fishwizzard

For open water, a 2 power Loomis MBR and 10lb Sniper Fluoro. If I am fishing them in light cover, I use the same combo but worry more.

I always assumed it was that getting the tolerances right for a flush-fit would be too difficult at any reasonable fishing rod price point, so the safest option is to to err on the side of making the ferrule overly long rather then too short, risking a loose fit.

The quality of the fishery isn’t amazing, but check out Clopper Lake. It’s a small impoundment but it has some nice largemouth in it and has enough coves that you can usually hide from the wind of needed.

The good old Minneapolis Wide Stance.

Did the same thing in the BWI garage after a 2 week trip. Except that I got into the other person's car and sat there trying the key for easily 60 seconds before I was like "wait, this isn't my junk laying all over the place....."

I fish flukes fast and close to cover, so I want something with a soft tip that immediately stiffens up. I also fish a lot in foot in really overgrown marshes, so I accuracy and easy of working are huge foe me. So far a SC Avid 6’2” M/XF has been the best I have found, the tip is nice and soft but recovers quickly so I can twitch it fast. The mid/butt are quite powerful so I get good hooksets and can keep a bass from running back into the cover I lured him out of. The reel was harder to settle on, due to how and where I fish flukes, I end up with a ton of slack on my spool, which made straight fluorocarbons too frustrating to use and even braid was annoying. What I have settled on is using a finesse casting reel with a shallow spool loaded with about 50y of 30lb braid. The short mainline eliminates the dig-in from the loose line almost completely. I add a short, 3-4’, leader of stiff 16lb fluoro leader. This gives me some abrasion resistance and I feel like the stiff, heavy leader lets the fluke stop more quickly post-twitch, so I can fish slow more quickly in terms of allowing the fluke to fall on slack like after every twitch.

That would be excellent. I don’t think I made it up there a single time this year.

I would love to get more into fishing the Upper Potomac, but its such a vast body of water that I never know where to start. I am starting to look into camping options up there to make it easier to spend more hours on the water.

This is how I broke my first rod, It was a very cheap saltwater spinning rod, but the sound of the graphite snapping still haunts me.

I go the other way, short-shorts and gallons of picardian spray, I want to catch the ticks before they attach.

It’s full of thorns, ticks, and mosquitoes. For sure never ever hike more then a mile from your car.

The goal is always 8 1/2 hours before I have to get up. My work schedule is all over the place and I travel a ton on top of that, so it’s hard to have any reasonable schedule. Currently laying in bed in a hotel on the West Coast hours before I have to be up. It’s always annoying when my first day on a West Coast show is a late start and I can’t use the time difference to my advantage.

I used to live in College Park and got to know my local corner store owner pretty well. One day I needed to break a $100 bill and asked him to do so. Like, I am in this store 2-4 times a week, you can see my front door from the store's front door and the owner knew more or less which house was mine. Even with all that, I got the stink-eye for a bit before he did it. I asked "man, how many fake hundreds do you get a year?" and he pulls out this huge binder, like for baseball cards, just full of fake bills. I start freaking out, like there are dozens and dozens of various fake bills. I suggested that he maybe call someone and turn them in, but he seemed shocked that anyone would be interested in them as he said it was like a monthly if not weekly thing.

I try keep at least a hundred bucks in twenties in me at all times. I am a big fan of less-formal eating establishments and until recently, a guy with his smoker set up on the side of the road wouldn’t be taking credit cards. Also a lot of the time at work I can’t get away for meals and prefer to have cash on hand when someone offers to pick me up something.

I am a geometry cheater.

What’s the weight on that hook?

I Fish for stock trout but I’m not super enthusiastic about it. I generally use it as a chance to give my white perch tackle some exercise in the off-season. I have a noodly little 5 foot ultralight casting rod that makes the 12 inch rainbows a lot more interesting then the heavy saltwater tackle most of the guys around here end up using for them.

Would you rather… 1) Hit your thumb with a framing hammer? or 2) Drive a number 2 Phillips bit through your thumb nail, into the nail bed?

I can get a ned out to 100' with a few rods, a Majorcraft Benkie/Volkey UL/RF, a Dobyn's Sierra UL 704, my old Phenix Recon2. The slower rods are easier to get distance/control with, but a longer XF rod can do it as well. The reel is equally important, I use older BFS reels, mostly Pixies, and so long as you don't need to rely on the breaks completely, they are controllable for longer casts. My only "modern" BFS/UL reel is a Alphas Air PE and it would very easily get a 3/16oz presentation out that far w/o much thumb needed, so long as I use the thin braid its designed for.

100’ casts with an pretty aerodynamic 3/16oz Presentation is easily achievable. I personally can’t skip that far out with a bait caster and honestly I’ve never tried it with a spinning combo but I’m sure it’s possible as well in the right hands. Obli enough, Midwest Finesse is one of the few things I very much prefer to do on a spinning combo. There’s something about the increased handle travel distance that lets me get a good “crank crank crank glide glide” retrieve. I have a BFS combo that I do fish a lot of Midwest Finesse on, but it generally only comes out on days when I may also want to drag a little t-rig around, which is something I prefer to do with a casting combo.

I love the Horny Toads, but they share my heart with the Kietech toads. The Kietech toads weight a ton and cast far far better then a Horny. They also make a bigger wake and can be run a lot more slowly. The Hornys get the nod when I want to fish faster and/closer in, the Kietechs when I want to go further/slower.

I do it the other-way around, the food is a reward for doing well that day. I wouldn’t say I necessarily plan my fishing trips around food, but every fishing spot has a corresponding food spot that I can hit on the way home.

Amazing! How is the rod?

I see it every year when they stock the pond near me with trout. But, as I’m generally there with a ultralight bait caster, I assume tbey are looking at me and assuming that I’m the idiot.

I use it in place of a t-rig if I am going to be doing more pitching then casting and I am going to be using a bulky plastic with a lot of drag. I have found that more hydrodynamic plastics don't really get enough separation on the fall for it to matter much. Something like a Hula grub is where I really think it shines.