fishwizzard

I very much agree. I have found that there are some good (and small) flyfishing packs and slings out there, but all of the large ones I have tried were awful at being an actual backpack. I have a pair of Osprey Talon bags, a 22l and a 11l, that I use for hiking throughout the year and they are both wonderful for lugging too much tackle around in as well. For lugging tackle in and out of my car, I use a Cabela's Advanced Angler bag. I have the magnum one and it holds like a dozen 3600 boxes and a bunch of loose stuff in the outside pockets.

I picked up a Fury 795SB to throw 68 Specials and BBZ Rat 50’s on, but unfortunately I am not really digging it. I stuck a daiwa millionaire cv-z 253a I had laying around on it but it’s very cumbersome to cast and doesnt feel any more powerful nor cast further then the Hyuga 72H/sv103 combo I have been throwing those lures on. I am going to stick a sv103 on it and try again this weekend, but I fear that I am gonna end up selling it off and getting a more powerful rod.

For smaller paddle tailes I think the Keitech FI’s have the best and most subtle action when worked slow and mostly weightless. The SK version is more durable but I think it takes more speed to get it moving.

I was understood it as “cover” being something that with enough determination and manpower you could pull off the bottom with hooks and ropes while “structure” would require an underwater bulldozer to alter.

For $300 I would try to find an old model 3-power Loomis MBR or CR IMX rod on ebay and a used Alphas to go on it.

For spinnerbaits I only really use them when I want to add weight for casting distance/ease. I have never noticed a difference in hit rate. Chatterbaits I use a low-action trailer like a fluke.

https://www.amazon.com/Daiichi-Recycler-Spooling-Device-Equipment/dp/B0026PERTM https://www.daiichiseiko.com/products/4960/index?lang=en They advertise it being able to remove salt from braided line to extend it's life. No idea if that is even a real thing but the ability to say rinse off Mattawoman Creek mud out of braid sounds appealing.

Th chart is dumb to begin with as Godzilla lives in the ocean, why would he care if he fell through the ice?

Black Friday Round 1 I have wanted to give Slug-go's a try for years but the price always put me off. Found them for like $4-5 per bag so I thought I would give them a go. The 6" ones are lighter and softer then I expected. I am looking for a "bigger/heavier/more durable then a 5" senko" plastic to fish weightless around pads next season. Trickworms are the go-to for most of my tackle but are a bit too light for some of my heavier rods.

I have four of the Classic Bass rods, a pair of cr723's, a cr721, and a cr782. They are all great rods and the tapers are amazing. The only one I am not in love with is the cr721, but I realize that is a personal failing that I will have to live with ? @Burke, if you are in central-ish MD and want to meet up and give it a try I should have a bunch of time next week. I also have a spinning rod build on the MHX 6'0" Med Shooter Rod Blank CS722. I had it build as a MWF rod and it will skip a Ned rig like a champ. It's pretty sensitive too, I would put it up there with the old model IMX rods that I have.

That is really nice. Some day I am going to spring for the Cadillac of spooling stations, but so far I have resisted. I do swap spools and line around in my reels pretty often and being able to easily pull the line off a spool in a way that saves it for later re-loading would be useful. It's way over the top but sometimes a fancy and well-made tool is it's own reward. I mean just look at this thing!

I just ordered one myself, should arrive Thursday just in time for me to leave town ? For the reel I am going to try a daiwa millionaire cv-z 253a that I picked up on ebay, it came in a lot with a rod I wanted. It's a far bigger reel then I have used before but it is surprisingly comfortable to use and I can even get a semi-palming grip on it. It's also way nicer than the used prices on ebay would indicate. Mine is a little busted up and from the little teardown I have done, full of old hard grease. But it's still very smooth and the little yard casting I have done with it shows it to cast will ease and control but still giving plenty of distance with a ~2.5oz swimbait tied on. The only downside is a lack of externaly adjustable brakes. But, it's still Magforce-V, so they don't need a lot of adjustment.

I feel like the Loomis MBR rods are generally close to their listed lure weight range. They have soft tips that make them seem lighter then they are, but after a year or two of fishing a few of them I have found that they can cast their full range. It does seem like a Loomis 3 Power/MH is a bit lighter than most other manufactures' "Medium Heavy", but that is what I uses as my "standard".

They are very close to the Robo Neds in height. I feel like Producto does do a sale a few times a year so it’s odd they would skip BF. FYI they have a sister company called 12Falthom that does salt water plastics. Some of them are the same plastics but in different color options.

I think they would work well for that, but they are pretty "tall" so will leave very little hook-gap exposed unless you are using #1 and larger hooks. I use them as trailers for tiny jigs, the paddle tail gives a lot of action but is far more durable then any tiny craw plastic I have tried. I went through my spam folder and still no email. I hope they are doing OK, I would hate to be without them.

No, which is strange as I got one last year. Their tournament worms are 100% worth it at full price though, they are amazing soft, floating worms.

I have a poorly-updated spreadsheet I keep to track parts/line/maintenance times for my reels, but I do not keep up with it. I only really use 4-5 different lines over around a dozen combos and am trying to keep working to use the smallest number of lines on all of them.

I fish a lot of tiny creeks and a good search bait for muddy water is a weedless inline spinner. Take an 1/8oz inline and snip the treble off. Using a tiny split ring, add a #1 EWG hook or something like that. Then take a litttle trout worm or other super thin plastic and rig it on the hook. This gives you a loud and flashy presentation that you can fish close up to cover and the flooded bank without many snags. The hook up ratio isnt great but it will let you know if there are fish in the creek and you can cover a lot of water with it. Now for “normal” conditions, my favorite “are there catchable fish in here?” lure is a GP or Black 3” stick bait, t-rigged on a 1/0 EWG hook. You can throw it anywhere and stand a good chance of getting it back and you can dead-stick it or work it like a tiny jerkbait. If I start getting hits I will switch it up but for reconnoitering a new creek I have found nothing better.

I mosty use a casting combo for DS these days, but I used to use 7lb sniper on a 2500 Ci4+ and didn’t have many issues. The line twist was never very bad and maybe once per 3-5h trip I would stop and push the twist out. I would use L&L every night before every trip.

Cool, thanks!

How fast does it power on? I am using a cheap ebay luggage scale and my main beef with it is the long 15ish second turn on time. I feel bad keeping them out of the water for that much extra time and don't weigh a lot of bass that I wish I did because of it.

Yep. I use the shoebox sized ones for "normal" plastics and some larger ones for clamshell packed ones. The "active" plastics live in an ever changing assortment of 3600 and 3500 boxes packed into kits so I can just grab and go.

That is cheating and also preshelled ones are too expensive for how fast I eat them. I play a “game” where I use a pistachio shell as a lever to open the stubborn ones until it break, then I use that shell as the lever and so on and so on until I realize I just ate 3000 cal worth of pistachios in one sitting and get up to go run around a little bit.

The 50 Rat is a producer of both size and numbers for me but it is a pig to cast. The 40 works on a lot of MH or H rods and I did pretty well with them this year as well.

I have some jigs poured from that mold and I use them for tubes. If you carefully force one into a slightly too-small tube it makes the head fattenup like a goby and gives it a bit of a glide on the fall.