evilcatfish

JDM Evergreen rods have pretty much ruined most others for me. Build quality and performance is exceptional. I do have several other rods I really like, but the EGs now makeup around 50% of my combos. If I was picking an American company, I'd say ALX is tops in my opinion.

Very sorry to hear this sad news. We are all thinking of you

You can get exposed hook type jigheads that have a wire weedguard on them. The guy that used to make them for me retired, but I'm sure some garage maker out there still does them

I found this chart on Ozark Anglers. This looks like your color on the bottom left but its kind of blurry. I feel like "Parrot" would be appropriate

On top>Buzzbait/Frog/Spook Moving>Spinnerbait or Squarebill Bottom>Jig or tube

I've been around for a while too and recently lost access to it, not sure why

Are you looking for an all around rod or will you be focusing on certain techniques?

I really like that sapphire craw!

I think a certain amount of pressure is a good thing. It makes us fishermen adapt and think outside the box. While some are a little goofy, the unique baits that come out of Japan are often born from pressure and the need to try something new. This said, I have seen social media induced pressure really hurt some smaller waters. A friend of mine and his stepson started fishing the past few years in mostly local ponds and creeks. I enjoy seeing pictures of the fish they catch and often hook them up with some baits and techniques to try. Well they found a somewhat obscure pond located on the edge of a neighborhood and industrial area. This place didn't look like much but was full of 3-4# bass, and apparently a good population of bluegill and channel cats. Instead of keeping quiet about a good thing, they started posting pictures on the Fishbrain app. Needless to say, more people started showing up to fish there, some keeping everything they caught with fishing quality going downhill. The worst part was the influx of people brought litter and trash being left all over. It turned out the property was owned by one of the businesses in the industrial park, who were generally ok with people fishing there. What they weren't ok with was people leaving litter everywhere and parking in their lot during business hours. Now nobody gets to fish there. Seems like its in our human nature to love things to death, or is that just greed?

I’m pretty much all daiwa but will say shimano makes fantastic products as well. Both of these companies put out quality reels and offer good customer service I recently did recently purchase the new shimano Calcutta 30 SE, and it’s impressive

I’ve never really understood the coloring your line thing. To me, the color of faded braid looks much more “natural” than fresh or braid that’s been colored with a sharpie. Granted, I only fish straight braid with frogs or when punching, sometimes topwater

I don’t use any bug repellent. I feel if the bugs are that bad the best bet is long sleeves

Keitechs or classic curly tail grubs for me. A fluke is good too if you want something more subtle

I’ve used them a good bit. I flip them using an owner jungle or hayabusa hook, and generally unpegged or loosely pegged. I usually use a 1/8-3/16 weight, though I don’t really flip tubes in real nasty stuff

I've been wanting to try the shrink tube method, but decided before buying anything else, I should probably whittle down the piles of O-rings I already have 😆