MN Fisher

You southern boys...sheesh We're having a 'heat wave' here - it's 40o

Well, so do ours, but some of us don't fancy sitting out on the ice in below-zero wind chill to try and entice the fish to bite.

For me it means taking them off the rods, stripping the line back to the backing and putting them in their storage drawer until I do winter-maintenance...after which they go back in their drawer until spring when I put them on their rods and load up the main-line.

Canoe is put up for the winter - given constraints, I won't have the time needed to take it out. I might go out for some shore fishing here and there - but that'll be it until spring.

I refer you to the last phrase in statement #1 "if you can find open water to cast to" Also - 4 hours of trip time is only if we can get someone in to watch the wife while I'm gone...she's partially disabled and needs someone to help her with some things. If we can't can't get someone to come watch her...then I'm limited to 2 hours.

I've actually been practicing with the 'no tension method' and getting decent results. I may give this a try...my teeth are lousy, so I can't use them to tie with.

Jerkbaits I run straight 10#YZH on a M/F. Chatters/Spinners/Jigs I run on a MH/F with 40# 832 and 6' of 12#YZH as a leader...for the shock absorption.

Financial - can't afford to move.

1) Distance and time - the closest river to me is the Crow River, and that freezes up and even so, the shore fishing spots are few and far between...I don't canoe on a river. Even most of the Mississippi here freezes over at least around the shorelines and the shore-fishing spots there are an hour or so away from me. Given that I have at most 4 hours, traveling there would leave me 2 hours max to fish...and the shore spots are 'spotty' for catching anything in winter if you can find open water to cast to. 2) Weather - we have periods where the high for the day is single digits...sometimes below 0of. Trying to work a reel, much less change lures, in that temp is beyond annoying...especially at my age where the fingers don't work up to snuff to begin with.

Shhh....don't tell them.

Looks a little scuffed up, but my old Cardinal looks worse and still works great. Zooming in with my paint program - I called it right. On the spool it says '6/110' - so it'll hold 110yds of 6# test. Give it a good internal cleaning and lube and you should have a great little finesse reel. Ya...my original finesse rig was a Mitchell Avocet RZ-2000 on a ML Avocet rod ($40 from Amazon for the combo). Used it so much that I upgraded to a Pres-25 on a Fury 702

With the money you saved on a reel - you can get a better rod I've been using the Dobyns Fury 702SF and it's a really nice rod for the money. Wait for TW's Black Friday sale and you can get it for under $100 - that's how I got mine last year.

Thing is...this has been a thing every since the start of message boards. I moderated a discussion topic on the old Use-Net (anyone remember that), and we were tossing people right and left. Later years I was a co-moderator for a couple Facebook groups...again, people tossed with alarming regularity. Now I wouldn't moderate a forum/discussion group if you paid me. Mods and Glenn do a bang-up job here, and having been through it myself, I appreciate all they do.

I found a British site that had the stats 5.2:1 52cm retrieve (about 20" per handle turn) Holds 140m of .20mm line (about 150yds of 4# mono) so about 110-115 yds of 6# https://www.garryevans.co.uk/abu-garcia-cardinal-stx-spinning-reels---save-10-27565-p.asp

Cardinal reels are rugged...I have a Cardinal 562 that's about 40 years old and still performs well. 10 size is 1000 - so it's smaller than a Pflueger 25, but not much.

Personally - as well as my Aird-X rods have performed...go up the extra $5 and get an Aird-X 7' ML/F

Across the board, all Pflueger spinning reels are about the same size 20 = @500 25 = @1100 30 = @2400 35 = @3000 40 = @4000 I'll be using lighter line (6#) for my finesse, so the 25 was the right size for me. Use to have 4# YZH (about 6# mono diameter) on it and it was just fine. A 30 on a 6'9" will be fine - my medium rig currently is a Trion-30 on a 6'6" medium/fast.

I think I was just counting the trolls - I probably don't even see the 'pass-by-shooters'.

Thought it might be something like that, Kent. What's that...3 'spammers' in the last couple months now?

I do my jerks on a 7' M/F rod - but as my Super Spooks and WP-110s are at or heavier than the rated max of that rod...those I toss them on my 7' H/F to get it nearer to 'center of range' of the rod.

Did a search - can't even find those topics anymore...might have been deleted, which would be why you can't find them through notifications.

Might still be a hangup in memory - clear your data, close the browser, then restart it.

This happens occasionally to me - when it does, I also clear 'Offline Website Data' and 'Cookies' - that usually clears it up.

So I shouldn't have given him my e-mail addy either?

I could almost get that with my Patriarch...20# max drag Though since I'll be using 12# leader on 40# braid - probably set it to 6#-8#