fishwizzard

How do you guys stand carrying two or more rods? I tried it once and the amount of time wasted fussing with the second rod just killed me. I tend to bring a single rod, usually a ML or M spinning rod and a small chest pack of lures. I usually bring the following general categories, a topwater or sub-surface lure, a "swimming" lure, and a "dragging" lure. These are usually soft plastics and I try to pick ones that can use the same hooks. If there is room in my pack I will toss in the odd hard bait but when I am bank fishing I like to travel light and that means plastics. I am currently hunting for the "perfect" tackle sling, one with a flyfishing "workbench", exterior points to strap a coat or jacket onto, and will hold a 3600 box, a 3500 box, and 3-4 bags of plastics. It can't hold more, or I will jam it full and kill my back

If you mean this guy: http://docirvcustombaits.com/baitbox/ then yes, his stuff is great and he has a million options so any bad idea I come up with can become a lure! His 3.5" tubes can be made solid and are looking like they will be an amazing river bait once I find the perfect hook.

Ah, but these were in the factory bags the entire time. They were recently unearthed when I reorganized my hobby room. They really felt totally different then the TRDs I bought recently this spring. I found one more of the ones that broke today, I had rigged it up maybe a week or two ago and stuck it in a mixed (but Z-man factory bag) bag of Ned stuff I keep in my PFD. The Green Gobey is a new color, so we know that one is pretty recently bought. The Coppertruse one is an old one. Both were slowly pulled to about 14", then allowed to snap back. The Gobey shed some salt and is slightly longer and much more pliable while the Coppertruse snapped apart at like 8-9". I snapped it again and tried to take a close up of the inside but my phone will not focus that close. The Coppertruse shed a ton of salt and really felt spongy. Yea, this is why I think they reformulated them at some point. They used to feel just like the Zlinkers, but now they seem closer to their finesse worms or what ever those fat ones are called.

I tend to use flukes or weightless Vile Craws as topwater when bank fishing, I own a few frogs but never really throw them unless I am facing a total duckweed cover. I am going to bring a few topwater lures along but I have never really had much luck with them and likely will not bust them out unless it gets really tough. The only summer fish I have gotten so far have been from the channel slow rolling a chatterbait and twitching a senko/fluke along the edges of the pads and through the grass. I have pitched, skipped, and thrown everything under the sun at that dock and never even had a hit. There is an older guy I see there a lot who seems to have success pitching a tiny little stick worm at the pads by the dock but he has far better aim then I do.

I am going to hit Cash Lake tomorrow in my kayak. I bank fish there all the time but this will be my first boat trip. For those who haven't been, it is a small, shallow lake. It has a medium dock, maybe 200' of riprap, an old creek channel full of rocks, and a lot of grassy/weed shoreline and a huge area of pads. My tackle plan is as follows: 1) MHF Casting rod - Spooled with 8lb YZHybrid, I am thinking chatterbait and/or swim jig, but likely a chatterbait all day. 2) MHF Casting rod - Spooled with 50lb braid, so I am thinking a T-rig worm for the channel and a Vilecraw/Rage Menace for the weeds. Depending on how far in the pads I want to get, I can swap out to a frog or weightless VCraw. 3) MXF Spinning rod - Spooled with 20lb braid/8kb YZH leader. This is going to be weighless senkos/flukes to work through the grass and the edges of the pads. 4)MLF Spinning rod - Spooled with 10lb braid/8lb YZH leader. This is usualy my Ned/MWF rod, but I am also going to bring along some mico-shaky head lures I have been working with. Any critiques, criticisms, or ideas welcome. I have had rotten luck with LMBs this summer so I am starting out with everything that has worked even a little so far. The lake at Cedarville State forest is ok. It can be a pain to fish from shore but I have gotten a few 1-2lbers out of there.

I went to use a TRD today and when I went to stretch it to get some salt out it tore in half. I was then able to tear each half into quarters. It was the second to last bait I had in the bag and when I pulled out the final one the same thing happened. Thinking back, I had the same thing happen maybe a month or so ago when I was making up a pile of Neds for a wading trip. In that case it was the last lure in the bag so I didn't really pay attention. I know I have/had some of these bags for maybe 2-3 years at this point along with some newer bags. From feeling a few lures out of a bag I know I bought within the year, it feels very different in texture and firmness then the ones that fell apart today. Has anyone here had them break down like this? Also, any idea if they changed the formula in the last year or so?

I have started using straight shank hooks on most of my t-rigged lures. I believe I make more and better hook-ups, but I know that my plastics seem to get torn up twice as fast as opposed to using EWG hooks. I am fine with this, but I have run out of the hot plastic of the day a few times lately so I suspect I need to re-think my packing amounts.

Flukes are my standard "only bringing a pocket's worth of tackle" lure for exploring new areas. I think Zoom Supers have the best action and durability, and I can skip them with the greatest of ease. I also use the D-shads, as they have that senko wiggle on the fall and are salty enough to hit deeper water a ton faster then the Zooms. I likely have a dozen other small fluke style baits in rotation, it is really becoming one of my favorite ways to fish. Every time I have a senko or weightless worm tied on I, at some point, wish it was a fluke.

I use the Owner Ultrahead 1/16oz-#1hook jigheads for Neds about half of the time. They are the perfect size and are pretty inexpensive. They do want a stiffer rod to insure good hooksets, but once the lure gets worn in they seem to be about the same as an exposed hook. I also really like the Decoy Nail Bomb jigs in the same size and weight, they have a slightly longer shank so they hold the lure a bit better.

I too have been messing around with the pack of Sexy Shad ones that I picked up. I have used them while river fishing twice. I have yet to catch a bass on one, but mainly because pan-fish just crush them the second they hit the water. I was fishing them nose hooked with a 1/16oz Gopher jig with a hop and deadstick retrieve through deep pools. While they do catch fish, they only last maybe one or two hits the way I was fishing them.

Is a plastic frog out of the question? The Z-man popping frogs have great action and I had a huge snapper grab one and start a 4 min tug of war with me over it. When he spit it the hook was bent but the frog was still in great shape. I think they are like $4-5 for a 4 pack.

I fish Fat Impacts using hooks with around that amount of gap and have a great hookup ratio. The plastic is soft enough to compress is my guess.

I spend far far more then I should, mainly because I get fixated on trying a new presentation/style. My latest kick is senkos/flukes/t-rigged 6" worms and I now have four 3600 cases full of tackle and a bin of spares. I did catch my first senko bass this morning, but it is still way overboard. I also buy way way too much stuff if I can get a "deal" on it. I had to unsubscribe from Outlet Tackle's mailing list as I was just buying piles of crap I didn't even really have a plan for. I am on the cusp of getting my fishing room organized and then I am going to sell off everything I don't actively use.

Man, that is bigger then four or five of my usual canal bass combined.

I have a two-piece 7' StCroix Premier ML-F spinning rod I stick an Okuma 3000 reel on. It's loade with 15lb braid and gets a 5' floro leader. I tend to give my non-fishing friends something simple, like a Ned, inline spinner, or small paddle tail and the rod handles all of them well. Being a two part rod, I don't worry about the tip, as I can just replace the upper section.

I bought a pile of 1/16oz finesse jigs at some TW sale last year. The 2.8 Flappers make the perfect trailers for them, compact but full of action.

I spent a few hours one afternoon fishing the trd tube for smallmouth in a small river. It seems to have more action then a TRD, but is lighter and doesn't cast or skip as well. Action-wise, it looks much better when swam then the TRD, but not as much as a half zlinker it shortned Hula stick. It was durable and preformed well on the zman jigs, with a perfect fall rate on the 1/20oz one. It faired less well on Gopher 1/16oz jigs, it didn't stay on well without glue. Where it really shined, was rigged weedlessly on An Owner 1/16oz-#1/0 Ultrahead bAll jig. The solid head held the shank well and the hollow rear allows much much better hook sets then a TRD or other solid plastic. The durability is also amazing rigged this way. The tentacels didn't have much action and stuck together until I lubed them up with scent. While the plastic isn't nearly as absorbent as a older hall zlinker, the tentacels and hollow butt really help the scent last. I am going to look into a more viscous scent to try and fill the hollow butt with it. All in all, I like it. Right now 90% of my MWF fishing is done with half zlinkers and shortned Hula sticks. I use the former for more swimming presentations and the latter for more more hop/drag ones. I plan to fish the TRD Tube against the Hula stick to see if one or the other performs better.

I have been out of town for work the last 10 days and I'm going stir crazy. Tomorrow I pick up a new rod and hit the canal hard in the next two weeks. I am going to try and take my kayak to wide water. Has anyone been there recently? I am wondering about the water level, the launch spot there isn't awesome looking when it is low.

They are great. I fish them on a 1/16oz-2/0 Keitech shakey head jig and have very good luck. They also work great weightless fished like a fluke. They are pretty fragile though, and panfish seem obsessed with biting their tails off.

Keitech recommends a 4/0. I was doubtful at first, but a 2/0 ended up working very well on the 3.8" ones I fish the most

I gave up on bank fishing this summer and just wade for smallmouths in smaller rivers. It makes the heat more bearable and on light taclke even a 9" smallie is a blast to carch.

I splashed some Gulp juice in my mouth once. It was so bad that I hiked back to my car and drove to buy a toothbrush and paste. Even then I swear it lingered for a day.

I pinch the barbs down on all my perch and panfish lures to make it easer to unhook them. I have started doing the same on my MWF jigs as my catch rate is sometimes high enough that the barbs slow me down. Most of my larger presentations I leave the barb on as larger lures and hooks seem to be easier to get out of the fish.

I fish mix of hollow bodied frogs and plastic frogs. The hollow ones get more hits, but less hookups, the plastic ones get less hits, but I get far better hookups. My solution is to just river fish for smallies until the weeds die off. But really, I think my issue is using too light of a rod, but sometimes I swear I get two or three good pulls in only to have the fish spit it. I am starting to wonder how many of my hits are from snapping turtles instead of bass. The main pond I frog in is full of them and I landed a monster of a snapper there last year.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B019X0EID2/ref=twister_B009ZNI49C?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1 Just a basic duffle bag, they are very well made and a good value at $30, but if you check weekly there is almost always some color on sale for $10-12, at which point they are absolute steals. I must have five of them at this point, keep my waders/gear in one, my cold weather kayaking gear, in one, a third for the emergency kit in my car. I am on a work trip right know and have one with me ull of tackle. I can get maybe 4-5 Plano 3600 series bags in the main compartment with room to spare for a few smaller boxes and my reel. Each side pocket will hold maybe 15ish bags of plastics, more if you really pack them in.