fishwizzard

Biting insects ruin a day faster then anything for me. I am going to breakdown and get a head net this year.

Same, but baitfish instead of white. So long as there is some open water I can cast to, a swimjig is the overwhelming choice.

I use a ton of the heads, the 3/0-1/16oz Pro heads are perfect for thinner 6" worms and lizards, very slow fall and the head shape lets them slip through soft cover.

The biggest difference imho is size. I had a Zillion SV TWS and sold it but love my new Tat SV and it's a much smaller reel.

I have tired Culprit Fire-n-Ice and have never had any luck with it. Tomato or GP w/ Red Flake out fishes it in clear water and Blue/Black or any of the purples beats it in stained. I want to love it but it's hard to restock when it's not getting bit.

Almost every casting issue I have seen in person involves not fully loading the rod in a consistent manner. Accuracy comes with practice, but if you are not getting the rod loaded you will never get be able to be accurate and consistent. What got it to click for me was finding videos of pro's casting with their entire body in the shot. Seeing how relatively little movement they use and how deeply the rod was loading on the backcast was like a light bulb going on.

Oh yes, I probably gone through three or four bags of them. It’s generally what I start with in clear water.

I bought an NRS semi-dry suit years ago when I got into yak fishing. I think I used it 3-4 times and then admitted to myself that I don't enjoy fishing when the temps are cold enough to demand that level of protection. It was an expensive lesson. I did test it out by walking into the water up my arm pits, it kept me dry and warm.

For me, it's the Culprit version of "Tomato". I found one on the bank years ago, I was fishing an other worm at the time so I pulled it off and stuck the Culprit on. Caught three bass on it and bought a few bags as soon as I got home.

I don't bother to get my tabs perfectly centered when building the jigs, so they are inherently uneven.

I have a Concept A, it’s an excellent caster and has survived some monstrous abuse. It got demoted to hazard duty due to an unforgivable flaw, namely a hard ridge right on top of the non-handle sideplate. It digs into my palm like crazy and it’s really distracting.

I ran into a guy once who had a small block and fall rigged up to the front of his rack, he used it to haul his yak up into the bed far enough to get the tailgate closed. He had a padded bar added to the tack to rest the bow on and strapped it down to the points in his bed. It was a real slick looking set up.

For me, the biggest deciding factor when bank/shore fishing is what the actual banks are like. If you are stuck a few feet above/away from the water, a shorter rod makes it easier to land land a bass w/o high-sticking the rod, as the shorter the rod, the lower you have to raise the tip to get the line in your hand. Another factor is how clear your banks are, I fish a lot of spots where I am standing in a beaver drag to cast, so a 6' rod is going to work out better then 7' one.

Same, I set the drag so that when it's wrapped around my finger joint, it doesn't hurt to pull. The result being that thicker lines get more drag.

Get a sheet of closed cell foam and use it to add buoyancy where needed.

I would disagree, the Loomis MagL/XF spinning rods are built like that.

I don't even have a pic of my Allen Pond almost-4lb, I weighed her three times to make sure and just slid her back in the water when I realized I couldn't make the scale change via willpower.

I have never really kept strict tract of my "PB by location", except for one spot. Allen Pond in Bowie. For those who don't know, it's a little 1-2 acre pond, very developed, in a big suburban park. It's pretty pressued, but had a lot of bass in the 1-2.5lb range and most every year I would pull a few dozen 2.5-3.5lb bass out of there. I became obsessed with breaking the 4lb mark. I have gotten within ounces maybe a dozen times and once got a 3lb, 15oz bass, but never managed to hit 4lb. 2020 was my worst year there yet, I think I only managed a single 3lb class bass from there and did awful over all, skunking out on more trips then not. I think I am going to give up my quest and accept that the 4lb, 0.1oz bass that surely lurks in the depths will never be mine.

There was a period a year or so ago when the market for them just tanked for some reason. I got an amazing Red 'zilla for just under $200 and an almost NIB silver one for $100! I found more at that price but I was able to control myself.

Like $1.5-2.5 per pack, a total steal. I had found a seller whom for whatever reason had all these terminal tackle lots that almost no one else seemed to be bidding on. I would throw up lowball bids at like 25% of MSRP and a lot of the time I would get lucky. So I have this pile of them and really want to find a way to make them work for me in the waters I fish the most often. The Owners use a split ring to attach the hook, so I can change them out to whatever. The only thing that seems to work is slowly crawling them, but again, they seem to ding in more than a bullet weight will.

Up until the single break-off I mentioned, I used 12lb Sniper on a 3 power Loomis MBR, 1/4-3/4oz, rod for about two seasons. I fished every kind of cover a reasonable person would with a rod like that and can't think of a single other issue. Most of the spots that I fish are soft bottoms with a lot of wood, so I have never really had to deal with much bottom abrasion. I do get a lot of pickerel and snakeheads as bycatch and I have don't remember ever having one bite me off with the 12lb, only when I was finesse fishing with lighter lines.

I am a Pixy fan, I have 3-4 of them. I had a "normal" Pixy on a 783c GLX for a few months loaded with 14lb Sniper and was really surprised at how well it did. With the brakes at like 50-75% is would struggle a little bit at the upper end of the range, but it was the bee's knees for casting/pitching weightless Trickworms with very good control. The weaker drag didn't bother me as I palm a reel with my thumb on the spool, so adding a little drag is easy. Sadly I think the TD-Z line guide supply has dried up, so I don't know if you can build a proper Pixzilla anymore w/o a donor reel.

How I pick a rod: First and most important, I fInd a niche/edge case situation I can justify buying a new rod for. Look around and pick a few contenders. Read a million online reviews. Agonoize for weeks/months, make a lot of navel-gazing internet posts about rods. Late one night, impulse buy one of the rods. It's worked out well for me so far, I have a pile of rods that I love and even still miss most of the ones that I have sold. I found that guy's reviews recently, I was really into them until I got to one of his "power/taper" tests. I think I made a hissing noise and slid my chair away from the screen.

The first Pixys came out in 2003, almost a decade before the first SV spooled reels, so the idea of using a casting reel for lighter stuff has been around for a while even if the term "BFS" is newer. The only tech that maybe has trickled up from finesse casting is a trend towards lighter/shallower spools, but that might just be a Daiwa thing.

I used 12lb Sniper on my most used combos for a season or two, also fishing from the bank in similar depths. It never let me down but for a single instance. Long story involving a new rod whose power I underestimated, a much larger bass then I normally get at that spot, and heavier cover then I was expecting. The line snapped at the back side of the knot as I was lifting the bass out of the water. I was about out my filler spool of 12lb, so I decided to give 14lb a try. In my very crude backyard tests, it does feel a bit weaker then the 12lb, but it also is a little more wiery and hard to deal with. Having fishing with the 14lb all 2020, I think I will be going back to the 12lb. The rod I have it on isn't really powerful enough that I will do much cover fishing with it and I think I would prefer the easier handling 12lb.