PaulVE64

Caught a garpike on treble hooks once. No net or pliers and it would have gotten bloody but I gave him some slack and he got off by himself. Always bring pliers

Get the Avid

River smallies. Goby, darters and crayfish imitations are all good spring to summer. Come fall its baitfish. I tie and fish alot of jigs under 1/8oz.

And sharp hooks. Best advice I ever got.

Go slow

Not sure if serious...

I use the leader because I catch the braid in the hooks occassionally. That never happens when I keep my leader on.

Whopper plopper I threw into the shallows on the far bank was blown up 10 times without getting a single treble hook into flesh. Totally twitching to hookset, just waiting for a bit of weight.

I've not tried copoly.

Had to rescue my brother one day. We were bank fishing a local river and I discovered him holding a smallie to his cheek. And after he healed I was remorseless.

If you felt cursed after using a product, any product really. But if you felt it was somehow cursed for you could you keep using it. I blame no one but myself but I swore off both fluoro and palomar knots 5 or 6 years ago. I've only recently retried fluoro and two weeks of it was enough for me. Mono rules

Fluoro + Palomar = my frustration

Most of time I notice smallies have relatively huge tails but then I see Dwight's catches and I notice their tails are small

With the plethora of lures out there you can almost always find what you want. Also I think almost everyone does "adjust" their lures. Removing strands, cutting them short, cutting and bending weed quards. Many times I've adjusted a line tie to make the bait track better. And I will bet you that every pro modifies their lures.

My 2nd best is alot lighter than yours. Those buckets get fat

In dirty water I go brighter/bolder but in clear water I want the bait to be almost hidden. Its a wonder I catch them really.

I still have one of those with the metal lip

Tube or weightless worm

I'm sold on matte black

DT4 in any minnow pattern. .....mic drop

The forces applied on the quide dictate that alot of flexural plasticity is required do to torque on the rod. Most often it is the wraps but some types of glue are honestly magical. So it could be either but I wouldnt trust the glue alone if I could add wraps.

Most of my misses are on pike. The line almost pings on the hookset and then goes dead. So I'd rather not know about the monster I missed. I've been lucky with smallies.

Memorial Cup tournament is on right now in Saginaw MI. My hometown London Knights are looking good.

That hook looks like a Partridge Universal Preditor X but its a jig hook so it cant be the preditor hook Beauty jig hook.

PB on a flyrod is a 3.86# smallie on a 9ft 6wt.