fishwizzard

Ah, have have never slipped on a rock that was stationary, just when they shift due to moving too fast. That and muddy banks account for all of my wading falls.

Phenix has been offering bfs rods for years, ones far more suited to general fishing then the Dobyn’s, but I think they lack the market presence to get much attention.

How do felt soles supposed to “work”? Wet felt seems like it would provide the worst traction ever on slick mud.

You dry them by leaving them in your car in the full sun the next day. This also insures that your car smells like low tide for the entire summer/fall.

I would be in. No boat, though I have a yak I can use if we have uneven numbers.

Mine was a second gen Recon, but I loved it. I sold due to some temporary madness where I decided that I had "too many rods". I regretted it the moment it left my hands and someday I will buy another ones. As a rod, it was near perfect. The taper is just on the Mod side of Fast and the tip is soft enough to make casting lighter presentations easy, but the rod has the backbone to give good hooksets on t-rigged plastics and smaller jig hooks. It's pretty sensitive too, easily enough for hard-bottom contact lures and weightless plastics.

I have two combos that I use primarily for the Ned, one has 8lb braid to 6lb fluoro leader and the other has straight 6lb mono on it. They are both awful. I have never really found an ideal or even close to ideal line selection that also lets me use the short rods and tiny reels I prefer for the presentation. Straight 7lb Sniper is the best of the line(s) I have tried, but it doesn't handle the best on 1000 size Shimano spools.

Specifically, the Dobyns BFS isn't going to be nearly as versatile as a Medium spinning rod. The tip is extremely light and the rod has a lot of backbone. It's good for a decent bit of stuff in the finesse univerase, but there are way way more presentations that it will be unsuited for. It's proving to be a very fun rod, but it's quite niche, even for BFS/UL rods. For about the same money the Phenix Recon 3 L rods will be way more versatile for bass stuff. The Major Craft Benkei line of rods is also very nice at that price point.

That is so much nicer looking then the production reel.

What now?

Hah, I had a massive one chase my popper around for a while today. It's neck was like 3-4" across, it would have stolen my lure instantly. I would see a dark shape slowly following the lure in so I could rip it away in time. Pond Popper Report: I am fishing an Evergreen OB, a PopX, and a Rico. So far the Rico and the OB are the clear winners, each with dozens more bass then the PopX. The PopX is also the hardest to work consistently, esp when it gets to within 20ish feet of me. I have been using a IMX 721c with 10lb mono, so a pretty light/soft combo. For the next few trips I am going to try them on the fluke rod, a Avid M/XF with 30lb braid to 16lb fluoro leader. I know I will like the action more, but I think the casting easy and accuracy is going to suffer a lot with the smaller poppers. The OB is bigger and heavier then I remember, so it's a point in it's favor if I can use it well on the heavier tackle.

I cover all my rods and reels as there isn’t a compelling reason not to. A good rod/reel cover is like $5, so 5% to 1.25% of the cost of the gear it’s protecting.

Any line too strong to break by hand gets wrapped around a dowel or the fancy-boy equivalent: https://www.daiichiseiko.com/products/13/index?lang=en I have been using one of these for a few years now and it’s holding up like a champ, even 50lb braid is easy to break with it.

If we are talking about the current version of the GLX, then put me in the "hate it" camp when it comes to the reel seat. However, the rods are so good that it has been worth hunting down reels that feel ok on them. I have a 783c and a 844c and if I were honest with myself, I could sell a dozen or so other rods and that pair could cover it all. I never found any commonality to reels that were comfortable, it came down to specific reel shapes and seemed less to due with size alone.

Send it back. Now that you have noticed, it's going to be impossible to not stare at the guides every time it's in your hands.

Because of my job I am always getting calls from all over the country from numbers I don’t know, but are actual calls I have to deal with, so for the most part I answer every call. I don’t even bother to engage with scammers any more, I just mutter “jackass” and hang up.

I buy high end rods for the feel/function, if they look good, that's a cool bonus. And even when it comes to looks, the guide wraps are like the last thing I am looking at. But, I think split-grips 100% look awful and will ruin the look of a rod, so my fussiness if clearly directd in a different direction.

They are for sure more durable then Fat Impacts and are stiffer with less action at a given speed. I use them both for different applications.

I am a big fan of the 3 power MBR rods and I have gone through a lot of different feelings about the ideal line weight. I have settled into the “12 to 14lb Sniper” zone. The 10lb feels to me to be too limiting to the power these rods can bring to the table and 16lb feels too thick and wirey for the lighter end of the rod’s range. When my supplies of 12lb run out I’ll probably only replace the 14lb as, at least with Sniper, the handling difference seems minimal and I’d rather have a little more strength. The funny thing is a lot of the work I do is making shop drawings/writing work orders and I am usually scrupulous about checking dimension callouts. Maybe it’s a little bit of self-rebellious, but I make that mistake when it comes to tackle sizes all the time

With that level of sensitivity, it screams out for weightless or lightly weighted plastic. A back-slide craw/tube, a Trickworm, a 10’ Culprit with a 1/8oz weight, stuff like that.

I use Google earth constantly to scout spots, it’s one of my favorite ways to kill a little time in the evening when I can’t fall asleep. I don’t see how using a drone is much different, other than being able to zoom in and investigate individual laydowns.

The 611m+ is crazy good. I have a fair amount of nice tackle but that rod is really something special.

Throw your empty beer cans inside the hull, that way it’ll smell like stale beer and not like stale butt.

I spent a few years in my 20’s living in a punk house and most of our beer consumption was 40oz bottles of Old English malt liquor. It was cheap and if you splashed a little oj in the there, pretty good. We could also walk a block and a half from our house and buy it at the local corner store and you can’t beat that level of convenience. Every spring I buy a 40oz of OE and drink it to remember those times. This year was different as, some how, the OE was amazing. Nectar of the gods. I have always liked fancy beers, but once a sixer got to be like $12-15 per, I more or less gave up on it. I think now I’m gonna be fully back on the Old English train and become a regular consumer again. The price has gone up like $.50 but it’s still quite a bargain.

I have a partial spool of 20lb Shooter and once it gets almost kicked I am going to spool it up on that AFC spool and test my theory ad absurdum. I will also be taking bets on how many casts I can get in before I blow it up.