fishwizzard

I have been staring at the 3'8" version of that rod for months, but I can't pull the trigger. I talk a big game about liking short rods, but 3'8" is nuts. The rod is rated as a Fast and is 1-8g. It's graphie and I really wonder how it loads across that range. I would love a rod that short for 3" senkos, Super Jrs, and small poppers, but wanting to t-rig the plastics makes me afraid of most truly UL rated trout rods. I never though to look as comparatively more powerful glass rods to dial in the ideal castability and hooksetting power. Very interested to hear your thoughts on yours.

Finding a rod that is amazing at one thing is pretty easy. But I fish on foot a lot so I am forever on the quest to find rods that do two different but complementary things amazingly. That is a bit harder and is how I ended up with two dozen combos.

Very well said. My "semi-slack" is enough slack to keep tension off the lure, but not more than I can take up with a rod dip and a quick handle crank or two as soon as I feel something, see something, or just know it's time to set. This is obvious a lot easier the shorter your cast is. For jigs I keep the line a little tighter, for most plastics I keep it a little looser. For various reasons I use a lot of shorter rods and proper slack line management is the only way I can ever get a good hookset a lot of the time, so I had to learn quickly.

I'm also not a fan of the GLX seats but love the rods enough to keep buying different reels hoping to find something that is comfortable. So far I have found the Alphas and TDZ frames to be the best fits for me.

The sealant keeps the filler from popping out as easily, which is mainly why I use it. Even “good” cork is full of filler and I do think that missing filler speeds up the breakdown of the actual cork.

I prefer a shakeyhead over a t-rig most of the the time as can feel the bottom better with the line tied to a jighead then with a threaded-through weight. I will use a t-rig when: I want to fish a larger plastic with a small amount of weight and desire a little separation between weight and plastic, but the free rig is taking more and more of this job When I want to quickly fish soft cover and want max snag resistance. I will often build a "t-rigged jig" for this and peg the weight When I want to use a bead and crack the plastic along the bottom.

As I said in the other thread, you rod came up when I was looking for a short frog rod. I like that style of rod, "powerful with a MF or slower taper", for frogging as it really helps to keep them on the line and to reduce the heartbreak of frogging a little. Going shorter/slower makes slackline management critical to getting reasonable hooksets, but that's a good habit to get it to in general.

Yes, a year or two ago I was on the hunt for a short frog rod and found that MC model. I ended up with an even shorter BLX but in general I have found that I prefer slower tapers for frogging.

I didn't scroll down right away and thought that rubberband was a pencil and hurt my brain trying to figure out the angle of rod, arm, and camera.

I am one of those annoying people who can take or leave tobacco. There are 2-3 year periods where I smoked maybe 5-10 cigarettes' a day, but then followed by a few years of maybe a monthly cigar at most. I don't think I have regularly smoked in like a decade or so. The brand of rolling tobacco I liked changed owners and the quality took a hard nose dive, I never managed to find anything else I liked so I just stopped smoking. If anyone has a line of a few pre-2010 bags of Bali Shag, shoot me a PM

I you want to try a high end rod just to see what the fuss is about, go for a dedicated bottom contact rod. If it doesn't knock your socks off you can likely get at least 60-75% of your money back with how scarce they are these days. If you want to just get "a really good bass rod", then get a Loomis 884c in GLX/NRX+/Conquest, picking which ever hits the price point you are happy with or has the components you want. You will end up with a rod that is great for a lot of stuff and at least "reasonably good" at a ton more.

I think the Loomis MagLight/XFast spinning rods are some of the best ever for traditional MWF fishing with light heads and smaller thin-wire hooks, but with a more powerful rod I would not want as fast a taper. So I guess for me the choice depends on the power of the rod, the more powerful the slower I want the taper and the lighter the rod the faster I want it.

It's the US end of things that has me worried, both of the rods I have ordered this year have had big delays and tracking errors, in once case the tracking number came up invalid like 3-4 days before the rod arrived. It was a Volkey UL that I had been wanting for years now and I was very bummed to think that it was going to disappear. Before these two rods I have never had an issue.

The only time I use a heavy hook for a fluke is when I am fishing moving water and the current is enough that I want a little more sink, but not enough for a 1/16oz weight. For the most part I don't use heavy enough tackle for flukes to make a light or standard wire hook the best choice.

Same, a super fluke is a close close second, but the trickworm wins out.

That thing is stunning. I want to dip deeper into jdm rods, but I am very gunshy about shipping right now, esp in terms of reliable tracking. What reel are you putting on it?

I would agree, you can even get a cheap aquarium pump online for like twenty bucks if you don't want to risk a mouthful of assuredly nasty water.

That is a great fleet of Alpheses!

With the extremely small sample size of "a single bag of the chunk trailers", no they do not. They get a little thinner and the texture becomes almost like thick felt/soft leather, but they stay soft and floaty. I lost the one that was in use for 18-20 months, but these two have been in use for like a year and have been on and off jigs a few times each. The scent is long gone but the plastics are still going strong.

Caring more about location then presentation. I am a tackle nut a lot of my trips are all about trying out whatever new shiny has caught my eye/wallet. An awful lot of time I can grind out a bass or two throwing most anything, so long as I can correctly guess where the bass are going to be in a given environment at a given time.

Oh no I did not take it that way at all. I am legitimately a little upset with myself that I didn’t bother to do any research for such a large purchase but I will spend literal months agonizing over a $400 fishing rod. As soon as I got the car and started looking more closely at the rack I realized something was wrong and five minutes of googling gave me hundreds of forum posts with angry sea kayakers ranting against the new rail system.

Yeah, I mean shame on me for not researching it before I bought the car, but the Outback has been the “standard“ yak hauler for so long it never crossed my mind to look into it.

The issue I had with that kit is not only the price but how far it raises the bar above the surface of the car. I found some inspiration online and I’m in the process of making my own riser blocks that will use the existing tie-down d-ring holes to mount to, which I will then mount a tbd aftermarket crossbar too. It should end up 2-3” lower and cost a lot less. I do love wagons for fishing in general and that’s probably 50% of the reason I bought the Outback. I keep the larger rear seat always folded down and I made a little wooden trough that runs the length of the car so my rods can be protected from all the other junk I have in there.

The Tackle Trap. But I ordered it in late February, if you want one, preordering is the best bet.

Word of warning about Subarus, I got a ‘17 Outback a year or two ago and discovered that the factory “rails” are not compatible with anything aftermarket. There are built in crossbars but they aren’t great. There are ways to get third party stuff to work but it takes money or hillbilly engineering to do it.