nboucher

After all, Ted Williams is in the Fishing Hall of Fame.

kb, thanks, that is indeed a very very nice setup. The sloping shelves on the unit are a particularly clever touch. Very compact, and I see you put it on coasters, too. I think I can guesstimate the measurements from the photo. A couple of questions: Are those countersunk screws with plugs on the facing piece, or did you use pegs? Did you use oak, ash, or stained pine? Or none of the above? Is that more or less a box the rod butts are sitting in, and do they just lean back into the top slots? I like those shelves with the reels in them, too. Are those glass doors? Also, did you make that rolltop desk? You are a terrific woodworker!

Now that's a wife with an excellent eye! Maybe I can borrow her to go through my tackle box sometime. ;D

This winter I'm going to build a rod rack. I found a pretty good design for one online, but I'm wondering whether any of you have built one and would like to share plans or post photos. The plan I downloaded has pegs along the side to mount reels, which I thought was a nice feature. If anyone's interested, here's the link. It's from the Australian edition of Better Homes and Gardens, of all places: http://www.bhg.com.au/display.cfm?objectid=85AA2F76-0E9A-4851-A1AE67E227670109&navid=A051D0EE-7710-4124-B241262E3DDA74D5

Thanks, all. I was also considering the G Loomis IMX rod, but it's a bit more than I want to pay at the moment. Carl, that is a sweet price for that rod. I actually got the Stradic new on e-bay for $95, so I was browsing there a bit the other day. I'm probably going to mull this one over until the holidays come. I've also got my Red Sox season tickets to pay for next month. The Fork trip is what inspired the Stradic purchase; I need to hold my own on that boat! Chris, I'll use this rod for soft plastics mostly and some crankbaits and finesse jigs. Because I fish out of a kayak, I never take more than two rods with me, so I need to be a generalist with them. I know this has been discussed to death on these forums, but I still find myself wondering whether a Legend Elite or a Loomis GLX would be wasted on someone like me. I'm an average angler who's still learning tons whenever he goes out, but I'm not sure I'd feel the difference between fishing with an Avid or a GLX. I'm not sure I'm that good. Plus, when I go out with LBH and see his success with a Pfleuger President on an inexpensive rod, I wonder how much the gear has to do with it. It's like those weekend cyclists you see with the bright biking clothes and the thousand-dollar bikes. I don't want to be impersonating fishing's equivalent of Lance Armstrong, when I'm really just a guy on a bike . . .

Upgraded my spinning reel to a Stradic 2500 for my birthday, and now I'm wondering what rod to match it with. I'm thinking a St. Croix Avid AS70MF. Opinions? Alternatives? Thanks, Norman

Yo-zuri Ultra Soft, in either 6 or 8 # test. Can't beat it.

You could use it once, but I'd use a lot of reinforcing tape, especially at the ends. Mine had actually popped open at one end, and the UPS guy and I looked over the rod carefully to make sure it was still okay. I don't remember just how wide they are, but I'd guess you can fit two, maybe three, rods in one. I doubt they'd hold up under airline handling for more than one trip.

I suspect the spool is overfull. Try pulling some line off so you've got about an eighth of an inch of clearance between the line and the edge of the spool.

BPS sends the rod and reel separately, so the tube is really only good if you take the reel off and put in your regular luggage. Which is what I do anyway when I'm traveling with rods and reels. By the way I have that combo, too (6'6" MH Woo Daves Xtreme rod), and caught some nice fish with it this year, including the baby in my avatar.

Gold and Tennessee shad have also been good HJ colors for me.

The Husky Jerk worked very slowly is one of the first baits that's effective for me in early spring, though next spring I will mix in X-raps, which I've only recently bought for the first time. I'm interested to see if I notice much difference in effectiveness.

Some guys do, and with no problem. I've tried it a few times. The key is keeping tension on your line, so the fish can't shake the hook off.

I hear you, SPEEDBEAD. My low-cost alternative: Spinning: Shimano Sahara on a BPS M Bionic Blade Casting: Shimano Citica on a MH BPS Woo Daves Xtreme Senkos (5" or 6") Rapala DT crankbait Jig (Booyah with Zoom Super Chunk trailer) Slug-go or Rapala Husky Jerk Zoom horny toad

I do agree about the lousy quality of campaigns and most politicians. I strongly disagree that not voting is a political statement. Not voting is a vote for the status quo, but more than that, it allows whichever party has the best turnout machine to win. That is not a democracy. There is always one candidate that is the less objectionable choice, at least. Not to see any difference is just lazy thinking, imho. I also think that it's particularly important to vote in this election as a way of honoring the men and women who are dying in Iraq so Iraqis can vote. No matter what we think of the wisdom of the war itself, we owe them that much.

I miss you already, man. :'(

One thing I commented to LBH about while fishing with him once is how he almost wedges the butt of his rod under his right armpit or between his upper arm and his torso. Keeping the butt high like this gives him a higher fulcrum, so that when he cranks down to set the hook, he can get a longer and more powerful arc. I noticed that I tended to keep my rod butt lower, which I think gave me a weaker hookset.

Thanks for sharing! Avid's right.

Great discussion. Avid, it's sad that the stay-close-to-nature approach is considered an old geezer approach. It needs to come back, big time, if the natural world we all love is going to survive in any self-perpetuating way . . . As far as the gadgets are concerned, I think each angler has to have a personal ethics, and each of us modifies them to suit our own needs and beliefs. Left to my own devices, I'm a purity and simplicity kind of guy, but that doesn't mean I won't hitch along for a day with a gadget geek, if the opportunity comes up. FC is right: sometimes the gadgets actually become the end in themselves rather than the fishing. The climbing world has gone through these debates big time. Back in the 1950s, ascending Everest took hundreds of porters and Sherpas and oxygen tanks. Here in the U.S., climbers would screw various devices permanently into the rock to provide rope support. Then the backlash set in and light, swift climbing was the rule, and people actually starting removing those old pitons and stuff. That reached its peak when Everest was climbed by one man solo. Now if you have enough money, you can literally be dragged to the top of Everest without any experience. The point is we each have to decide which style angler we want to be, where that line is.

Excellent work, Nathan! Love to see those smiles. Welcome to the gang. Norman

Russ, how'd you do yesterday? And how was that venison stew??? I got a date with a rake today :-[

Good luck! Gonna be brutal out there.

Radical temperature drop in New England overnight. Air temp was 43 degrees when I hit my local pond at 11 this morning. Water temp: 48 degrees. Wind: 10 mph Didn't have high hopes, but the sun was out and I had the day off from work. It took awhile: tried a jig, an X-rap, then a lighter jig without success. Finally tied on my old reliable blue shad DT-6 cranked with pauses and picked up a nice little 1lb, 12 oz LMB. Then it was time to go home. We're supposed to get another warm up next week, but I'll be at work. Season's not over yet.

FC, that egret/blackbird photo is a classic! If you haven't already, you should get it published. I'll bet Audubon or any of the wildlife mags would buy it.

Excellent post, FlyRod. Heartbreaking about that little girl. As her story shows, feeding a wild animal is always perilous and often has unintended consequences. (The classic story comes from the 1960s and involves the bears of Yellowstone. For decades they were allowed to feed in the dumps there; in fact, watching bears at a dump in the evening was one of the touristy things to do. Then they closed the dumps and suddenly the area had a big-time bear problem on its hands.) Your experience with Beaky was a happy one, fortunately, because you were the only one feeding the bird. Animals that become dependent on humans, though, can get tame enough that when the humans go away they have trouble feeding themselves. Or because they have learned to associate humans with food, they can get overly aggressive toward humans. The moral of the story: as pleasurable as it may be to offer handouts, let nature take its course and try not to feed the wildlife.