fishwizzard

I am up two combos (and assorted lures/TT for them) this winter already. My dog might have to get used to a lesser grade of rawhide for a while.

I fought the Monkey off. I really want a BFS rod that can handle lures down to 1/8 of an ounce. The combo will be used for wading small streams and rivers and for some of the smaller ponds I frequent, and at both of those spots I will throw weightless 4" finesse worm type lures pretty often.

Hey guys just want to let you know that I am offering a new service aimed at my fellow Maryland fisherman. I seem to have a magic power where when when I travel out of town for work, the weather at home is lovely. But, when I return home and have a week off, it suddenly decides to be 30° and windy again. So for a low daily fee, I will arrange to be out of town whenever anyone would like to schedule themselves a glorious few days of fishing. i'm thinking of expanding into ensuring that weddings have nice weather, but I think I'm going to jack my rate up for that.

This is good to hear as I skip almost all of my weightless plastics whenever it is practical. Mostly just for the practice but I do think sometimes it seems to trigger an immediate strike once the lure comes to rest. I don't skip senkos as it seems to kill their already awful durability, but do also almost always skip my Ned rigs as well. If I am wading and find a longish run with a lot of overhanging trees it is almost a sure thing to get a bite if I can get my Ned far back under them.

Man, that sale seems to cover a ton of stuff. Currently have a tab open with a CR721 (for $191.25!) sitting in my cart. It's low end is a little heavy for all the finesse stuff I want to do, but it is going to be a struggle to go to bed without hitting "Checkout".

Well, I have only been fishing for like three years, so I shouldn't be tired of anything at this point! I am already into my second wave of rods and reels, having almost finished replacing all the random stuff I bought before I had even the slightest idea what I was doing or what I wanted.

I use floro/CP leaders mainly because I fish a lot of weightless or lightly weighted plastics and having a bit of sinking leader seems to help me work the lure and keep it at the depth I want. I find, for example, a weightless Super Fluke will stay at a nice 2-3' depth with even a short 2' 8lb YZH leader tied on where with straight braid it wants to rise with most every rod twitch. I fish for a white perch and pickerel a lot with UL spinners and this spring I am going to try to use a very heavy and short floro leader, maybe like 6-12" of 15lb, in front of my tiny inline spinners. I hope that it will one, provide me a bit of pickerel protection, and two, help get those light lures to stay down when I reel them in fast, which is often how the perch want them.

Man I am really starting to want to grab a sv103 while they are still around but I have no real use for one at the moment. I think I could justify a second sv105 to go with a Daiwa BBB telescoping rod I just picked up, but to be honest there is no issue just moving the one from my jerkbait rod to the BBB when I need it for a hike or trip. I have next week off and am going to post my entire arsenal, I am sure you guys can find a hole somewhere a sv103 could fill.

I bought one (and a few other lures) to hang on our xmas tree as my wife was complaining that I wasn't excited enough about doing xmas stuff with her. She thought it was funny so I guess I did the right thing. As for fishing it, I have a local pond where the pattern is as follows; Little kids show up to feed the ducks, which makes them swarm the banks All the sunfish run right up to the banks to get the food the ducks miss The bass cruise just past all the duck-commotion to pick off the sunnies on the edges of the school I cast a baitfish imitator out there and catch bass So i think I can make the duck lure work here by casting it on the edge of the duck swarm and working it like a gosling that is straying away from the group.

I fish the 1/8 Sebile lipless cranks pretty often. I bank fish with a single rod most of the time and when I have one of my finesse rods with me they are great when I want a little more casting distance to fish something further than I can cast my usual weightless plastics. I also fish them a lot when I am out hiking with non-fishermen as they cover water very fast, catch a wide range of species, and hang up less than an inline spinner. This lets me get some fishing in while not making my friends stand there while I slowly work a plastic or small jig. I either crimp all the barbs down on the OEM trebles or switch out to single hooks. The single hooks rarely snag even when bumping them around wood. Last fall I had an insane day with a bright orange craw colored one catching stocked Rainbow trout. I was catching them all over the lake and they would race out of cover dozens of feet away to hit it.

I have been slowly switching out all my trebles to single hooks. There is an English company called "Cox and *something*" that makes single hooks, barbed and barbless, in most every size. I have a small scale and try to match the weights as close as I can. Inline spinners all seem to work just as well, as do small lipless cranks and the smaller Rapala floating minnows. I don't fish "normal" cranks so have no info on that. I do change out the hooks on my cheaper jerkbaits that don't suspend well with OEM hooks, but so far have not messed with my few nicer jerks that actually suspend.

I have a pack or two. They do skip well, but I don't have a lot of experience to compare them with. Have never caught a fish on one so I cant comment on the hookups. But they do feel like they would work well, the keeper is a bit of stiff wire and takes very little finger pressure to make the hook pop out.

I hit up a small pond yesterday and had a single hit, a nice one shot out from an undercut and smashed my jig. But in my usual fashion I blew the hookset. It seems like every time I see a bass hit my lure I never manage to land it. On the bright side I the water was more clear then I have ever seen it and I found a bunch of deep holes I never suspected were there. Also saw about a dozen very nice bass cruising around. I had written this spot off before but clearly they are in there and from the litter/tree lure distribution, it doesn't seem like many people fish the more productive but less accessible parts of the bank.

I picked up a Fred's Magic Stick this week to be my frog/heavy topwater rod. I spent about two hours with it yesterday and am really impressed. My most used rods are all around 6' so I expected some issues when going to a 7'5" rod, but they were all pretty minor. It can bomb a frog very far but still do close and accurate, but not as easily as my usual 6' rods. I was able to walk the frog pretty well, but the long butt would snag in my jacket at times. I next tried a Whopper Plopper 130 and my first cast took off all 50y of braid and a few feet of backing before I thumbed it to a stop. It was a bomb cast but still way further then I have been able to cast before. Making more normal side arm casts still got the Plopper really far out there and a few times I had to cut the cast short before all my braid came off the spool. The only other technique I wanted this rod for is heavier jigs/punching for when the frogs arnt working. I hope to get some time to try that out this weekend. Overall I am realy happy with the rod so far.

Yea, I am not usually sentimental, but his operation hits all my buttons. I love the small, light wire hooks, but I wish he would offer a version of them with a wire-hook plastic keeper, I have never found the groove in getting the zman plastics to get on the dual barb keeper without a ton of fighting. Once they are on and glued they hold great, but it is not at all an on the water task for me.

I bought a ton of assorted outdoor gear from them and never had an issue. However I'm done buying sunglasses online, as I have never lucked out out and found a pair that doesn't pinch my head.

Iirc Gohper is a one man operation these days. I know my last order took a while to appear on my CC. They may not run the card until they are ready to ship.

I tried the Finesse Floro in 8.4 on my finesse spinning reel. I like it a lot, it handled and cast very well, and stayed limp and manageable even at below freezing temps. However, I did have an issue when I had to break off some snags on a later trip. To get a Triline knot to break I had to pull pretty hard and most of the time the lie would break many feet from the knot, often in the dozens. In addition, several feet of line would twisted at the break and need to be cut off. I like the line line enough to keep using it, but am going to fill my spool ~50-75% full of braid, then fill the floro on top. This way I can keep the spool topped off with less waste and will leave me with enough braid to fish it with a leader to finish out a day.

That is really cool, I would have assumed that netters would have depleted them all in such a build up area. Now that I have a nice compact travel rod, I am going to be far more aggressive in making time for urban fishing when I travel for work.

Thanks for all the info guys. I will pull my tackle together and run it by you all this weekend.

I ended up getting a bunch at 1/4oz as once you have the weight of the blade, a skirt, and the trailer, they end up at slightly over 1/2 ounce total. The 3/8oz ones ended up a good bit over 3/4oz, which was too heavy for the rod I wanted to use them with.

Man I want one of the L powered Super Tricksters so badly. But for the cost/shipping I know I could get a great, but very plain looking, custom rod made up. But man that thing is pretty.

Hah, where in NYC can you fish for bass? I have been inspired to take a day to fish around DC some more. I already have a nice Georgetown smallie to my name, but know there are more in there. I also want to give the Tidal Basin and surrounding areas a try. I think it would be a fun way to spend a nice spring day.

Having read a lot of good stuff about J-braid, I ordered two spools last night, one at 30lb and one at 8lb. I am going to use the 30lb as backing/emergency main line on my two main casting reels and the 8lb to try on my UL spinning reels.

Cool, thanks for the advice. I will check out that park, there also looks to be a shopping mall north of it that has a ton of nice looking bank along the same canal. I was thinking of bringing a few packs of senkos/flukes, a few small spinnerbaits, and maybe some Menace grubs on small shakyheads. My travel rod is like a ML-M (5-21g rating) and the reel is currently spooled with 11lb floro, does all this sound reasonable?