fishwizzard

After like two years of talking about it, I have finally upgraded my rack/yak carrying system. I feel like my passenger side mirror is 100% safer now with the lift assit and I can get the boat up there in literally half the time. If anyone wants to get up to some yak shenanigans this spring/summer, let me know There are a lot of spots I'd love to hit, but are unsafe/unreasonable/unfun to try to launch and recover from by yourself.

I have the IMX version of your rod and love it. IIRC Loomis doesn't make anything close to it anymore, so if you love the blank, you might want to look at having the reel seat replaced.

I find it to fish a lot like Fluoro in terms of feeling "solid" and having a connected feel to the lure as it's falling through the water column, but it's noticeably easier handling in terms of memory and knotting. I use the 11lb for poppers it's supple enough for them but still works well for fishing a fluke on the same combo. Right now Sniper Fluoro is my "default" line, but I think DA equals or beats it, but the lack of bulk spools kills me.

It's really really good line. I am a fluoro junky but if Defier Armilo came on bulk spools and/or came thinner then 11lb, it's the only line I would use other then the odd bit of braid.

An old GLX 782c MBR. I had the chunky factory guides replaced with much smaller Recoils and it's made a great rod even better.

The ponds of PG/AA are warming up, I managed 6 bass in one afternoon and only three of them were super-dinks! They all came on more or less the same presentation, a paddletail swam along "deep water" transition lines. Last year was a bust for me fishing wise, took too much work in the spring and fall. This year I am trying to block off most all of May and hope to have a rod in hand for most of it.

For open water, a 2 power Loomis MBR and 10lb Sniper Fluoro. If I am fishing them in light cover, I use the same combo but worry more.

I always assumed it was that getting the tolerances right for a flush-fit would be too difficult at any reasonable fishing rod price point, so the safest option is to to err on the side of making the ferrule overly long rather then too short, risking a loose fit.

The quality of the fishery isn’t amazing, but check out Clopper Lake. It’s a small impoundment but it has some nice largemouth in it and has enough coves that you can usually hide from the wind of needed.

The good old Minneapolis Wide Stance.

Did the same thing in the BWI garage after a 2 week trip. Except that I got into the other person's car and sat there trying the key for easily 60 seconds before I was like "wait, this isn't my junk laying all over the place....."

I fish flukes fast and close to cover, so I want something with a soft tip that immediately stiffens up. I also fish a lot in foot in really overgrown marshes, so I accuracy and easy of working are huge foe me. So far a SC Avid 6’2” M/XF has been the best I have found, the tip is nice and soft but recovers quickly so I can twitch it fast. The mid/butt are quite powerful so I get good hooksets and can keep a bass from running back into the cover I lured him out of. The reel was harder to settle on, due to how and where I fish flukes, I end up with a ton of slack on my spool, which made straight fluorocarbons too frustrating to use and even braid was annoying. What I have settled on is using a finesse casting reel with a shallow spool loaded with about 50y of 30lb braid. The short mainline eliminates the dig-in from the loose line almost completely. I add a short, 3-4’, leader of stiff 16lb fluoro leader. This gives me some abrasion resistance and I feel like the stiff, heavy leader lets the fluke stop more quickly post-twitch, so I can fish slow more quickly in terms of allowing the fluke to fall on slack like after every twitch.

That would be excellent. I don’t think I made it up there a single time this year.

I would love to get more into fishing the Upper Potomac, but its such a vast body of water that I never know where to start. I am starting to look into camping options up there to make it easier to spend more hours on the water.

This is how I broke my first rod, It was a very cheap saltwater spinning rod, but the sound of the graphite snapping still haunts me.