What can I say? I'm a huge nerd. Anyway, having googled looking for meaningful data dumps from the BASS or FLW tours (which I couldn't find) I wound up on the YouTubes watching videos while I was doing dishes. My interest got further piqued and I wound up binge-watching close to two years worth of FLW and other tournament videos online in the past 10 days or so. This spurt settled the big issue around 10lb bass for me, but I also tried to glean as much as I could to put into practice for my own fishing. Here's what I think I've learned, and I thought it might start a good discussion... So, I'm posting my ramblings here for all to see. Take with an appropriately large-sized grain of salt... About a half-pound lump ought to do it. Tournament anglers seem to know that the game revolves around locating fish... Learning to read the body of water and conditions in order to FIND fish is probably the most important thing I can invest in improving. All the time in the world spent in 'empty' water isn't going to fill the boat. And I'm sure that I'm not applying enough thought to carefully thinking about why I am doing what I'm doing and where I intend to do it. Keeping the bait in front of the fish is the best way to get bit. This sounds self-explanatory, and of course it is. But, it's clear from watching just how frequently pros cast back to their targets and how little time they spend aimlessly casting or wasting time. Now, I don't have to beat anyone, but I could learn to combine the thoughtfulness from #1 above with keeping the bait(s) in the strike zone. Pick a spot that I think holds fish, cast there, work it, and retrieve my bait to cast there again as soon as I feel I'm out of the productive location. Techniques (drop-shottin', jiggin', crankin', etc) clearly matters but the specifics are not as important as I think we're led to believe. If you watch, anglers on the same spot will, from camera shot to camera shot, pull out fish on different baits. Again, I'm sure there are cases where the fish are only biting a lime green craw dipped in Penzoil on a Texas rig and not biting anything else. But the majority of time it seems that the main thing is, again, just using a presentation that targets the fish's location (depth, cover/structure) and general mood (active, passive). I should stop spending so much time fretting about what I have to fish with and focus more of my thinking on whether the location is - given the conditions - apt to be productive. Having watched a lot recently and tried to be empirical in what I saw, I have to say I'm not sure what to make of pattern fishing... At the very least, patterns seem to be highly localized to specific concentrations of fish. Again, I'm sure exceptions exist but it seems like the pattern which fish are responding to seems way more broad and general in most situations than I've heard it presented. Having said that, I do not pay nearly enough attention to the data that I should be getting while fishing. I turn off my brain and analysis way too much. Watching these better anglers just convinced me how blind and ignorant I am, functionally, when I fish... whereas these people in the highly-branded shirts and boats watch and think about EVERYTHING. There's more, I think... but it really is all variations on a theme. To grow as an angler means to engage the brain way more intensely and consistently on the water than I do. There are lots of different strategies that are effective in these tournaments. Generally speaking, there's always someone catching fish shallow and someone catching them deep. What seems to matter most is using one's noggin to find the fish (moving when necessary), and then thoughtfully analyzing the situation in order to adjust your approach accordingly. I ponds I fish are blips on the map of some of the massive lakes the pros find themselves fishing... but the general mindset is, I think, the same. And I'm confident that I'll do better if I try to cultivate a bit of that competitor's mindset when I'm on the water. Curious what others have seen and learned from watching other anglers... Thanks for reading/replying.

Don't have one, but the RG-AB's been discussed a lot on threads here as a viable contender to dethrone the Pflueger President as the 'go-to' $50-60 spinning reel. I'm sure if you jump on it, you'll have no issues.

If I understand the question correctly, I think it's clear the answer 'should be' Strike King. As I've said elsewhere, I'm sure there are days when the bass will eat a Green Pumpkin GYCB Senko and *not* eat an identically-presented, Green Pumpkin Shim-e-stik from Strike King. But, those days are rare. I think it's FAR more common to have the days where they won't bite a worm but WILL bite a buzzbait or crank or spinner or [insert any number of other things]. SK makes good versions of all those other things along with good, wide-ranging soft plastics. So, if I had to choose just one company for the rest of my life, SK would win over GYCB. If I could only choose x-number of BAITS, however, the answer might be different... Soft plastics would be the one thing I wouldn't want to have to live without, and GYCBs just catch fish seemingly more consistently for me.

It is... And, at first, I think I bought it for just that reason. "Whoa, that looks neat." I'd fished through almost all the colors from my first order from Siebert (made a couple years ago when I wanted to try jig fishing, but never got around to it 'til this summer) until only the bluegill was left. Finally, I put the bluegill color on and it's been the best producer of the summer in clear water - both swimming it and bottom contact. Funny how something can go from sitting in the tackle box to 'confidence bait' after a few good fish.

Stuff happens... Sitting in a kayak, with my cell phone in a dry bag. I had brought it because my mother's health has been a little off so I wanted to be able to get a call from her or my wife if needed. Sure enough, phone rings and its mom. Talk for a few, everything's ok. By the time we're done, it's getting late and so I decide to make one more quick cast. Phone on my leg (why I didn't put it between my legs, I'll never know) until I accidentally brush my arm over it and slide it off my leg and over the side of the yak. The best part: The phone has... er, had an environmental error condition. If it was subjected to WAY to cold/hot/wet conditions, the LED flash for the camera and the alert LEDs on the front of the phone would flash. So, an instant after hitting the water, the lights started blinking... I watched as it slowly flashed into the depths only to flash no more. It was a cool, eerie little light show.