FishDewd

Weather and work permitting, 1-2 days a week ideally. I actually went fishing today. Skunked, but had fun! Today was good temperature wise, but the wind absolutely killed me. I have trouble fishing in wind, I can't detect bites or control my lures nearly as well. On the bright side, it was my first time fishing my new ML Carbonite rod! It performed flawlessly. On the downside, I lost my brand new red eye lipless crank that I just bought the same day I bought the rod lol. I am starting to really dislike crank baits, I always lose them. For some reason, it is a pond requirement here to have arbitrary random cement blocks/slabs in the middle of the water in what is otherwise a perfectly snag-free area.

Lol, they are a bit like pets! I do feel a little bad stabbing them onto a hook... some of them are so big they are hard to rig up cause I find I have to run the hook down them, push them up to the shank tightly, repeat, then maybe even need to loop them a few times around the bend before finishing by letting a bit of them hang off the tip to cover the barb. To be fair they put up a fight the whole way and don't make it easy! Squirmy wormies! One of these days I want to start a bed of Egyptian worms because they can handle my warm texas temperatures without cooling. These canadians I have are a bit of trouble to fish with because I have to load them in a small cooler with ice packs so they don't get too hot and die on me.

I really only do ned rigs with very occasional shaky heads... pardon my newbness there. I consider ned to be a super finesse presentation... it's hit or miss for me. I've caught a few on it, but since I have issues watching my line due to various reasons it sometimes doesn't work well for me. But here's what I do when I fish these: Ned rigs- larger baits (4" or so), 1/20 oz. Small baits (2-3/4"), 1/15-1/16 oz. I never get a lot of distance with these cast wise, but that's not really the point. It may take me as long as 15 minutes to reel one of these short cast ned rigs in because I fish them extremely slowly, patiently, and methodically. I almost fish it like I would a drop shot, with more drag motions. I'm learning this style but I've had some luck over winter and like it a lot for its delicateness. Shaky heads- up to 1/2 oz depending on weather conditions (like wind or currents). I still fish these slowly, but not as slowly as I do the ned rig. Little wiggle here and there, lift and drop, drag... but it's still a slow progression back to me. I haven't had as much luck with these, I'm also still learning this style.

Those look pretty nice... a lot like one I recently bought actually with the skirts (the green pumpkin ones with the flake), but the heads are a little different. I want to try to make my own as well one day.

I have a fly rod... or what's left of it anyway. A cheap Martin starter reel/rod combo. The reel and bottom section is fine... the top section was killed in an unfortunate storing accident that basically severed it in two. I tried to repair it, but it didn't work. I used it once but was only starting out with fly rods so I didn't have any luck. Not sure I have the coordination to be effective with one. The reels also kind of baffle me, how does one get a big fish in with such a tiny handle on the reel? People do it, but beats me how it's done lol.

Kind of... I know some die but I assume they reproduce cause I often find some in there that are a lot smaller than the others. I also do restock after I've gone fishing using them enough times to use up about a batch of worms, about 18 is average for what can be bought at a time from a store. So it's like mixed families in there at this point. I imagine some are older than others. I do re-dirt them when they show signs of being unhappy, such as a lot of them being on the surface at once for a while. I feed them newspaper and/or used coffee grounds. Newspaper I wait until they've shredded through what was in there, or when I re-dirt them I line the container with it to get started. Coffee grounds I do maybe once every few weeks, just a few sprinkles of it on the surface after I've dried it on some paper towel for a while. The thing that seems to kill them is excessive moisture that causes dirt molding. It'll get this white, webby stuff on it and the worms don't deal with it well at all. I have lost some batches in the past due to that so I learned. On average, I'd say a single batch can easily last a year or more kept cool and happy in a decent container with scheduled dirt replacements. I use an organic mixture from home depot that contains a fair amount of earthworm casings.

Huh that's weird. I've left on some of my trd baits for quite some time and mine don't show any sign of this rusting at the keeper. I do also stretch the heck out of them before use, but maybe that has something to do with it. At any rate, I just pulled out all my z man bait bags and removed any hooks that got left into them just in case lol.

I got a 6'6" medium lite in fast action. I only wish they had this in a 7' but to be honest... I don't think it would make much difference really. I'm not the longest caster at any rate, and I catch more fish closer to bank anyway. I already have 2 7' rods so I figure this would be a great change up for me for different situations. I'm gonna reserve my spinning set up for larger cranks and jigs and whatnot... my Lews medium 7' Tp1 I love as a dropshot and carolina rig set up, and this rod can kinda go in between those two as both a lightweight crank rod for tiny minnow cranks, etc, and also as my dedicated finesse rod for unweighted or very lightly weighted plastics. It has a very unique tip action. Reasonable flex up/down for jerking with light jigs, as well as a nice side-side whip action which I like a lot. That could open my possibilities there for what I can do with it. I'm thinking weightless dropshots, unweighted texas rigs, ned rigs, and whatever else I can come up with. I like to be creative sometimes lol. But I think it'll do great as a finesse rod. Even though it's a medium-lite the spine on is pretty good. Easily comparable to my other medium action rods in strength. I also really like the grip on it as well, feels really nice in my hand. Very well balanced. I'm gonna put it through it's paces next week with brush, grass, and grungy bottoms so I'll post here how it went for sure. Edit: another rod I almost bought over this one is available at my Cabela's called a Waterloo Phantom. They wanted $109 for it. It was also a medium-lite, 7' length, fast action. Only thing is to me it almost seemed like a light action. That was by far the lightest action baitcaster I have ever held, but it was almost... too light. Made me a little nervous. But I have no doubt it would launch the smallest plastics imaginable. Maybe you could return it or exchange it with a receipt... that's probably what I should've done actually, I'm just kind of tight on money right now which is why I elected not to spend that extra $20 for a reel I didn't really need. If it wasn't for getting a little tax return I wouldn't have bought the rod. Like I said in the other thread, I wasn't too fond of the spool bearings on the reel anyway. BPS kinda ticked me off anyway with their ad changing like it did lol.

That could help. I have a dark kind of green spiderwire braid on my casters right now. I've tried powerpro before but just didn't like it much. Wish spiderwire had a red or yellow in the same texture as the ez braid. I usually do okay with mono as a mainline since it floats, but since it tends to sit in a big curly que on the water it's still hard to notice a change.

Well, all I've been able to do for now was toss the carbonlite around the yard for an hour to get a feel for her, but I'm liking it! It'll sling a 1/8 and 1/4 dropshot rig a fair distance with minimal effort. I think it'll be a finesse monster when I take it out next week! I wouldn't mind having another in a longer medium action to replace my Lew's. Not a big fan of where they put the hook keeper though

I have a question for you guys that may seem kinda silly, but how does one "watch the line" to tell if you have a bite or not? I've never been able to do that. It's either too windy to tell, my line sinks, or I just simply cannot see where my line is in the water. I go mostly by bumps or if I feel pressure that I know isn't a snag, reel down into to verify, then set the hook.

I like it... it's always done great for me. Doesn't have a lot of memory, has just enough give to it, and hold knots well. I don't get what's not to like about it lol.

They were bringing more out in carts as fast as people were buying them... so I have no idea how many they actually have in stock lol.

I just got back from there... yeah, they were selling fast. I saw several people buy anywhere from 2-7 of them at a time!

Oh, this is true... the googans just aren't that great I thought. Some of their antics is what I don't approve of. Not the best of role models in some ways, especially when it's clear that they are just pushing their products. I've noticed the same... he also uses the Select Balance rod quite a bit, but I'm not sure about recently.

So I went, I saw, I conquered... kind of. They kind of pulled a fast one on me. The original ad I saw showed a carbonlite reel and said "buy a reel at $119.97(9?) and receive a carbonlite rod for free". It made it sound like I could choose a reel and then choose a rod. But that's not what it was at all... they had pre-made combos available in 6'6"-7'0" variations of medium to heavy. They did not the medium-lite rod combo that I wanted, in right or left hand (I wanted a left). I showed them the ad I downloaded and printed earlier this week, and while they agreed the wording was misleading and that I was right to think I could pick a rod, they refused to honor it. Also, I wasn't terribly impressed with the reels. I liked how the star wheel and spool knob clicked, but the spool bearing seemed sub-par to me and did not have much free spin to it. Ultimately I turned in one Zebco Mercury pole with a nice little 33 reel on it that I've used to pull many a fish out of creeks with, and got the $20 off for the medium-lite rod that I actually wanted. I also tried to cash in my credit points, but was told I didn't have any points on my card which I've had loaded at customer service 3-4 times now. So I ended up paying the full $100 for the rod (not bad a bad price though, not complaining) and for the red eye chartreuse sexy shad lipless crank I bought with it. Apparently you can combine the discount for an old rod/reel with points on your reward card to get a bigger discount. Too bad I couldn't do that, and I can't get that credit back cause the receipts are too old. I was told that the employee must have not pushed "enter" when my previous points were applied. Well, that's great. Good job! So I made sure the points were applied this time when I bought the rod and crank, so now I have 100 points when I should've had closer to 300 to use for a few extra bucks off. It was just chaotic to say the least! Hardly anyone was working, the people in customer service were really slow and giving this guy a hard time about a return purchase price for a Mossberg shotgun he had bought. Don't think I will mess with Bass Pro's sales events anymore, they just do not have their stuff together. Lol. With that said, I like the rod! I loads at 1/8th easily and I think it will be perfect for throwing weightless plastics. I think I will enjoy it a lot. It has a Fuji first guide with K series mini guides the rest of the way down. It is light, sensitive, and balances perfectly with the reel I put on it. So I"ll be testing it out next week now that temps that stabilized back into the 70's again. I think Spring is finally almost here! At least where I live anyway.

Excellent find! I actually somewhat expected that... buoyancy isn't as simple as the line floating or not. The line + the lure has to be able to displace it's weight of water to float or suspend itself. And it simply can't do that.

Not sure specifically but I have heard they do... not hard to believe when it's known they use the same reel parts as other brands.

In physics terms, this is referred to as "impulse"- the rate of change of momentum. The line (and/or knot) will actually break at different points according to how quickly the force is applied. Try it and see- if you know how much force can break the line, try applying the force slower or faster to show this. That's also a fair way to demonstrate the difference between mass and weight. That actually isn't a bad idea for an experiment, I like it. Good idea! A lot you can do with that one.

I've caught several bass using braid tied directly to a hook of some sort. Caught two today on a finesse dropshot actually, on a spinshot hook tied to braid. I don't believe for a second that a creature with a brain so small they aren't believed scientifically to have any of their neurons devoted to pain receptors has the capacity to think "oh, look that goofy looking 'worm' is being tugged around by Spiderwire braid! I better not bite that! Quick, Spot, let's swim over here so we can hide!" That's just giving them way too much credit for intelligence lol. Just like I don't believe that they can see a person standing near the water and automatically be scared to bite anything that's dropped in front of them, so all the people who cast unreasonably far over a hill in order to avoid being "seen" by the fish are just being silly and over complicating things for themselves. So no, I don't think the leader matters that much. What matters most is: placement, time, technique, and a sprinkle or two of good old fashioned luck. With that said, there are other reasons aside from visibility that make certain leader types better to use than others. Such as abrasion resistance, as has been said already.

What I think about the Favorite line of reels and rods... 1.) I think they are a marketing plow in order to support the YouTube group of fisherman known as the "googan Squad". For some reason they attract a massive fan base of followers who buy all their stuff. Most of the models from the Favorite line are in use by members of this group, and several are even named after them. 2.) I think they are overpriced for being the same blanks and parts that are used by multiple other manufacturers. 3.) I think I'd rather have one custom built than spend $250 on their best rod. That's what I think of Favorite in a nutshell.

Well, it's confirmed. Bass do like coffee... caught two today on KVD coffee scented finesse worms! Granted they were small ones, but nothing else I tried all day worked until I wacky rigged a KVD on a dropshot finesse rig then got two within 15 minutes of each other. Lol.

Another planning to fish a pond tomorrow here lol. I'm gonna be focusing mostly on jigs since I need practice with them anyway. May run a few shakey heads too. Water here is a little warmer than what you have though.

I've had the front part of the reel foot on a cheap shakespeare spincast reel snap off during a cast a few weeks back.. only time I've ever had anything plastic break. Granted, those are very low quality reels so I'm not exactly shocked. It really depends on what kind of polymers are used for the plastic production. There are some cases in which plastic can have a higher strength than metals. For example, carbon fiber has a higher strength to weight ratio to steel and aluminum at a lower density. If a component of the same thickness is made from carbon fiber, steel, and aluminum, the one made from carbon fiber will have a greater rigidity and lower weight than the two metals. Furthermore, if we wanted to reinforce something and had a certain weight limit, the advantage again goes to carbon fiber since it is lighter than steel and aluminum. This would give it an even more superior rigidity strength (and therefore higher ultimate stength) compared to the other two common materials. So really... it depends on the weight, size, and how it is constructed that will determine what is actually stronger. The feeling of the metal being "superior feeling" is mostly an illusion and bias. To give you an idea: Edit: Whoo, 100 posts!!

Ha, the old games were great... I remember I had this one that I think was on SNES? That had a "superlure". It was a donut with sprinkles. Lol. It attracted so many fish that during the underwater view I used to like to make them chase it around until I could let that one big fish bite into it.