the reel ess

I kayak, so no. And the place I usually fish is about 2 miles away so fuel for the truck isn't a big deal. I work from home. That alone has saved me about $1200/year for 9 years. But then my daughter went to the governor's high school for the arts about 2.5 hours away. We've spent more in the wife's car in the last school year.

I use braid main line with a mono leader on a medium spinning rod. But I'm not trying to get the bait deep. It would probably be smarter for me to use mono, but I want to use the same rod for some single hook presentations. I didn't do well with flouro when I first tried it. it seems like the middle ground between mono and braid, except it sinks. I usually fish shallow, weedy places.

I'm gonna tell you a little secret. I like to fish jigs and T rigs around specific wood cover. More often that not, I detect a bite because the line is moving, not because I felt it with my very sensitive jig rod. The little guys are helpful with that tell tale tap-tap. The big ones just suck it in. They might move and they might not. I feel those because they are heavy dead weight when I lift my jig.

I found a new Pflueger Trion size 20 spinning reel, still in the original package at a pawn shop for $20. Retails for $40. I bought a Falcon Lowrider (made in USA) "big cranker" MH rod from a coworker for $50. It retailed for $130 even back then. Still the most sensitive rod I own. It was my pitching/frog rod for quite a while. It's just about the perfect MH all-purpose rod. Years ago, when I was in college, I worked at Walmart. I would ask the guy over the sporting goods department to let me know when rods were going on sale. Then I would have him hide one or two for me beforehand so they wouldn't all disappear before I got back to work. Then I'd tack my employee discount onto that.

I get your point. But every snap is tied with a knot. It's not laziness, it's convenience. I use small Tactical Angler clips and they were recommended to me by a professional guide. So not even all guides think the same. The same guy also used braid on every rod with only a very short, heavy mono leader for topwaters to keep the line out of the hooks. He explained that he fished too often to be losing an expensive bait every other outing. That said, I never use an entire swivel with any bait, except for maybe an inline spinner.

Oh, I fish cheap compared to a lot of people on this here message board. My current arsenal includes an $800 kayak, about $1000 worth of rods and reels and a couple grand in lures, both the ones I have and have lost. But I used to have a Procraft fish & ski and I've owned 2 other kayaks. I also have a lot of my dad's stuff. He was not a big spender when it came to bass fishing. But I like to catch fish on his stuff.

However you want.

I have a Crixus rod. I like it but the golf club grip is starting to peel off. Sure, you get what you pay for. But I've got older, cheaper rods that still hold up.

I'm a kayak fisherman, so I can't take the kitchen sink with me. So I leave it in the truck, locked and I take one Plano utility box with me. I also take a few bags of the soft plastics I think I might need. I already have 6-7 rods rigged, so often I don't change up any of them. But even though I have the big tackle bag in the truck, I often wish I had something that I left home. I make a note and take it next time. To keep it simple, you don't really need the full spectrum of colors and finishes for each lure. For instance, look at the colors for a Spook. Most of them are white on the bottom. Fish can't see the back of the lure. So you don't need one in 5 patterns. I only have about 4 colors of Trick Worm and I don't keep them all with me. If you do your research and gain experience you'll end up buying the same colors over and over.

I'm not from the north, but start when the water starts warming. Here that means high 50s. But it might mean low 50s there. If Big Mama's shallow she'll react to a buzzbait or a Whopper Plopper. Can't help herself.

I think it's real purty.

Best? Not sure because I fish year round. They'll bite in winter too. Spring to early summer is a time when you find more fish shallow. In the colder months I like to fish in the middle of the day. As it turns toward summer, I start gong early or late, mostly early. I like to get out before sunrise and I'm usually done by 11:00-ish. I like topwater fishing and that's best in low light conditions. Even in summer you'll catch more bass shallow early and late. When you have a full-time job and family the best time to go is whenever you can.

Well, budget is everything. If you want a light one, don't expect to stand up in it. I highly recommend a stadium seat. I have a Perception Pescador Pro10 as well as a first gen Pescador 12. The old 12 footer tracks better. If I had it to do over, I'd get the Pro 12. If I had a boat with pedals I'd be fouled in weeds all the time. I had a Feelfree Lure 13.5 rigged with a trolling motor. Too heavy to load/unload, more maintenance keeping the battery charged and more time consuming assembling/disassembling the trolling motor setup. I guess I'm saying I like to keep it simple.

I bought a Popmax this winter too. So far, the Pop R has outfished it.

I'm also honest to a fault. Not on the same level as your two rods for the price of one, but I ordered a box of 10 Gamakatsu EWG trebles hooks and they sent me 10 boxes of 10 for the price of 1. I informed them and they replied for me to keep them. That's more than a lifetime supply of this size trebles for me.

A Johnson Silver Minnow spoon rigged with a grub or some sort of chunk can get er done sometimes. This one is gold and rigged with a Zoom swimming chunk. It looks a good bit like a mouse coming across the mat. You can drop it into pockets and at the edge of mats where you can't with a frog. Sharpen the hooks.

I throw the SPRO rat in the middle size. Still a pretty big bait. It gets some bites, but not a ton of them. It's a bigger bass bait, but you'll still get the occasional dink on it. In fact, I've gotten mostly dinks on it. Definitely more of a weedy, shallow body of water bait. The kinds of places fish might see a rat swimming.

I caught my PB on a War Eagle gold shiner spinnerbait. I've caught bass over 7 lbs. on a Chug Bug, jig, Spot, Johnson Silver Minnow and Whopper Plopper. I also caught the bass in my profile pic on the War Eagle spinnerbait.

Welcome! And I feel you. I had a stellar year last year and this one, not so much. And I haven't caught really anything over 2 lb. since December. It beez like that sometimes.

I feel you. It's been very breezy in SC this spring. Not your friend when you're paddling a kayak. I'm thankful for the breeze right now though. We have people working under the house and can't use the AC all week.

Black, blue and black & blue. Gerald Swindle said he only uses two colors: something brown and something black. I might change it up with a swim jig. But I have determined black/blue is what I'll use for a crawfish imitator here. It even works better than plain black.

I too fish alone. Yeah, with nobody else. You know when I fish alone, I prefer to be by myself. My dad was my fishing partner and he died about 5 years ago. He had stopped going because he got tired easily. I got him to go to a pond one last time in the late summer before he died and he caught a few, then sat on my tailgate and talked to the pond owner. My daughter used to love kayaking with me. She's away at a governor's high school and when she's home she's pretty busy with homework and friends. She always said I fished to long. It's my hope that she'll have a child someday before I get too old to fish, if that's even possible. Other than these two, I'm my favorite fishing buddy. I truly like being alone for a few hours. I have one friend who's also a bit of a loner that I go with sometimes. We get each other so we get along fine. But I don't want to impose by asking him often.

It will last so long that it becomes highly visible. Then you reel that onto another reel and use the other end. No need to spool 2 reels. I also fill the spool halfway with cheap 15# mono before adding the braid. The stuff is expensive, but lasts so long, cost is mitigated.

I'd also say, get yourself a junior one. The big one can be intimidating to fish.

Take it to a weedy pond and swim it around the weed edges.