fishwizzard

allbasescovered.jpg I like shorter rods as well, still hunting for a great short frog rod.

Notice how most every country in the top 10 has a strong tradition of fishing.......

I have been wanting to try out the Iovino plastics for a while but the price put me off. Found a seller on ebay with these to bags for $20 shipped so I went for it. They are the softest soft plastics I have ever felt and the SM Killer color is really great. I am going to fish them on little Slider heads and may give spilt-shotting them a go.

Cool, thanks. I have a pair of Loomis MagL/XF spinning rods that I use for dropshot/general finesse rods on the yak and while wading but they are on the edge of being under-powered some of the time. I think the Avid ML/XF rods sound like they would be a good bump up in power while keeping close to the same taper.

Great combo. I have a FMJ and keep swapping out between a Steez SV TW and a sv103 on it. I think the Steez A would be the "Goldilocks" reel for that rod.

I have been looking at the AVS63MLXF for a while, it seems like it would be an ideal addition to my yak arsenal and be a great wading rod as well. How well does it load at the lower end of it's range?

Yea, I don't even understand why its so versatile. I normally hate XF actions in anything more powerful then like a ML spinning rod, but that Avid is really something special.

Your posting about it got me to buy one and I am glad I did, it's a wonderful rod. It's the best rod I have fished for anything that wants to jerk, pop, walk, or twitch. But it's still sensitive enough for bottom contact presentations as well. I use it as a dedicated topwater rod when on my yak but it's a great versatile rod for bank beating and I am using it more and more for that. It's so light and handy, it's great for hike-in/bushwhack fishing. This is the 3600 box I put together for bank-fishing the Avid 6'2". It;s got a bit of everything and the rod shines with everything I have in there.

I have found exactly one place in Maryland to get boudin. It's a little Texas-bbq place that only seems to be open when the owner feels like it. I drive by it coming home from a few of my ponds and if it's open I cannot help but stop. This place just has boudin blanc, I have never managed to find boudin noir outside of Louisiana or east Texas.

The Bell Grove Ponds on the lower Patapaco are full of metal, but you might snag on an old bulldozer.

I just bought one of these, waiting on delivery. I want to give one more try to using a 20-30’ leader on one of my spinning combos and figured this was a good time to try the FG as well.

That’s a great picture of The Bend. I want that whenever I have anything bigger then a pound on the line.

It will warp the boxes over time. I keep some in a 3500 plano knockoff and it’s very warped but still closes tightly. I keep pre-rigged Ned’s in a fly box. The owns I have are made of a harder plastic then plano boxes and so far it seems like they are unaffected. Friend of mine keeps his in a little multicompartment Tupperware container he bought at the grocery store and it seems to not be reacting. It seems like a crapshoot though on whether or not a given plastic will react.

R is “Regular” action, it’s a rating used by japanese rod companies. The two I have owned were slower then most “mod-fast” rods but faster then say a trout rod. Combined with a lot of power (the rod I use is rated 1/2-3oz) you get the benefit of solid hooksets but even a 1lb bass will pull hard enough to keep the rod loaded. I use the same rod for smaller glide baits and I managed to land a stocked rainbow that somehow managed to hook it’s self without ripping the hook out of it’s lip.

I started using a XH/R at the end of last fall for spinnerbaits and am really liking it. Plenty of power for hooksets and some forgiveness in keeing the pressue on. That being said, I throw a spinnerbait on basicly every rod I own and so long as the weight/hook gauge is matched to the rod’s power/action, it’s basicly fine.

Oh, I meant when breaking off when snagged. My goal last season was to become more fearless when fishing jigs, so I ended up breaking off a lot of 15lb Invizx. When I switched to Tatsu it seemed like it took less force to break it off, but I don’t know how much stretch affects my perception of how much force I am putting on the line.

I gave Tatsu a try this fall and I swear it breaks more easily then a comparable diameter Invizx. I wonder if the added stretch from the Invizx is making it seem stronger? I keep meaning to test them with a luggage scale but have never gotten around to it.

I only carry a single rod when bank fiishing so I try to find presentations for each rod to cover bottom/mid/top. The FMJ is obviously great for all things bottom. For mid-column it works pretty great for chatterbaits, the rod has a good blend of power/taper for ripping them through grass. The hooksets are great and the rod loads enough to help keep them on. For topwater I was surprised how well it worked for walking a Shudderstep, the tip is pretty good for walking/twitching heavier lures. I have also thrown a BBZ Rat 40 on it to good success. Anything with thicker trebles works pretty well but I dial the drag way back and use my thumb to add pressue as needed. I use Cover Craws a lot in shallow pads and the FMJ does pretty good with them but 3/8 oz is really about the lower limit where it will load well. This comming sprinng I have some assorted 6” and up stickbaits and some 8” lizards I want to try on it.

Huh, I have only cracked the brake sideplate open a few times and didnt even know the mag ring would fit in backwards.

I was hoping they would do a Levente version of the Launcher as I think it would have let me get a crank/topwater into every sqft of some of the smaller spots I bank fish. I might try the EMTF, a crankbait rod is the only real hole left in my arsenal. The jdm line up has a 1 power spinning rod that looks really interesting as a hairjig rod for some of the smaller creeks I fish.

What combination of reassembly errors could lead to the mag dial working backwards? I managed to get a handle to spin backwards once but Haven’t found the “magic” combination to get the brake dial to work backwards.

I bought a FMJ last spring and it’s an amazinrg rod. Great jig rod but it can do a lot more.

I honestly don’t know, most of my canaille fishing is from Swain’s Lock heading north. The watered part of the canal isn’t really a continuous stretch of water due to a lot of the lock gates being kept closed and I don’t know the Chain Bridge section well enough to hazard a guess on whether it’s level will influence the level of the northern stretch. Now that It’s staying light out a little longer I’ll probably make a trip up that way in the next few weeks to scout things out and will report back.

There is very little information about the Hyuga line out there other then a thread on tackletour. If you’re interested in trying to pick one up I was suggest calling the Tackle Trap and seeing if they could still source one for you, otherwise you would have to hunt around and try to find a overseas site that has one in stock. However, heaver rods with a slower action are far more common in JDM rods, so its very likely that with enough looking around you can find another one that suits your needs.

This fall I started throwing chatterbaits on a MB Hyuga 72H. It’s an XH/R rod and it seems to give really solid hooksets and has enough bend to be pretty forgiving when it comes to keeping tension on. I do use 40lb braid on it to give better casting distance, better hooksets, and a better chance of being able to “land” whatever undereater log I end up setting my chatterbaits into. I think the Hyuga line has been discontinued and they seem to be getting harder to source, but in any case I’m starting to feel like a heavier powe and slowr action combo is really what I prefer for chatterbaits, spinnerbaits, and really anytimg that has a big single hook and is going to be in motion when the hit happnes.