fishwizzard

The TSD sale got me to give the Hippy Rat a try; Took it out this morning and felt a bit silly, until I got a blow up. I missed the hookset but I buckled down and keep casting around the same area. A few casts later the rat got smashed. I was delighted that the rat worked and kept casting around the same area, about 10 more casts then this guy hit; My scale battery picked that moment to die, but he was a bit smaller than the first one. I was throwing the rat on a Fred's Magic Stick and it felt really overpowered. The rod is only rated for 2oz, but it throws a 2oz Huddgill perfectly, so I was surprised at how hard it was to cast the rat. I can bomb it out there, but any kind of close range lob was very awkward and inaccurate. I bought the Fred's as a frog rod, but I have been throwing big baits with it far more often, so I might look at replacing it with something more powerful and finding a new frog solution.

I bought a pack of the new heads and the keeper works extremely well. It is based on a keeper by...TT Lures I think? They are an Australian company and had been making heads for Z-man lures down there for years. I don't like the look of the heavier hook, nor the fact that the heads are way heavier than the standard Shroom heads, but I have yet to fish them.

Non-migrating geese have become an issue here in MD and a few of the suburban ponds I fish have installed flashing buoys to try and deter them from overwintering. Marylanders used to be pretty good at fighting the goose menace, but we did go a little overboard in the past. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punt_gun

This is a pattern I use a lot at some of the suburban ponds that I fish. Cast just outside the duck/goose feeding frenzy to target the bass picking off the baitfish feeding under the ducks. I have yet to hook a duck, but I saw a guy do it once. It was not a happy scene for anyone involved and I was amazed the guy's rod didn't break.

Right now I lug my gear around in an '02 RAV4 with the rear seats removed. I can get a 6'6" rod in the back and up to 7'6" with the tip sticking up into the front seat. It works ok to cartop a kayak, but it is a touch too high to be super easy to get it up and down in any kind of wind. I keep looking for a used truck and start every reply to every promising CL ad with "Hi, I am interested in you *truck*, but I am not interested in anything with rusted out cab and bed mounts, what condition are they in?" Maybe 1/4 of the time the seller is honest and admits to some rust and we are done. The other 3/4 of the time they lie so I waste an afternoon driving out, crawling under a truck, scraping a big rust scab off with my nails, telling the seller they are a jerk, and driving home. After a few of these I get discouraged and give up looking for a few months. I think I am going to give up on trucks and start looking for an E-series van. I ran into a guy in FL who turned one into the slickest Mobile Kayak Command Center I have ever seen. He had rod racks on the driver's side wall, a kayak cradle on the passenger side, and raised deck/storage box next to it. He sized the box to fit a sleeping bag pad, so he could more comfortably sleep in the van for overnight fishing trips. Being able to drive around all the time with my rigged yak in the back would increase my time on the water ten times I bet.

I like both spinning and casting about equality, with casting getting a slight nod in preference. I have a few finesse casting combos that will throw any lure I could do with a spinning combo. What determines my choice for the day tends to be the answer to "How far from my car will I be walking?". When I am on foot I carry a single rod and while there are usually a few more in my car, I don't want to deal with a show stopping backlash when I am 3-5 miles from a spare reel. On those days I take a spinning combo with me. I also pick a spinning combo if I am going to be using light lures around a lot of cover where I am going to be making a lot of "risky" casts. My thumb is getting smarter every day but I would still rather throw light lures around cover with a spinning reel.

Could you add a bit of weight to a DT6 to get it down to 8'? I have some Vision 110 knockoffs that I have added suspend dots to in order to get them to slow sink and it works reasonably well.

I have a pair of Ci4+'s and agree. Both of these reels replaced far far heavier reels on a pair of custom spinning rods I had built. The builder was provided with the reel weights and he built them to balance around those numbers. When I swapped in the lighter Ci4+'s the difference in balance was very noticeable. On one of the rods the difference didn't bother me and after a few hours of fishing it the combo felt as "balanced" as ever. The other rod, for which the reel weight change was far greater, felt incredibly tip heavy and the balance point was several inches in front of the reel seat. I added weights to the butt with tape and was surprised to see that only like 5/16-3/8oz was enough to shift it back to where the rod felt comfortable again. At some point I will get unlazy and send the rod back to the builder to have a bit of weight added.

If you don't have a dremel, a bit of leather with some jewelers polish worked into it might work, but will obviously be a lot slower.

That is how I start the process, then fish them and adjust from there.

This is all I can think of when people talk about night fishing. I once, because I am dumb, camped next to the Potomac in a hammock w/o a bugnet. The next morning I looked like I had smallpox.

I live by some great white perch rivers and will take a dozen or so trips each year to target them. Sometimes I try to target panfish but usually end up trying more for bass once I get one or two as bycatch. I got was was likely my PB smallie while casting at a pool full of 6" Redbreasts.

I have only owned one of their bass rods, a 6'3" ML/RF casting rod from the Go Emotion line. There is a ton of good info on them here and on TT. They are all over eBay and shipping is usually pretty reasonable, especially if you can deal with a two part rod.

If you are going to mainly use small jigs with light hooks, really take a look at MajorCraft. They have a lot of short light rods, but many of them are Regular/Fast action, which gives me trouble with weedless rigged plastics. But with smaller and lighter open hooks the softness helps me keep the fish pinned without ripping the hook out. The Little Spider on a small jig is a great lure, I really like them for smaller rivers and streams.

I am real hot/cold when it comes to time, I am usually slammed with work or traveling for a few weeks at a time and will not make it out at all. Then I come home and fish every day for a week or three before the cycle starts up again. I am trying to shift my work to be heaviest in the dead of winter and summer, but am having limited luck so far.

Interesting, I will have to play around with hook placement a little. I have used the Dshads and like them, but I tend to fish flukes on pretty light tackle and the DShads are a bit heavy for my rod.

Man, my worry would be getting it snagged on something, I would want a necklace that would break before my neck did!

I would one would be interested in your thoughts on this. I will flip a fluke over and fish it upside down when it gets too ripped up to stay weedless rigged upright and I do kinda feel like it darts down more when rigged that way, but I have never really tested it out.

The main issue I have with floro is that when I have to pull out a snagged lure, it seems to break far up the line, rather than at the knot. I have noticed this across a few different brands and weights. While it is not a huge deal, I would rather just leave a lure in the water then a lure and 15 yards of line hanging off of it. I am going to give premium monos a try next season. I have been using Shooter Defier Armilo a good bit this year and have really liked it, even for jigs and other bottom contact lures.

Maybe I am the odd man out, but I have one of those and don't feel like it loads well with anything under 1/4oz or even 5/16oz. OP, if you are not adverse to going custom, I have a pair of short spinning rods from a builder called SmallieStix. They are both on MHX blanks and came in around $150-170. The builder is a great guy and was really helpful in guiding me through picking components. I too have a fondness for short rods, although the longer I fish the more I find myself moving to longer 6'6" to 7' rods. Major Craft has a huge range of rods with many of them being on the shorter side.

Post edited to preserve your secret. And thanks, I was fishing them on my Ned rod, with like an 8lb floro leader.

If you can PM me the secret to getting them to run consistently, I will go back and delete my posts.

I have a few of the Zman micro and mini chatters and it is about 50/50 on them running well. Oddly, I have noticed that they EDIT give me a bad rash in the jock-area EDIT, far more than they do bass.

That is good to hear, I have a SJR 6400 IMX headed my way. I threw a low bid at an auction and forgot about it until I got the "you won" email.

See, I hate having stuff banging around in my pockets, so I prefer a small pack. I sent some plastics through the wash once and my shorts were a little tie-dyed for a while.