PhishLI

A full moon at night is bad news in my super shallow lakes unless there's ripple. I had about an hour and a half to play last night, and only went up because 7-9 mph winds and light cloud cover were in the forecast. At 10:30 there were no clouds and zero wind. It was chilly enough that my breath hung in the air, so flying insects were nowhere to be found. A giant moon directly overhead was so bright I could've read a book by it. Baitfish along the shoreline were locked down on the bottom. It's safe to assume the bass were too. I didn't see a single break at the surface anywhere, like it was void of life. Fish at this lake are harassed by a mob of Ospreys, Hawks, and other fishing birds during the day, and it might as well have been noon last night. They simply will not chase during a high sun or moon. I fished the shadows where I could find them. Two piddling bite and spits, and I was lucky I got those. Thankfully I needed to leave otherwise I would've gone into a trance and slugged it out in a no win scenario for god knows how long. .

If you feel it'll drive home an extra heavy flipping flipping hook then you're good.

A true 5+ power heavy. The hook is like a 6d finishing nail with a point. It requires backbone.

Normally I'd have way more time on it by now, but I've been kept off the water over the past 2 months but for a handful of trips. I can't say I know everything about the TW80 yet, but I believe I know enough. It's a standard Tatula, just small. Other than its out of the box smoothness, it's a Tatula, not a FFS Daiwa. Regardless of what some people claimed at the time, the '16 Zillion SV TW was a better reel than a '17 Tatula SV, and not just on paper, or going by price point. The Zillion did everything better. I imagine the same will be true of the Alphas. Even if none of the bells and whistles of the Alphas added up to much more than the TW80, its lighter spool will be better. The TW80's spool weighs 15 grams without line. I'd bet the spool of the 800S will come in between 10-12 grams, and you like to fish with lighter lures sometimes. So start practicing your Alphas 800S speech to your wife. She's heard it all before. She'll understand.?

The hook is just fine. Perhaps a bit over kill for the bait's size, but there's nothing wrong with it. The screw lock spring keeper that comes with the hook is what I've had issues with. Its diameter is too small for such a heavy wire hook. If the equivalent Owner Beast hook, shown in the top of the photo, came with Owner's standard small keeper it would be problematic too. There's a lot of leverage placed on the hook's eye when the bait is fully collapsed by a hard bite. Something's gotta give. An aggressive 3 lber cored the first one out. It was fixed with Mend-it, got the Owner large keeper, and it's held up since then. If what I've described occurs with yours, save the cored out plastic from the spring keeper. You can glue it back into the plastic, then just upgrade to the large keeper, and you'll get way more use from the bait. You're doing great. Keep working. It'll happen.

Cool. Report back once you've frogged with it.

Just like any other bait there's a time and place for it. If you pick some up make sure to get (L) Large size Owner CPS screw locks. The stock one sucks and will core out the bait. Sometimes after one fish. The Large Owner stays put. Its heavy gauge hook is nearly identical to an Owner Beast 6/0, so you'll need a rod with some backbone to set it. The junk stock keeper is shown on the bottom

Just online. Someone in my orbit will have one eventually. AFAIK, it uses different material for the pinion and a deeper Mag Z boost spool. Looks nice, and probably is, but with what I'm using now I'm good for now.

Some more new stuff.

and that's exactly why I love it. I'm already peaked, then it's a rocket ride when a big one smashes a bait. Night bite hits on bigger baits are sometimes violent kill shots, and when you feel that particular strain in your forearm from a fish with some really nice weight, the rush gets cranked up a notch. I'm getting the shakes just writing about it. Where's my defibrillator?

This totally depends on where. It's almost to the point in some places where anything topwater with trebles is out. Not a chance. Just mining slop.

Disappointing. I was expecting more Pearl Jam.

It's my favorite time to fish by a wide margin. Besides the fact that bass are more willing to move around and chase baits, it's just an electrifying experience. Personally, it takes me a bit longer to get my equilibrium at night on the yak. You might feel a touch stoned for a quick minute. I do. Depth perception is off in the dark. Don't worry about throwing a bait into a tree. You might throw it over the tree line. But you'll adjust.

Right now it's a tie between the Catalina TW and Zillion 1000 G. The Catalina, with its 36mm tall wide spool, is super versatile and built like a tank. No problem throwing anything from 9 grams to 3 1/2 ozs. Even when it's tuned for distance it's a reliable, repeatable caster. Any of the available drop-in spool swaps out there stretch its versatility even further. Its 8oz Zillion HD platform might be a little big for the small-handed, but no problem here. Not as refined as a Steez CT, or a Zillion G, but I'm a caveman and couldn't care less. I like it that much. The stock spooled Zillion G is probably one of the better reels ever made for standard sized bass baits. If I fished tournaments I'd have a boat full of them. It's forgiving, yet allows for bomb casts without being on the edge of disaster. There's very little if anything to squint your eyes over, or to hold your nose about, regardless of its very reachable price point. Super smooth, it's a true magic machine that's a pleasure to use.

Casting counts as PT ? My daughter and brand new 4 week old grand daughter were here before my previous PT session. Since I'm the crying baby whisperer, I had to do my thing. Towel over my left damaged shoulder, followed by the baby on that side. Must be the combination of my heartbeat and voice that does the trick. It only works on that side, and as usual, she was out like a light. I needed to keep adjusting my shoulder for the next 45 minutes to remain comfortable, and to keep her head in the just-right position. This gave my muscles a small pump. When I got to PT right after that, my warm up went way better than usual. Things were far less "crunchy" starting off. Typically that feeling is gone after the first few sets of cable pulls, but it was nice to begin with a less disconcerting feeling. I told the grand poohbah therapist about my sleeping baby warmup story, then suggested that some type of pre-warmup activity before PT was a good idea. He agreed. I shot up to a local spot about an hour before my last PT session. Started off light, but just had to test myself throwing a bigger rig with a swim bait for the first time in 2 months. Felt OK, but I needed to watch it. The muck is really kicking in since I've been gone. Even top water treble baits were a misery, so I went back to a lighter set up throwing the trusty 5" Caffeine shad. Lost one and got one, and it turns out that casting is PT too. No crunch on the cable pulls.

Breathable waders develop seam leaks. Sometimes in 5 days. Sometimes in 5 years. Doesn't matter if they're $100 cheapies or $800 Gortex. There's not a person alive who's more insane than I am about wader care and maintenance, and I can't stop it from happening. I wore a hole through a bootie's heel on the one pair of waders I owned that never developed a single seam leak. I cleaned them, hung them by their suspenders as usual, then waited for 6 months to attempt a repair. The season had just begun, so I bought a new pair. $200 Simms that had a crotch seam leak from the get go. They got swapped out. Anyway, the heel repair went perfectly, but somehow they developed multiple seam leaks just hanging there. Oh well. Just the cost of doing business if you like to wade, and that's mostly what I do. BTW, holes are easy, and try it if you like, but seam leaks are a you-know-what-er. Hard to fix.

Fish naked. It works.

These deep, small, glacial kettle lakes around here don't fish quite the same as our typical shallow ponds. They're different in some ways. Different opportunities to fish baits you can't in the typical pond.

There will always be fish to be found in the pads, weeds, and edges of drop offs. Pound those edges near weedy shallows with heavy jigs, and everything else that's been suggested to try. Fishing choked out areas requires patience. Start out in the middle with your graph, then work toward the shoreline and you'll probably find huge schools of bait fish suspended or on the move 5 to 10 feet down. If the bite in the shallow cover and drop offs isn't on, then run a progression of small deep cranks and small flutter spoons out deep near the schools. Even a baitfish profile drop shot. A 4" weighted wacky worm in some type of white laminate color dropped through a school can be effective too. Dissolved oxygen levels drop off rapidly below 15 feet in these deep, small places, so you probably don't need to fish much deeper than that with cranks. Other species can hack the lower levels, but the bass can't. Algae is a problem in the northeast. We have a few natural kettle lakes around here that are similar to what you've described, and one dead ringer. You might be one of the few to show them something they're unaccustomed to seeing in deeper water that the shore guys can't reach. Find a hot bite window and it might be crazy good.

jdltreasures1

That seller is a gold mine for vintage parts. I've patched up a bunch of reels from the 70s and early 80s with parts I've gotten from them.

I stray from those baits because fishing with lures I know will work somewhere bores me quickly. I'm not interested in shooting fish in a barrel. Once I've figured out how to present a bait a few different ways and have success catching with them, I like to move on and climb a different mountain. The info I've gathered on them along the way gets filed away. Sometimes I'll pull those go-to baits out when the going gets tough, and sometimes to get a few in the bag just so I'm playing with house money. It depends on where I'm fishing. Playing a hunch and getting it right is more fun to me than getting more fish in the boat with a slam dunk lure. I've already proven to myself that I can do that. I fish for my amusement, not for food or money, and it amuses me to catch bass using more challenging, lower percentage, or just different outside-the-box baits and presentations.

Waking up.

The Catalina doesn't have a heavy braking profile. Not quite as light as a HLC, but not that far off, so with its 36mm free floating spool I can really send certain baits stupid distances. It's a special reel all around, IMO. With most baits the ICON PT is a very good caster, in line with most good centrifugal reels, but with frogs it's a freak. I'd guess because of its spool weight, specific braking profile and behavior, it just tracks nearly perfectly with a typical frog's weight and how they cut wind. This is how I tried to explain it to my brother when he couldn't understand why his frog just kept going beyond what he was accustomed to. FWIW, my brother is 6'4" with a 80" wingspan, and a gifted athlete. He can cast.

I won't speak for @islandbass, but I've witnessed plenty of guys casting spinning rods who looked like Liberace, minus the fabulous capes, trying to swat an insect with a badminton racquet.