Big Hands

A kayak in Florida? A simple Google search indicates that there are gators in all 67 counties and about 1.3 million gators that live in the state. Seriously, what am I missing here?

Back shoe, caliper, rotor? I'd like to empathize, be surprised, confused, mad, etc. right along with you, but I can't really understand what's going on.

A 10" worm generally weighs 3/8 to 5/8 of an ounce by itself. With a 1/4 to 3/8 of an ounce sinker, that's definitely into MH/F territory and maybe H/F, or somewhere in between. If I were going to spend Steez or G Loomis money on a combo, I would pick the reel I want to use and then go rod shopping where I can put hands on the two components together, or vice versa could work too. The intent is to end up with a combo that works well as a system. There's no way to know if a combo is going to feel ergonomically good or be well balanced for you until you try them together. Reel seat design and placement, trigger shape and placement and butt components. All of those things have to work well together and with another important component of the system. . . . You. Obviously rods like a Steez or NRX+ are highly regarded for good reason and lots of people love them. That doesn't mean they play well with any reel for what you want to do with them, and it doesn't mean they'll play well with you. Here's why I feel that it's a good idea to make sure a combo works well together, and works well for you: I remember going into a tackle store determined to walk out with an Orochi XX Whipsnake. I had even handled it by itself on several occasions and was pretty sure it was going to be perfect for me. I took my Tatula 2500 spinning reel with me just to be sure. I then spent over an hour trying to convince myself that I wasn't feeling what I was feeling; that the balance wasn't good for a ML/F spinning rod with the reel I had, and I felt that the butt section was shorter than my taller than average self truly wanted it to be. How could that be? It's a fine, high quality rod and praised by many. But it turns out it wasn't going to be great for me. And, the reason I even thought to take a reel with me was because I once bought a Daiwa Kage spinning rod without so much as seeing how it handled with my Daiwa Tatula spinning reel, assuming there would be no issues. Turns out that Daiwa used a proprietary reel seat on that rod and both a Tatula and a Kage spinning reel in both 2000 and 2500 sizes squirmed in the seat no matter how tight I tried to secure it. The only way any of them would not squirm was to use a thin plastic shim on the reel foot and I'll be darned if I am going to do that with a Daiwa reel on a Daiwa rod. The only reel I tried that wouldn't squirm was a Shimano Vanford (or other higher priced Shimano's). Returned the Kage rod and went with the same spec Tatula rod that used a standard Fuji reel seat and all was right with them.

A much smaller size for how heavy it is. They also make more noise, especially when combined with a glass bead.

As good a time as any. I don't particularly like to catch a bunch of dinks because they can be vulnerable to some damage getting them off of a crankbait, or if they swallow a hook, their tiny mouths and being relatively delicate overall can leave them with significant damage. There are times in the late summer when I can actually get more bites than I take casts because the dinks are so numerous and ravenous.

Your time on the water is your own. In my world, I think you should enjoy it as you see fit. There's no harm in switching things up unless maximizing your results is what puts food on your table. Sometimes you might just want to try other methods to see if they work better or work at all. If no one experimented, we would have no innovation or personal growth/discovery.

If the pulling, and then pulling with the thumb on the spool doesn't work, I search for the deepest loop and tug upward on it, then try pulling line off again.

I honestly don't know, and for all I know you might be yanking 'em out of a mess of vegetation, but if a four pounder is about as big as they get in that body of water, is it necessary to use a No Jack hook?

I think you'll find some clues about the true nature of this rod (the 7'5" Chris Johnston Tatula Elite MH/F) in the specifications. It's rated as a MH/F, but has a lure rating of 3/16 to 5/8 oz, a line rating of 12-16 lbs, and it has 11 guides. All of these specifications are notably different than most of their other MH/F rods. The Brent Ehrler Tatula Elite that's only two inches shorter, has the same "rating" of MH/F, yet has three less guides, is rated for 1/4 to 1 oz lures on 10-20 lbs line. Some Daiwa MH/F rods have lure ratings up to 1-3/8 oz and up to a 12-25 lbs line rating. Club me over the head with a rubber chicken and call me crazy, but that (the CJ rod) reads more like the specs of a M/F (or M-MH/F or M/F+ at most) casting rod than a true MH/F rod. I'm not sure why this is (**cough** marketing **cough**), but at least some manufacturers skip over the M/F casting rod designation and I am not quite sure why? . . . Or maybe I do feel like I have an idea why they would do that. For the record, I think the CJ rod could secure a comfy spot in my quiver, so I am not saying I wouldn't love to own one. Seems like it's sweet spot would be Neds, smaller jigs, TX rigs, smaller c-rigs, shakeyheads, etc. Just saying that comparing it to a traditional MF/F from Daiwa or just about any other rod maker. . . IMHO the math ain't quite mathin' for me.

Forty years ago, I was living in Redondo Beach, very close to the Redondo Beach harbor, and I was regularly fishing the party boats there. I built myself an entire set of matching saltwater rods using Sabre and Truline blanks. My favorite one of them was an 8' Truline jig stick with a Fuji SIC guide train and cork tape wrapped butt. I mostly used an ABU Garcia Ambassadeur 9000 two speed reel that would sling a single hook Tady a country mile. I learned to wrap from a friend that showed me how to put the spool of thread in a tea cup and then use an encyclopedia to tension the thread. I would sit on the floor of our apartment and had a block of wood with a v-notch to keep the tip in place and hold the other end of the rod in my hands. I wrapped a total of eight rods like this, including two roller guide tuna rods. This was fine for wrapping with "D" size thread, but I wrapped a couple freshwater rods using "A" size thread and it wasn't nearly so easy. I built myself an . . . apparatus. . . for drying the Flex-Coat using an old BBQ rotisserie motor, however I didn't feel like I was very good at using a minimal amount of Flex-Coat compared to what I could buy on a factory built rod so I didn't build any more freshwater rods after that. A couple years ago, I listed the two Truline rods for sale at midnight. By 6 am the following morning, I had six people offering to come get them ASAP.

The Daiwa 7'3" MH/F multi-purpose all-around rods (they have this same design intent represented in several of their model lines at different price points) are multi-purpose MH/F rods more so than a multi-purpose rod as in good for things that a MH/F rod would traditionally be good at. So, TX rigs, jigs, carolina rig. . . that type of bottom contact fishing. They have other rods that are for things like chatterbaits, larger topwater, swim jigs, etc. that have a slightly more moderate bend, like the Randy Howell 7'4" Tatula Elite MH/R (I'd call mine more of a mod-fast than "regular"). Both excellent for their designed purpose in my opinion, but different.

As I so subtly alluded to in a post of my own earlier this week, Spot Lock has made it easier for me to be more effective. We have now been actively seeking main lake points and other offshore structure to fish because it is so much easier to hold the boat in position than it was before. I can also turn off pinging of the transducer while hovering in a spot.

I use a finesse version with six pound mono, a mojo sliding sinker with a double knotted 3/32" rubber band as a sinker stop with an 18" to 30" leader length. My standard c-rig version uses a 15 lbs mono main line with a 1/2 oz to 3/4 oz egg sinker, and a 36" to 48" leader of six or eight pound mono leader. Keep in mind that I fish the same lake more than 95% of the time due to Quagga constraints on local waters. Lots of different soft plastics will work, but my ride-or-die deserted-island choice would easily be a 4" Keitech Swing Impact in Electric Shad. Roboworm stopped making my previous go-to decades ago; discontinued the bait itself, and the color. I had gone through as many as four bags of them in a day and kept that mostly to myself. The Keitech is the closest competitor for me and pretty good in it's own right. I have a lot of confidence in it. I keep searching for alternatives, but for me, everything else is just everything else.

Now that I can more easily sit on those deeper water (15 - 30 feet deep) rocky main lake points/humps, I have been fishing them. . . . with a wacky/weightless 5" Senko. Usually throwing them onto the submerged edges in 15' and dragging them off the high spots into deeper water, even with a 10-15mph breeze. The prevailing winds usually blow across the points, so I sit on the backside of the point and throw up onto the high spot into the wind. Many of the bites occurring directly beneath the boat, so. . . . vertically fishing 5" Senkos in 15 - 30 feet of water. Takes a minute to let them get to the bottom. It has been as effective as anything else we've been throwing (dropshot, texas, c-rig, crankbaits, swimjigs, jigging spoons, spybaits, and others). More effective TBH. Pretty good fishing actually by local standards. Yesterday, we had fish biting on the bottom, and boiling on top. My son left his dropshot rig out, bagged one on a Spook, then returned to find a two pound smallie waiting on the dropshot. We tried five spots in three hours yesterday, just to see if it was a pattern, and caught fish on all of them, with the weightless wacky Senko being the top producer.

That's exactly why I chose the Ultrex (Quest). The thought of having no feedback and the lack of response time of the steer-by-wire of the other models was a no-go for me too. I get that. I have been running my old Edge on a Lithium battery, which is not recommended unless you keep it at 85% or less power, I am also on my fourth transducer cable (although I think I have that one figured out to an extent), having the means to do so at this time, currently having access to some 'friendlier' pricing, and some uncertainty of where prices are going these days added to the inducement. I went with the built-in transducer and a new Xplore head unit too.

Disclaimer: Also known as Pinpoint GPS, Anchor Mode, Anchor Lock Yes, the purchase price is like taking a kick from a Doc Martens work boot to the "please don't kick me there" area, but once that's healed it's been a love fest ever since. I know we're still in the honeymoon phase and being part of the early majority means the product hasn't been perfectly refined, but I am pleased to no longer be a part of the luddite demographic (at least in this particular regard). Not only has it made fishing in places and conditions I normally fish much easier and pleasant, it's made it possible (and pleasant) to fish in situations I would have previously avoided due to wind, waves and/or holding on an offshore spot. Another thing I like about this particular one is that the trolling motor stays pointed in the same direction with my foot not being on the pedal, even at the highest speed setting. I imagine they all do, unlike the old-school purely cable driven ones we've used for decades. It's hard for me to put a price on how it has enhanced my fishing pleasure, but the trolling motor companies have done that for us, and it ranges from around $1,500 to $5,500 just for the trolling motor (installation and accessories are extra), LOL. May this honeymoon never end.

We knew then that cortisone shots were not a great solution and that it's not great to get them at all if you can help it, but they did relieve pain for a couple months per shot. I still wore the straps for a few years after the surgery as a preventative measure, but gradually learned to work smarter and not overdo it. The recovery time for the tendonitis surgery was three months. I had carpal tunnel surgery at the same time, so that got to heal far beyond the normal three week recovery time. I used to call my elbow straps my "American Express cards" because I never left home without them.

Excellent video!

I highly recommend having that repaired. I had mine fixed over thirty years ago and it's still good today. I was a carpenter and used to carry heavy things like sheets of drywall and solid core doors around with my elbows locked out. I nursed them along for a couple years with straps, ibuprofen, and eight cortisone shots. Casting (especially with the wrist wrecker pistol grips we thought were cool) was pretty painful. I never thought I'd be able to cats like I do today back then, but I don't even give it a thought anymore. The only braces I found effective did not stretch, and had metal d-rings to cinch them down. The ones that stretch provided no pain relief at all, and the ones that had plastic d-rings simply broke when I did anything that flexed that muscle on the inside of my arm just below the elbow. That muscle had been . . . . overdeveloped from years of manual labor. My days of work related manual labor are long gone, but I still have a bit of that muscle left over, LOL.

My first (weightless) "5 inch senko" rod that I found that I really liked was a St. Croix Mojo Bass 7'6" ML/XF (MJS76MLXF) hair jig rod, and have loved it for the past few years. The strike detection I have with it was next level for me. I could feel those "ticks" on slack line even when I didn't think it was possible. I generally fish them wacky style with #2 or #4 finesse wide gap hooks. They have been discontinued for a year or two now. I have been ogling the Daiwa ML-M/F 7'6" hair jig rods for a while. They make them in three models that I am aware of (Steez AGS @ $599 - aka "The One", Tatula Elite AGS @ $299 and Tatula @ $169). They have some others that are ML/F at the same length, but they might be slightly underpowered for a 5" Senko that weighs about 3/8 oz because they're rated for up to 5/16 oz, but I have not really looked closely at them. I did pick up the Tatula Elite AGS Seth Feider rod a couple weeks ago and it is definitely a little stouter than the Mojo. So far, it has handled it's business well and I am really liking it. I've caught about twenty bass up to 5-1 with it and I am impressed, but I don't yet know for certain if I can say it has the same level of "tick" detection that the Mojo has (I suspect it will be at least as good). I paired it with a JDM 25 Caldia LT2500S-XH and I think it, or a compact 3000 are perfect for this rod. I run 10 lb braid and usually a leader of 8 lb Daiwa Samurai Camo fluorocarbon leader.

A H/F frog rod is definitely different that a MH/F, but they do have at least some overlap. I like a MH/F rod that has some bend, but can drive a heavier (than light wire) hook home, but not be a broom stick to cast and keep a fish pinned while it gets played. A frog rod is more meant to drag a fish out of heavy cover and into the boat quickly, and they do it well. Daiwa has their 7'3" All-Around MH/F rod covered across several lines including Tatula, Kage, Tatula Elite, Zillion, and Tatula Elite-AGS. Same basic intent, but some more. . . . "refined" than others depending on how much refinement you can afford or you choice of reel seat/butt details. If I wanted to replace the Tatula model I have, I'd probably be looking at the Tatula Elite or Tatula Elite AGS version. At this time I think I would go with the non-AGS version because I would mostly want a bit of a workhorse more so than a thoroughbred.

It's definitely a machine, but not typical injection molds. More like a machine that pours them into one sided, open molds like old school small batch manufacturers used to do the pouring by hand, one worm at a time. That's why they have a flat side to them where the plastisol self-leveled. I have to imagine that's where the "robo" comes from.

Define hand poured as it applies here. Back in the 90's I worked just around the corner from their manufacturing facility. I used to be allowed to go there and purchase from them directly. They took me back and let me see their hand pouring machine. Their worms are not injection molded, but it is very much automated, hence the consistency between batches.

I recently picked up a Daiwa TTEL761MLMFS-AGS 7'6" Hair Jig/Neko rod and it's definitely closer to a M than ML, IMHO. I have used it for several techniques and so far, I am really liking it. Bagged a five pounder on it yesterday and it handled it well in some pretty tight quarters. They make a Steez with the same design intent too known as "The One" if you're wanting to stay at a higher level than a Tatula Elite-AGS.