fishwizzard

So it it looks like the Nano Popper has been changed. The colors are all different and the tail treble is not longer dressed. I found a few old one and bought them and a few new ones to try. I can always dress the hooks myself, but I now worry that they changed how the lure runs as well.

Boom, that's it! I am going to go buy a half dozen of them! 1) What kinda fool gets a manicure *before* they go fishing? That's just throwing money down the drain. 2) I like a lot of things about it. First, it casts very very well for it's size. Second, it stays on top of the water. A lot of small poppers (lookin' at you Pop-X) seem to have a very narrow range of action before they will either skitter across the surface or dive under. This little guy is so easy to make either tiny "pops" or big splashes but it either way, it stays on top. Third, it is really easy to work. I am normally an XF guy for popping/walking lures, but even on a Mod action trout rod it works great. 3)I did go out today, but it was so windy that I fear if it did float up it is now wedged under a floating dock. But, this same pond did return a BBZ Rat to me a few months after I lost it to a snag, so maybe I will get lucky again.

Hah, yea I cannot walk by that display without grabbing one. I don't even like them anymore but my childhood memories keep me buying them! The BPS version of a flick-shake worm are pretty decent. They have nowhere near the salt of the Jackal ones, but with a weighted hook the action is very very close and the BPS ones are a ton more durable. I also really like their larger stickbaits more then the GYCB ones. The 7" in particular has a much slower fall then the actual 7" senko but still has that wiggle.

Last night I lost one of my favorite lures, this mystery tiny popper: I found it snagged in a tree years ago, it's light enough to cast on my trout combo and I have caught quite a few late-season bass on it when I get sick of trout fishing. Last night was no different, the trout were not cooperating and I tied tiny popper on. Five pops in to the first retrieve a nice bass grabs it. I got him to the bank and then, forgetting for a second I was fishing 4lb mono, I grabbed the line to lift his head rather then stick my hand into the water. The line popped and he ran off with my lure. I feel really bad for leaving a lure in him through carelessness. I am also cranky about loosing my tiny popper and would love any help IDing it.

But see, it takes me a few hours to wade that mile, but only 15-20 min to walk back. I like to wade upstream and then if I have not pushed my time limit/daylight to the max, I will hike back on land and try to hit a few of the more productive spots on the way back. I don't think I have the self control to move fast enough upstream to allow for much fishing on the way back. I also feel like I am way less sure of my footing when wading downstream, even when just crossing water when hiking my preference is to cross on a upstream diagonal. Also, if you want to see some more insanely good casting and some really beautiful creeks, check this guy out. It's also all in japanese and this guy uses casting rods to throw small cranks to trout. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCrQAtakEbQa-YZ6zmESV92w

I travel a lot for work and have a combo and small hip pouch I take with me. I have my tackle limited to the following: 1) One bag, Senko, GP w/ Red Flake 2) One bag, Zoom Super Fluke, Pearl 3) One bag, Culprit 7" Fatmax, Red Shad 4) Two @ 1/2oz Red-Eye Shad, Sexy Shad 5) Two @ 1.5SK Squarebill, Chart Black Back 6) Two @ 3/8 spinnerbait, Sexy Shad skirt 6) Micro Plano box with 3/0 offset round bend hooks, a few sinkers, and some pegs. A lot of these choices are informed by the rod I bring, a ML-M/ModF telescoping casting rod. It's not amazing for plastics but it works well enough. If I ever move on to a stiffer and more powerful rod I would lose the flukes and add a few jigs.

Thanks! I will drive an hour or so for one with bass stuff. I went to a cool little on up in northern MD last winter that was 90% smallmouth stuff, I gotta hunt around and try and find it again.

I think this is it. I spend a good bit of time with the Toadrunner this summer and bass would miss it by feet sometimes. I feel like my hookup rato was good if the bass actually got the the lure in it's mouth, but it seems like they have a real hard time zeroing in on it. I eventually learned to fish it slower and started adding more pauses, so more like a Frog and less like a Toad. I don't mind Trokar hooks in general and use Owner Cutting Points for a lot of my soft plastic fishing, but I do not like them on a frog. Even trying to be careful I have cut myself a half dozen times by nicking the hook with my fingers while grabbing to to squeeze water out.

I see you are in central MD. If you can wait a little, I suggest hitting up some of the fishing flea markets that happen around here over the winter. https://www.fishtalkmag.com/blog/winter-fishing-shows-mark-your-calendars This is not a complete list, but it seems to have most of the ones I have been to. They are mostly salt-focused, but there are always a few of tables selling used gear for pretty decent prices.

Look up Rock River Custom Baits. They sell a product called "Solid Head Finesse Tube" and a "Crawler Head Jig". I would link them but their site is just awful and it's hard to get links to work sometimes. Confidence Baits also sells that style of head as a "Draggin" head. In any case, I use small tubes rigged on a "Crawler" or "Draggin" or "Sled" heads all the time and they work great in every kind of water I have tired them in. There isn't a good supplier for the jigheads however, just a few small vendors who all charge a ton for them. But, they work well for a ton of different small plastic presentations in addition to tubes. I love them with solid head tubes though, they give great plastic life and you can swap out colors and tube sizes very quickly without ripping up your plastics. The hookgap is perfect for soft tubes and they are very weedless and great for fishing through light/soft cover that most weedless tubeheads will snag on.

Not well! Hit three ponds on Friday and beat them to a foam with spinners and chatters. The only bass I saw was a small school of turbo-dinks who would follow an S-Waver around at a respectful distance. Hit the same ponds again on Saturday and fished a fluke, t-rigged senko, and a shakyhead for most of the day. Same result, nothing. I tied on a tiny Pond Magic spinner and spent about a hour walking and casting it to no effect. Ran into a few other guys I see and chat with and none of them were having any luck either. I seem to recall doing pretty good last fall, but I also seem to remember that it was a lot warmer.

"According to the most recent National Survey of Fishing, Hunting and Wildlife-Associated Recreation, produced by various federal agencies, bass are the most popular fishing target in America. Nearly 36 million people older than 16 went fishing in 2016, and they spent some $43 billion on equipment and travel. By rough comparison, about 24 million Americans played golf in 2016, according to the National Golf Foundation, and they spent about $32 billion on the same categories." From the NYTimes article posted on the last page. I guess I would have though "fishing" as a whole would be more popular then golf, but not by nearly that much. In terms of "friends and colleagues", I think it depends on where you live and what you do. I live by the Chesapeake Bay and work in the event/entertainment industry, so I run into very few bass fisherman but a decent number of saltwater guys.

That might just be the nature of super inexpensive electronics. I had a different model scale that worked wonderfully, well enough that after owning it for a month I bought a second one as a spare. When my original one died due to getting caught in a huge thunderstorm, I dug my replacement out of the bin I had stashed them only to discover that it was completely nonfunctional right out of the box. So that case, one scale was the best thing since sliced bread, and the other was complete garbage. I bought both from the same eBay seller within a month or so of each other, so it’s kind of a crapshoot.

I started throwing the 50 last fall and had a lot of success with it. Most of my hits came on the pause or during a slow, straight retrieve. I also picked up some 40s and they seem to work about as well, but are harder to keep on the surface unless I really slow down the retrieve. I don't really walk them that often, but will give them a few twitches as soon as they splash down, both to get the lure pointed the right way and to try and take advantage of the rather large splash-down the lure has. It works often enough to keep doing it.

I have been using this guy all year with few complaints. It's $8 and is accurate and turns on fast, the two things I am mostly looking for. It has survived one good rainstorm in the outside pocket of my pack and all summer in the back of my car. https://www.ebay.com/itm/50Kg-5g-10g-Portable-Digital-Hanging-Fishing-Scale-with-Lighted-LCD-Display-/381204513711?hash=item58c18f43af

I fish very close to shore as well and most all of my kayak rods are 6' to 6'6". I will bring a longer one if I think it will be useful or I can't find a short rod for a given application, but I have a core group of 3-5 rods that come along most every trip and the longest is 6'6".

More or less. It's the one bit of fabric on me that I can be more or less guaranteed to not have any grit or sand on it.

I use spit and my hanky.

For Zoom Supers, you can rig them upside down so the hook point is hidden in the belly slot so it's still weedless, but is much easier to pop out.

Flukes, along with the Ned, were the first lures that got me catching bass consistently. They are just super fun to fish and a wide range of retrieve speed and cadence seems to produce. The first time I had a good sized ~3lb bass come up and grab a fluke right at the surface is burned forever in my mind. I remember thinking, "Welp, I don't see why I need to try any more lures, they can't be better than this!".

I have also had some luck with really tiny, like crappie-sizes, unsalted tubes. I tried them as I wanted to see if I could use a DS rig to target panfish, but I caught far far more bass the three or four times I tried it. The hits were all super soft and they were most all hooked inside the mouth, like they just sucked it in while swimming by.

I have had some luck with little 4" Zoom lizards. They fall very very slowly and have a ton of action with just a tiny twitch of the rod. Panfish will peck them to bits though, to the point where I just give them up when it gets too bad.

There were a ton of pretty nice ones on ebay from Japanese sellers over the last few months. I got a maybe C+/B- one for like a hundred bucks this past spring. The yen has picked back up a little bit, but it's still low enough to make used reels from japan very attractive.

I will at times throw an S-Waver 168 on (casting) rods rated around 1-1.25oz at the top end. It's not ideal but I just cast with a gentle lob. Once the lure is in the water it fishes with very little resistance, so your H rod should handle it. If you just want to fart around with one then I think it would be fine. They are fun lures to fish, you can make them do a lot of stuff with the right line/rod movements.

I would love to try out a super long spinning rod, but I don't think I would take the leap of faith to buy one blind though. I fish a lot of spots with long riprap dams and have very good luck fishing small paddle tails or flukes like 3-5' off of them. I think I would get a kick out of a super long rod that would let me cover a ton of distance per cast so I could give each area more attention.