Swamp Yankee

With regards to self-powered boats; moreso than in canoes or kayaks ( and I own both) I really enjoy fishing still water and slower moving rivers from a rowing boat. But the best boats for rowing are the ones that are designed for rowing only... not aluminum boats designed for outboard motors that happen to have oarlocks.. not much fun to row one of them at all...not when compared to a true rowing boat. A drift boat is really designed for drifting backwards ( rower facing forward) downstream on relatively faster moving streams. The hull is designed with lots of rocker to steer quickly. The oars are meant more for steering than propulsion. Because of their hull design, however, they are tough to row for a long time on a straight course in still water because they’re not designed for that. A rowing boat is also a great way to take your wife out onto the water. She sits in the stern facing you, and you row her butt around. Fishing is nice because you can both see what the other is doing. One fishes the port side, the other the starboard. Many of them can be easily “backed in” to good fishing spots so the rower can see precisely where the boat is going. And when you’re just trying to cover distances no canoe is more efficient than a good rowing boat. They’re just a great way to get around on the water. Problem is... they’re hard to find and often expensive when you do find one. Many of the better ones are hand made by professional and amateur builders. It’s too bad, too. I own and have owned sailing boats, canoes, kayaks, motor boats, and pure rowing boats... and for sheer fun on the water, a good rowing boat is second only to a good sailing dinghy, and it’s much better suited for fishing. But nobody seems to want anything to do with them. My hunch is that many people that have any experience rowing have tried to row an aluminum boat designed for an outboard... and again, they’re no fun at all, IMO. But when I’m out on the water it seems many other boaters seem to think rowing must be sheer drudgery.... if they only knew how much fun it was in one of my rowing boats, they’d think otherwise.

I’ve got a pretty good nose for bass holes.

I really love my G Loomis SJR6400 Mag light spinning rod. Five foot four with a full cork grip and sliding rings for a reel seat. I paired it with a Shimano Sahara 500 reel and 10# Sufix braid. I love it for weightless Zoom Fluke Jrs on a light wire Lunker City texposer hook, size 1/0 ....one of my favorite rigs. It tosses them a country mile. I also throw small jerkbaits with it, and if the bass aren’t biting, it’s great for jigging Crappie. I’ve taken bass well over 4 pounds with it so it has the backbone I need, but it also has an extra fast tip so it’s just a joy to fish.

I had the same thing happen. I figured the bass was trying to puke it up but couldn’t because of the dorsal fins on the perch.... so the perch’s tail was sticking out. Otherwise, the bass hit my jerkbait while it was still swallowing a perch :D

I’ve got rods with all sorts of grips, and even surfcasting robs with cork tape wrapped on for grips and electric tape for a “reel seat”. If the rod feels good and fishes well, I don’t give a hoot. One thing I’m not sure about is the lack of any foregrip on lots of the new spinning bass rods. I have one, a Dobyns Fury, but the jury’s still out on how I feel about that feature. It seems to me it might be better suited to a BC rod designed for a low profile baitcaster.

I need prescription progressive lens eyeglasses so I splurged on a nice pair of Ray-Ban aviators. Very happy to learn they now offer polarized progressives. They didn’t, a few years back.

Yeah, I have to drop the anchor sometimes so I can focus on the dang knot and not worry where I’m drifting.

I do 7 wraps up and 7 back, making sure the back wraps lay neatly into the gaps between the up wraps. Leave all your tag ends long enough to cinch the knot up tight by pulling all the tag ends at once. Wet the knot well with saliva before cinching. After the knot is as tight as it will go, it should be neat as a pin...if it looks lumpy, tie it over. When I’m tying at a work table, I trim the tag ends very close on a cutting board with a single edge razor blade. Once it’s trimmed, I put the knot in my mouth for a few seconds to soak it, then I just touch the knot to the droplet of crazy glue....it should wick right in. Let it set and it’s good to go. I don’t always use crazy glue... but it’s a little added insurance.

Alberto knots, properly tied, are nice and slim. I’ve never yet lost a fish to an Alberto knot. I tie new knots at least once a week but usually do so because the leader itself is getting knicked up. I find that if I wet the finished knot well, regular super glue will wick into the knot better.

Thanks for the fix. The site is honking along nicely now!

I think it is more common with smallies but I’ve had largemouth cough up a shad or two as well.

In winter I cut a new piece of heavy, green plastic tarp from a huge tarp I bought years ago to cover our 39’ camper, but never used. I cut the piece big enough to tent over the boat and then secure it all the way around the outside of the boat with foot long pieces of gorilla tape stuck to the hull every 6 inches or so. Come spring, I take the tarp off and pull off all the bits of tape. The tape glue leaves residue though, and the residue gets dirty. After three years of doing this and not even trying to remove the dirty marks from the previous season, a sort of camo pattern is emerging.

Only fished September and October calico bass largemouth bass smallmouth bass chain pickerel white perch yellow perch bluegill red breast sunfish pumpkinseed threadfin shad ( puked up in my boat by a largemouth )

They sure do like yellow perch and crayfish.

Like others here, I think water like that calls for a V bottom boat with lots of freeboard.

Boats get cleaned? Whodathunkit?

I love mine, a 5’4” Loomis SJR Mag light with the simple two sliding rings reel seat. I’ve got it paired with a Shimano Sahara 500. I’ve taken plenty of bass on that rod, including several 4+ pound LMBs. I love it for throwing small, weightless soft plastics.

I’m surprised that so few have mentioned it but I agree that it’s most important that beginning anglers be put on to lots of fish and quickly. Assuming that there are plenty of fish and they’re biting this rig - then a weightless T rigged Senko or similar, easily cast soft stick bait would be my choice. They’d learn how to read the water and figure out where the fish are, how to cast accurately, how to watch and feel the line for strikes, and, hopefully, how to set the hook and fight the fish. And all this would be done with a minimum of snags.

I’m thinking a significant percentage of the plastics these fish puke up were eaten after fishermen discarded them. That’s one of the reasons I don’t throw them in the water when they’re no longer fishable. The other is that I’m a cheapskate - I repair my plastics and fish them again. The senko I mentioned in my post sunk away before I could grab it. Too bad, too, as the other half of it was still on my boat. It would have been pretty cool to glue it back together and use it again

I’d say it’s tough to beat that.. a squirrel!?!?

I’ve had them spitting up plastics that weren’t mine, as well. I guess we’re doing them a favor... forcing them to puke up indigestible stuff

A couple of weeks back I was fishing an orange pumpkin 5” Yamamoto Senko in my favorite river and I had it bitten/pulled in half by a fish. The next evening I was fishing weightless flukes a few hundred yards downstream and hooked a smallie, maybe 1.5 pounds. As I brought him alongside the boat the fish puked up the tail end of the Senko I’d lost the day before.

I don’t see any mention of pier fishing other than your own ... maybe it was deleted? In any event, the OP does mention fishing for little tuna. I stand by my suggestion to go with a 3000 reel if the “ little tuna” on the left coast are anything like we get out here. FWIW, a 7 foot rod paired with a 3000 reel is often used by fishermen targeting FAs in these parts.

Don’t know what kind of little tuna you get on the west coast, but here in New England we get False Albacore and they can be ferocious line peelers. Some can be tamed with enough drag, but then you hook into one that just won’t stop. If I was thinking of tangling with them, I’d look for the added line capacity of a 3000 and fill it with straight line (no mono backing spliced to braid) Out here, if we’re targeting FAs specifically, most would use a 4000, to be honest.

I used to post on a forum that would bleep out part of the word "saltwater"