emjaysmit

I have used their rods extensively here in South Africa and I really don't know where all the negative vibes come from. Not only Halo but plenty rods. Most people dont even bother looking after their rods and simply throw them down when catching fish or on the back of a pickup truck....ANY rod will break where it gets knicked under preasure... Value for money these are spectacular rods so far. I am really enjoying my Halo twilite's and I even own a Starlite el cheapo....After reading the vibes I tried my best to break them and I couldn't. As for the parabolic bend its not true for all their rods. The 7'0mh for instance loads just like any stiff fast action rod... I have fished basically everything I can gt my hands on and the only two rods I have ever broken is a Gloomis IMX and a Crucial spinning...but that was probably a bad batch....or it got a knick from someone playing in a tackleshop and clipping the blank against something...breakages happens guys....I wish the dollar was more humble to the rand then I would buy plenty more...for sub $200 I think you have to look far for a sweeter rod...but then I have used plenty of rods and have enjoyed them all...Gloomis Mossy, Kistler KLX's, zbones, alx zolo's, st.croix, steez, zillion and the list goes on, carrots, duckets, quantums whatever...you really have to be a retard if you cant pickup a bite on any ofthese rods...I believe most people writing reviews or negative one's anyway are by people that I dont think has ever even touched the rod they claim to have issues with... Different strokes for different folks...if Larry Nixon could feel a bait in the 80's on an old ass graphite rod using mono line and a spider jig in 60ft of water...you really dont belong behind a bass rod if you cant feel a bite anywhere this side of im6!!!

They are all brilliant reels...in terms of quality I feel the pre-malaysia reels are better...the new curados I bought I ended up selling. Brilliant reels but the new brake system on them are super high maintanence. Lews reels are good but yes, they feel a tad cheaper but at the same time smoother...the drag is also not as consistant as the Shimano. They cast a country mile but once you open them up they arent quite as refined. Like earlier mentioned decals are the first to come off. I have had shimanos that are over 20 years old with no decals coming off and they work...but I am impressed with the performance of the Lews and they have been around for ages... If I couldnt fish Shimano I would fish Lews and vice versa...both are really good products...any E series Shimano will be my go to reel,I also own JDM reels and a few Cores but if I had to choose between the Curado I and BB1 it would be the BB1...I really dont like the noise the Curado I makes when you tilt it while casting and it sounds like the reel is coming apart...I dont know why Shimano tried to re invent the wheel because the previous VBS system worked like a charm...

Well I download quite a bit of content off the net before I venture out to start a specific application. Got a tackleshop and have endless hours of watching on the bigscreen as my pc is also connected to the flat screen and I have a nice chillout lounge for customers in the shop where I spend alot of my time. I always kept hearing of guys fishing Jigs with 4 or so amber strands and saw the most popular Jigs by far was Black/Blue and Green Pumpkin followed by PB&J (peanut butter and jelly). Now to answer my first question I would have to go with the green pumpkin as I have more confidence in this colour than in black, also in my side of the world green pumpkin also gets you way more bites than black. I happened to have quite a few of the Molix Tenax Jigs in green pumpkin and as it so happens they also had 4 amber strands (this is just a matter of built up confidence from what I have heard) so my mind was made up on colour preference. First step : check Second Step, what kind or style of fishing suits me best. i.e rock and shoal or timber and vegetation. I personally prefer the latter as I LOVE fishing timber especially on our waters, Klipkoppie, Witklip Primkop, Injaka etc, the list goes on, this is without all the farm dams I often fish, they have hundreds of stumps, laydowns and overhanging bush, typical FLW and Bassmaster style with close quarters battles just waiting to happen. This after all is what got me into Jig fishing so the football style head got second place, especially considering the amount of grass and weed we have in our dams, the nature of the football style jig eye in relation to the head would just not cut it and I would be too busy getting rid of grass covering my jig and not getting the required amounts of time to fish it. I just love the idea of watching pro's get lunker fish mere meters from the boat in the thickest nastiest stuff that any sane person would never even think of putting a lure into. So first choice was a heavy cover and penetrating Jig for my personal style. Second Step : check Third Step, what depth do I fish and how heavy is the cover in relation to the jig I should present, now I don't have alot of confidence in a jig so my first step I would have wanted is a 1/4 or 1/8oz as I believe that when fishing something new rather downsize as the frequency of bites is normally higher. BUT...here comes the big BUT...A light jig would just not cover my application with regards to the kind of structure I would like to penetrate and fish. Also with my lack of deep water fishing skills I wanted something I could use for both the above mentioned applications. So I rather opted for a 1/2oz jig. Not to big but big enough to make it do what I wanted it to do in the thick nasty stuff, as well as in the deep more open water. Third Step : check Fourth Step, one of the most important attributes of a jig sits in the trailer (soos voet en plakkie of pap en shiba, een werk nie sonder die ander nie). Now do I want to immitate baitfish (nah got more than enough lures that get this job done) or a crab or freshwater crustation (now we are talking, I have seen some crabs this side that I would like to use for helping me snip braid). Now remember I don't have confidence in jigs so I don't want to stick a trailer on it that is going to make the bait look too bulky. I want to make it look compact, so I dug in my tackle box to try find a suitable trailer, now the general rule is that you want your trailer to match your jig i.e now looking for a green pumpkin trailer to match my jig but at the same time I don't want something bulky like a brush hog or a full sized creature trailer. Luckily I found a spare jig trailer (batwing styled) that I got with a berkley jig I purchsed many moons ago so on it went. My first outing to a local farm pond with my new arsenal saw me reaching instinctively for the lighter 1/8oz football Gary Klein Finnesse jig made spro in brown and black, luckily my logic got hold of me realizing the sheer amount of duckweed and watergrass found in this specific dam. So rather I picked my 1/2oz model although this was not my initial first choice as this was very bulky and going against all of my lack of confidence in jig logic. The boat was barely in the water for 5minutes, Leo starting to tie on a lure and me sitting with the idea of throwing this big unidentified pitching object when I made my first half hearted pitch, about 4m away from the boat to a bunch of lilly pads forming a little point (now in my mind I am still trying to figure out what the bite would feel like should a fish take against all of this dams finicky fish odds). My jig barely came to a halt on the bottem before I had the distinctive thud thud thud like a steriod worm bite rigged texas style, set the hook and got my very first keeper for the day. Leo frowning on this as this is mostly a green pumpkin weightless fluke dam (that normally has you easliy go through a packet of flukes in about 3 or so hours, boating 30+ bass ranging from 400g to 2.3kg) so he gracefully carries on tying his fluke. The rest of the day saw him land one fish on fluke, within the first hour I have already boated 10+ keeper sized fish. To such an extent that he tied on my other jig that I had made ready for the occasion and soon he was also into fish. Unfortunately from all the bites close to the end of the day my trailer was scarred for life with me fixing it with a lighter where ever I could trying to save it for as many bites sas possible. We got off the water and problem...eish no more trailer. Got back to the shop and was now faced with the fear of not being able to replicate my new found glory trailer. The next step was to use something I had confidence in thus resorting to the old faithfull Zoom Z-Hog in green pumpkin which I minipulated by cutting away and slimming most of the body and making it shorter to suite my style of jig fishing as well as to keep the bait profile compact. The next few sessions out still saw me catching the same amount of fish. This from now on is my preferred jig trailer till such a time that my confidence will allow me to do otherwise. Fourth Step : check Now we are are getting to the real meat and potatoes of jig fishing, your Rod and Reel Kit. I used a Quantum Smoke Reel with high speed retrieve (to be able to reel in slack line in time) and my 7" MH Carrot Stix Wild Green with a fast tip and 3/8oz - 1oz rating. I used 15lb P-Line 100% fluoro and this really handled the application like a dream. I believe the P-line is a really good value for money fluoro with very low memory ( I HATE LINE MEMORY ). I then rigged Jigs on the following setups to get a proper feel for the application : Quantum Smoke high speed reel (the reason I use smoke reels is that it's the only reel that I have ever fished that I could actually also feel the amplified vibration of the bite right into my reel through a good quality rod) on a duckett 7'6" XH and the same smoke reel on a quantum Exo 7'4" H. I must admit I prefer the balance of the EXO above mentioned for the application as it slots nicely in the middle of the 7' Carrot and the extreme 7'6" Duckett. The only thing I changed was the line, I first went to mono with the frightful idea of me snapping off on the bite using the heavier rods on the 15lb p-line (belive me fluoro sounds like a gun shot when it snaps). I still felt all the bites and the stretch was a bit forgiving, much more so than with the fluoro hence my fear of snapping at the knot. The only lacking aspect was when making really really long casts the strikes were too mushy with the stretch even though I was using 17lb mono. I then proceeded to move to a copolymor line as I thought with the added UV layer that stretch would be a little less. This was true and it coped very well but the downside was line memory. I have yet to find a copolymor with the same low amount of memory of a high quality mono or fluoro. Personally I am not a big fan of braid for any application (this is just my peronsal preference). I just simply break it to easily no matter if I even up to 60lb test, it just hasn't got the same abbrassive resistant qualities that a good quality mono or fluoro has. And pesonally I also hate tying leaders and have absolutely no faith in tying braid directly to my lure. I am one of those finicky fisherman that believe fish can see the line, I have seen to many times how much higher my rate of bite is than my friends on the same day using direct braid knots. Sure I do believe that braid is the ultra in sensitivity and it cuts very nicely through vegetation but at the same time it is costly and frays much to easily for my personal liking. No matter what ambilical cord (line) I used I have still managed to feel all my bites (that I know of anyway ) and I feel that this is all down to personal preference. In some applications certain lines outshine in various situations but for now I use a good quality fluoro in the 15lb range (I have never had a snap by strike)for most applications and a very high poundage mono in the really thick and nasty stuff. My sensation on my jigs have become a tad better using the broomsticks but I believe a good quality solid 7' MH and descent reel will get the job done most of the time. (if you don't fish 1oz jigs) Meat and Potatoes of jig fishing : check And the most important thing I can ever tell you from personal experience is to please NEVER apply the principle that "strikes are free" and if you think it's a fish strike...you lose more jigs and sit with a dented ego more than anything else as you will be striking more than you will be fishing. Remember jigs are made to fish the nastiest stuff and they are designed to make contact with everything...if I had to strike everytime something caused tension on my line I would be out of breath 3 casts into my fishing day and a jackass infront of everyone watching. It is however crucial to watch your line carefully especially on the fall and to be very observant at all times as to what your line, lure and rod are doing. But 9 times out of 10 you will feel that destinctive bite. When in doubt DON"T set the hook, rather just load up on your rod slightly with a bit of tention to a certain point and keep steady pressure. Wait for the fish to make a move...you will either at the worst of times notice your line moving to the side, feel the action of his tail swimming and moving or, here is the best part of all...even though I am still finding my feet with jig fishing and a jig fishing novice, almost all of the time from personal experience, when a bass has really committed to your jig and you keep that constant pressure when you are not sure whether it's a bite or not, you will eventually feel him chomping down on it AGAIN while he holds on as he is getting ready to crush it with those crushers in the back of his throat, and thats when you know to set the hook. I hope this has made some sense to you from a beginner jig fisherman to another...enjoy it, it's the single most awesome kind of fishing to me personally and even rivals the rush of top water fishing.....

Maybe not world Records yet but at the rate of growth I would expect Letsibogo to produce the yet again the next intercontinental African record that would easily rival the world record, during the dam low it's already producing a bigger average size bite than El Salto although no motorized craft are allowed. Another factor one needs to consider is the sheer size of the waters in the US in comparison to that of SA. Also Bass is native to America and have had ample time to produce some awesome gene pools. It might be a while still but the potensial is still there as bass are relatively new to SA in world terms.<br /><br />Given the right body of water, the right gene pool and the right climate together with the right forrage we wil definately be able to be a contender. Komatipoort has farm ponds that are already producing 40+lb 5 fish bags that rivals even big American lakes such as Falcon and Okeechobee. Biwa in Japan are producing but I do believe due to commercial fishing and being able to buy Bass on the local Japanese market it definately puts strain on the fishery, it may be a good thing to cull out undersize fish, big fish are few and far between and from what I have heard is that Biwa has some of the most difficult fishing out there.<br /><br />Maybe we too should start stocking Koi as forrage lol...<br /><br />Whatch the South African news.

A Rapala 13cm original floater in Silver or Gold, let it sit on top wait for the ripples to die off and give it a twitch and repeat...Best top water bait I have ever fished...

What makes sponsors choose individuals in the US? How does one go about getting a sponsor and what sort of are requirements should be met? Should a foreign people wish to compete successfully in the US how would one go about this...you can win as many comps as you like in SA but it will still still not warrant sponsorship in the US for a non US citizen...

All species jump out the water, in actual fact we fish a local farm pond with regular sightings of 5lb bass jumping at forrage literally landing on the reedline flopping around, last year during a recent trip to Mteri we saw bass in the grass literally jumping in the boat, we get various species of Carp in South Africa, Silver Carp, Mirror Carp and Giant Carp as we call them, they clear out of the water completely with massive splashes, during the rainy season when the flying ants fall on the water surface you regularly see bream, carp barbel and bass giving some air....

Hi their WRB, it's actually the all African Tackle Record and it was caught in Botswana which was declared a country on their own inside our country...Lesotho is also a country inside our country as well as Swaziland. So us South Africans see this as our own Countries. Zimbabwe is also on our Continent although the big fish in these areas cannot be registered as official South African records and get registered as African records. Zim's record is in the region of 17.6lb's and in South Africa it is an official 14lb something bass although numerous 15.5lb bass have come out, down side is that these anglers did not belong to a club and so cannot register it as official records... Since the introduction of Pure Strain Florida, SOuth Africa has had huge amounts of angling success with competition bags on good days averaging 26lb's...

All I know is that personally I prefer the older Curado E series to the G series, it has a better build quality and look to it... Basic models are the 200 series in 7 ratio and 5 ratio. You are also blessed with a 50 model for general finesse applications. In my opinion the most popular baitcasting reel in history. I personally am a Quantum and older Team Daiwa fan but simply can't fault the reliability, ability and user friendlyness of the Curado. There has to be a reason that you find more Curado's on boat decks around the world than any other reel...

My experience is that your flippin stick will be more sensitive as manufacturers know flipping relies more on sensitivity than frogging. My 2c worth out of a marketing point of view is that when building a frogging stick manufacturer's can rely on a not so much a lower quality blank but a less sensitive blank to get the job done resulting in a lower manufacturing cost thus improving profitibility with the finished product. I would rather use a flipping stick for frogging for this piece of mind. Another variable I take into consideration is that manufacturers spend millions in refining flipping sticks to get the weight down as low as possible as they know a heavy rod and reel setup is a very daunting task especially considering some pro's use the majority of their day flipping and pitching when conditions are ideal. Pro's can't afford the fatigue in a real world 8hour + fishing day. Please don't quote me as there are very good frogging products on the market. This is simply an individual opinion and one that gives me more confidence in this specific application.

Yes water can be too warm, remember they are cold blooded and cannot regulate their own body temp...water does this for them, warmer water is good but I have found that once water temp sores over 27 degrees celcius the bite dies down and you have to slow down your presentation. Simple example, we have a tank in our shop with a bass in...we accidentally left the tank heater too high and water temp was 29 degrees celcius, old Larry our bass just sat there while we added 5 snack offerings to him....he was hardly moving and was a very pale colour and fins flat...we tried everything and all the fish remained...for three days this wen't on till I noticed the water was at 29 degrees...went next door to the liquor store, baught a packet of ice, turned the heater down, chucked in the ice and the water temp dropped to a steady 23 degrees celcius...almost immediately Larry changed to a bright colour and the black marks on his lateral line became apparent, shortly after this his dorsal fin sprouted and he started moving around. 15 Minutes later he started feeding off the fish offerings like there was no tomorrow. If this is not proof enough then I don't know....

My peronal experience is that Florida strain grows quicker than Northern strain bass. You are sitting with the following defining criteria : a.) Water temp through out the year... b.) Genetics c.) Forrage d.) Strain e.) Predation f.) Cover e.) Water Body Size g.) Human intervention (i.e pollution, culling and re-stocking as well as breeding programmes) Down in South Africa we are sitting with the following situation, should all of the above criteria be met in the perfect balance you can potentially sit with a 2.2 lb's a year average especially closer to the Komati basin and having a majority population of Florida strain bass...we are in a very warm side of the world with bass hardly ever living past the age of 7 years, although their are exeptions giving potential 14lb + bass. Also taking into consideration time of the year ( are they stocking up on food reserves and/or are they full of eggs ) this would obviously affect the weight of the fish. A freak acciden't that no-one can quite explain is the relatively young Letsibogo Dam craze in Botswana producing 200 fish plus a day catches with a average of 7.7lb a fish, numerous 10lb + fish and a dam record of 18.2lb's. Some say it's the African version of El Salto with days that literally make your hands bleed from lipping the monsters and handling gloves being recommended. This was when the dam was relatively clear, but of late it has recieved an extreme amounts of rain hiding loads of visible structure and making fishing much more challenging with very off-colour water. Some people say the quality of fish is because of government intervention. Being a main water supply to the region, no large craft or outboards are allowed on this body of water. In past only Botswana citizens were allowed to fish this body of water, only lately with the government promoting tourism have lodges been granted permits to take clients out on the water from other countries. This again comes down to water management. If you manage the fishery properly and premote catch and release you can hardly ever go wrong.

Different water temperatures in ponds effects bass at different stages...who says that bass have to go deep and not cruize, they were cruizing and obviously they weren't feeding...is the pond deep enough to give them potential deep water access? Also remember different ponds have different numbers of male to female ratios... It happens a lot of the time that there are more females than males not giving all of them a chance to spawn and vice versa...if you have more males than females obviously you have more beds than available potential female mates and you end up with this scenario... You could possibly also encountered a cold front prior to visiting that might have made some of the females abandon the nests before returning till temps return to normal, it could also be the possibility of large amounts of predators emptying entire fish fry's or eggs at any one time, making the females leave the nests with the males hanging on hoping for the odd cruizing female to return to their offerings, remember if her offspring has been depleted she did what nature intended her to do and will leave, this does not mean that the male will leave the nest just because one female got her knickers in a twist.... Good luck