fishwizzard

I don't have cable, but ponied up the $10 or whatever to watch them online. I learn a lot from the show, but mostly when it comes to casting technique. It is amazing how fluid some of these guys are.

If I had the option to buy all barbless hooks I would and crimp them down whenever I think to. I like barbless a lot in general as I enjoy the challenge of keeping the fish on as it jumps and runs. I also fish alone and often quote far from my car and would rather not hike out five or six miles with a lure stuck to my face. I am less worried about single hook lures, but everything with a treble either gets the barbs pinched or replaced with a single hook.

I have a line spooler like that one and I really like it. I have found little difference when spooling up a spinning reel in keeping the fill spool fixed or letting it spin for braid, but with floro it seems to keep the line from wanting to jump off the spool as much. No idea what the mechanism of effect is, I might just be imagining it. In any case, it is a good tool and keeps me from bugging my wife whenever I want to respool.

Yea, when I got into fishing I wanted a short rod to go after catfish with, so a clerk thought about it for a while and handed me an inexpensive 5' boat rod. It is labeled "Medium" but the range is like 1/4-1.25oz. This caused a lot of confusion when I started looking at expanding my arsenal.

Hah, I was thinking about this the other day. I am teaching myself how to splice hollow core line and was wondering just how strong of a 1/8" line I could get if I started with weaving 50lb braid.

I have some of the 8.4 on my finesse spinning reel and in my limited experience so far, I like it a lot. But, the only thing I have to compare it to is 6lb YZH, so obviously it is going to feel and handle a ton better. I am excited to give it a try more when it warms up a bit.

Ned Rig all day every day. Until I get bored, then 3" senkos. small tubes, and J-5 Rapalas with the trebles switched out to single hooks. But really I think the Ned is my all time most productive small water lure

I also fish barbless a lot of the time when going after smallmouths. My most frequent spots are good for numbers, not size. So I use a lighter rod and pinch my barbs down. With how fast the run and change direction, and how high and often they jump, having to keep line pressure 100% of the time really makes landing all the 9-13" fish a lot more enjoyable.

I used the heck out if the 4" Bubbling shaker this spring. I mosly fished it weighless on a small twistloc hook. I will also rig them on a very light shaky-head and fish them with the MWF retrieves.

Ha, when I first got into fishing I bought a bunch of those things, I don't think one ever lasted more than three or four casts, I was constantly snaging and losing them. Now that I am, at least a little, more competent, I kind of want to try them again. I assume you can catch a ton of panfish on the smaller ones as well, right?

Yea, I also like the idea of being able to use cheap mono as the drop line. I keep wanting to try them but never really remember to hunt some down.

Does anyone use these hooks? I have yet to even try drop shotting (despite owning hooks, weights, and lures), and I really like the idea if being able to pretie a bunch of weights to different lengths of line so I can swap out depending where on the river I am. Even better, i can start using the hundreds of assorted nuts that follow me home in my pockets from work as weights, to both save money and not litter lead everywhere.

I agree that youtube is the simplest way to go if you don't want to learn how to mess with videos yourself. Also, I read the title as "Resizing flyes" for some reason and clicked expecting to see like a 5" long Wooly Bugger or something.

My wife fishes with me occasionally, and I give her a 4" z-man finesse worm on a Slider head. It is weedless and she can just cast and crank. I need to buy some actual slider worms at some point, but the Z-mans are great for standing up to the hoards of panfish that attack it and are so thin that little hookset is required.

I am going to have to unsubscribe to the ALF mailing list, it is too tempting. I have been looking at the 5'10" casting rod with the little cigar grip all morning and I do not at all need it, but man do I want it!

I have an SV105 and as advertised I can set the breaks to full and cast a senko straight up and let it fall and hit the water with only a few loose coils. I also just got Zillion SV and it will thow loose coils if I have the breaks maxed and just let the lure fall so idk whats up, but I have not had time to mess with it much.

How well do these work? I would love something like that, but we used to have a line counter at work for aircraft cable and never found one that worked well or for long and I guess I assumed a counter for smaller line has to be fussier.

Actually I think the rod question could be interesting assuming one could get an honest answer from them. These guys have a huge amount of experience and I assume most to none started out fishing the high end stuff.

Wow, I gotta start driving north more often, that is a beauty!

How do you like the CR721? I just got a CR723 and even just playing with in the yard I can tell I am going to love it when I get it on the water. I think I will settle more to the L then the UL side of BFS and love short rods, so it is at the top of the list. Specifically, how does it handle lures at the extreme ends of it's range?

My plan this summer is to get my MD boating card and do a bunch of rental days at the spots that rent. I know Loch Raven rents battery powered jon boats and SPSP rents small power boats. The cost is pretty low and I want some on the water time, especially in the smaller jons, before I even think for real about buying.

I have been using 6lb YZH on my perch/panfish reels and 10lb braid + leader on my finesse bass fishing reel. However, I found that the YZH is a bit stiff for light lures and the braid + leader is a pain to retie on the water, so I bought a spool of the 8.4 Seaguar Finesse and spooled up my finesse bass reel with it. In my extremely limited time on the water, I really like it so far. I fished it for about two hours in 30f with 10-15mph winds and it cast like a dream and didn't get stiff at all. I was fishing small shaky heads and a micro chatterbait and was able to pull the latter out of a few minor snags with the knot and line looking no worse for it. When I got home I did some crude breaking strength tests with it and while it did feel like it broke with less force than the 6lb YZH, it didn't feel like a huge difference and the handling/casting difference is enough to make me want to try it on my true UL rigs as well. Honestly the 8.4 seems so light and supple compared to what I am used to, I might not even step down to the lower tests. I also think it might work out for my BFS reel, but at this point I backlash enough still to not risk such expensive line. I do wish it came in bulk spools though, if I end up liking it I will have three or four reels to feed.

This is the most intimidating part to me when I think about getting a boat. It's like learning to drive and maintain a car all over again, but with vastly more expensive towing fees if I mess something up. I do like to think I am smarter now than I was at 17, but then again, I am thinking of buying a boat.

Take a look at this; http://japantackle.com/casting-reels/daiwa/low-profile-casting-reels/daiwa-alphassv2015.html Daiwa Alphas SV for $204 before shipping. I believe it is the JDM version of the SV105.

My personal definition stuff like this; 4" or less plastics, weightless or on a 1/16-1/8 jig Cranks/jerks in the ***" and 1/16-3/16oz range Inline and standard spinners in the 1/16-3/16oz range But really, any plastic smaller than a 4" senko or a hard bait smaller than a Rapala 7. I think people get very hung up on exact nomenclature with stuff like this, I think "lures that would be impossible/a pain to throw on an "average" casting combo" pretty much encompasses it all. Or maybe "any lure that you could throw on a $50 spinning combo,yet you choose to use a $500 casting combo for" would work as well