bulldog1935

Just after helping Stevo load his Outback a couple of times last week, I'm wishing he had one. I thought my loaded boat was heavy. We gotta work on his staging, too - he's slow coming and going.

have you priced power boats lately? The kayak industry has been heading there a long time, making surrogate bass boats. If you can build a boat that eases the chore of hauling it around, you will find a market. Of course, it has to handle well in a wide range of conditions. The best kayaks still around were designed by naval architects. The math is Really Easy. If you're not in the market, buy something else. Most of the PE kayaks made 30 years ago and stored indoors are still perfectly useful today. It's really not a conspiracy against you, though marketing and BR may sometimes seem like it. I'm going to offer Josh's updated spreadsheet on kayak models, set up to help narrow your choices. And a tutorial on now to use the spreadsheet. He knows his stuff, worked at Jerry B's in Corpus while attending TAMU, and has kept up with the industry more than anyone else I know. @TnRiver46 you're not going to put in a 10-mi day in a canoe, especially with a 16-kt wind - but it's perfectly feasible in the right kayak. That's why there are choices.

My lightest SOT is 39 lbs Kevlar Kestrel, and while it's the fastest taxi to wade-fishing you'll find, it's not normally stable enough for most fishing. This is only slightly slower, seems infinitely more stable, and I've been in beam-reach 28-kt gusts with no steering problems, and riding a 36-kt gale with my drift sock deployed at the stern, and it was just plain fun. There are many good light, stable, fast/efficient SOT kayaks out there, such as this 44-lb Redfish 10. PE kayaks are here to stay, and it's worth searching craigslist for what's out there. If you check out our long trails last week, we still like narrow efficient distance SOT kayaks Speaking of my buddy Josh, here's his updated spreadsheet on kayak models, set up to help narrow your choices. And a tutorial on now to use the spreadsheet. He knows his stuff, worked at Jerry B's in Corpus while attending TAMU, and has kept up with the industry more than anyone else I know. .

@AlabamaSpothunter the trailer is an Oliver, made in Hohenwald, TN. Lou and I were styling. Steve has a Sprinter 3500 to haul it. With everything paid off, he's in the mode of cashing out retirement toys before he retires in 2 years. This is his man-cathedral with vintage GMC motor home. He provides this as a repair landing for other members of the GMC motor home owner's club. Josh, on the other hand, has a young family with twins due next month. He always jokes about how all his friends are old, because we're the only people who can keep up fishing with him. BTW, we all paddled 40 mi over the 5 days.

Our buddy Steve went over the top for us. A long story, but he hauled down his Oliver travel trailer around his 4-day work week. Lou and I stayed in it all week, and Steve returned Friday night. (long story about the Monday errand, including his brother Dennis with his boat in a repair shop there waiting for a lower unit) This way, we weren't stepping on each other in Josh's cabin. @AlabamaSpothunter But it was so easy to notice how over the week, Lou and I relaxed from the world too far from the salt, while Steve's Friday road funk lasted until Saturday night's bacchanal. Good for Steve, Josh loaded him and Lou with half-shell fillets. Also, a guide coming in handed Steve a bag of red and black drum fillets. So taking fish home to MA, maybe she'll let us borrow the trailer again...

Impossible to detail 5 days kayak-fishing different grass flats and marshes along the Texas coastal bend, so you get the condensed version and good photos. Josh has hosted this fall event 11 years in a row from his family's digs on Copano Bay. The big group, 6 to 9 people over the week, were arriving Wednesday night, so for the preliminary day, Josh and his sister Nina drove up the coast to Indianola to explore mud marsh trails, while Lou and I drifted our favorite Estes Flats and waded our favorite tide pass. The mud marsh. Look close - they were fishing to redfish backs. Josh and Nina brought home major meat, including a rat from the gullet of a redfish. Lou and I didn't bring home meat, but got into nonstop fish catching on a falling tide pass. When the big group arrived Wed night, Josh cooked a feast of Flat Iron Steaks, Crab & Toasted Pecan Risotto, Grilled Shrimp, and Grilled Romaine with Parmesan. Of course, chased with cigars and brews around the firepit. Thursday, we picked mud marshes up the Aransas River delta in Port Bay. From sunrise, we fished up the bay piers with topwaters. Nina took the day with a 28+" red, following a sleigh-ride through the marsh Friday, couldn't be farther from the marsh, a ferry ride to Port Aransas on Mustang barrier island, and our favorite shallow grass lake on East Flats I scored my trip-fish 24-inch red on a topwater shrimp plug We dodged Saturday's power boats with a long trek up the coast and a long paddle along the ICW to more mud marshes. Josh snapped a photo of my orange T160 Josh established himself as the mud marsh king with an early red limit. We saw dozens of redfish with their backs out of the water, and tough to catch because they were so close together. Twice I cast to a fish, lined a different fish, and they all exploded. I did bring home a good flounder. Josh made 4 artful fillets from my flounder, and barely offered a skeleton to the waiting pelicans. Saturday night was Josh's fabled shrimp boil - he gets better at this every year with his own spice blends - and that's saying something. We knew Sunday would be another strong south blow, a short day, off the water by 11 am, and picked Brown & Root flat because the focused wind down the cut channel is a guaranteed ride home. Lou and I found some wind shelter to drift, Josh joined us with a redfish that he caught twice, jumping out of the boat when his stringer was drifting away. Stevo came in with a 22" red sight-fished on TSL Grasswalker chicken-on-a-chain Great times with great friends - fish are gravy. And yeah, grill-blackened halfshell redfish fillets are da bomb.

harrumph.

back to the original question, if I was looking for a dedicated rod, it would be Valleyhill https://fishingshop.kiwi/category/Rods/Casting-Rods/Valley-hill/buzzslater/ FishingShop.kiwi normally has the lead on this brand, but note, they charge $40 to ship.

Shimano A and Daiwa S knobs all interchange as long as you stack it right. Using Shimano knob on Daiwa spindle requires the "plastic collar" (bearing-size spacer/bushing) or you can also use an extra inboard 740ZZ bearing. I do the extra inboard BB on MH and H spinning reels with Daiwa handle and, e.g., Livre knob. If you tinkered this stuff as much as I do, you'd have bearings and shim washers, etc. to spare... This is a full handle swap, but the Studio Composite handle and knobs are lighter than the stock.

Offering some rod taper considerations, which go back to splitting and planing bamboo strips (split cane has an equivalent modulus to S-glass). Fast tip pretty much defines parabolic rod taper, where the tip doesn't flex, and flex is in the mid and rod butt into the handle. They load more of the total rod length and get maximum cast distance in a shorter rod - characteristically unforgiving for the power trade-off. This taper is independent of the power, which range from XXH to traditional UL. In fly rods, these get the moniker "broomstick" They're easy to spot by a Narrow lure weight range. The opposite is a progressive taper, where increasing weight loads a band that moves progressively down the rod length. Progressive taper has a softer tip, faster mid, and rigid butt. Easy to spot by an extreme-Wide lure weight range. Characterized by forgiving and accurate. This is also how you get an extra-fast UL. In general, every functioning rod taper is going to be a blend of both. But you can describe rods as more para or more progressive. Certainly the simplest way to match a rod to your niche is by lure weight range.

FishingShop.Kiwi has Steez A in both 6.3 and 8.1, both RHW - $40 to ship. https://fishingshop.kiwi/DAIWA-Steez-A-TW-HLC-6.3R/ also a great place to check rods, lines and lures.

@AlabamaSpothunter - we actually covered this on a different thread (Other Species Latest Catch). Texas redfish slot, 20-28" are too big to pan blacken. I used to release them or give them all away until my buddy Josh taught me about grilling half-shell fillets I'm now a grill-blackened redfish junkie. Two things happen on half-shell fillets. You brown the meat side first, and all the vitamin A moves down from the skin, making the meat sweet. Keeping the meat from sticking is a trick, but a couple of extra coats of grill oil spray, making the fire flare right before you lay them down really helps. When you flip them skin side down, they pretty much can't dry out on the grill.

this just off the grill... Shared with my folks (just up the road) who made it a feast, with homemade Spanish rice, green beans, and my mom's banana pudding, which is beyond anyone else's. Not only that, they only ate half their skin-on grill-blackened redfish fillets, and will still be eating them tomorrow, so they sent me home with half the banana pudding.

@TnRiver46 I'm too tired to write my trip report - paddled 40 mi last week Nina got a 28+" red - took her for a sleigh ride through the marsh ps - I will be back later with a trip report. I put my long report on FFR. After Josh posts his day reports on TKF, I'll borrow some of his photos and write my condensed report for BR Other Fish Species...

16" speckled trout 17" flounder 24" redfish

I would say OOS is most always about batch manufacturing. They stock up, stock the next in the manufacturing queue, while the last one sells out until it's back at the head of the manufacturing queue. You can follow it with any JDM reel model.

Last week of salty sunrises

@Jrob78 described proxy shipping company, which may work the same way, but I've posted about buying from Japan using a broker. Twenty years ago, using a broker was the only way you could buy from Japan, both for the language barrier, and Japanese banking laws. I still use the same broker, noppin.com, for buying from Yahoo and from companies that don't market direct to US, like KTF, Haneda Craft, SquidMania. The nice thing about having an e-friend there, Masamichi, he'll ask questions that you could never get answered, will make sure you're getting what you want, and will store it up to 60 days if you want to combine several small orders from different vendors before he packs and ships DHL. He's also set up to bid on Yahoo for you, but I've never tried that. This service used to cost 20%, but with recent competition from other brokers and Japan vendors direct marketing to US, broker fees are down to 5%.

The only manual-bail Mitchell was 440 Ottomatic.. Every complaint about spin fishing is solved with proper manual bail technique: wind knots line behind the spool loose line at the end of a cast runaway line in the wind. The Shimano bail is designed so it won't randomly close during a cast. While it has auto-bail close, it's so stiff as you noted, and you really want to use manual bail technique. Keep your free hand close to the spool. Use your fintertips to feather the line at the end of the cast - like thumbing a baitcaster. Close the bail with that hand - do not use crank-auto-bail-close. Turn with the rod and take up the slack before you retrieve. ___________________________________________________ The offset weight of the bail and rotor is really what keeps the reel turning on its own, though the imbalanced handle weight adds to the mass that makes it turn on its own. You can solve it with count-balanced or double handle, which also very much improves finesse feel through the handle.

Older sister was 4 when she caught her first fish. Completely different, though an equal Texas treasure - just after dinner and sunset from a boat dock on Lower Laguna Madre. The Zebco UL-1 and Eagle Claw Featherlight glass rod were also common to both stories. Calm evening, and the most important part was a spray with Cutter to keep the mosquitos from eating us. When Taylor caught her nursery trout, realized I left the camera upstairs, and ran back to get it, just keeping the fish in the water. After the photo, when we tried to release the fish, it went belly-up. Didn't make sense because we were generally kind to it. "I didn't want the mosquitos to eat the fish, so I sprayed it with Cutter"

the best are two with kids My younger daughter was not quite 3 when she caught her first fish. Took her, mom and sister to picnic and fish Shoemacher's Crossing on the upper Guadalupe. We began the morning in the back yard, adding grasshoppers to a plastic coke bottle. She played in the water while her older sister fished through most of the grasshoppers. Finally, she took over the rod and caught a nice, fat cichlid. Her eyes got big as saucers watching me bait the hook with the next-to-last hopper. She grabbed the coke bottle and ran. "Daddy - Don't - I love him"

you can still buy pistol-grip handles, Two I know of are Eagle Claw Featherweight UL, and Smith Super Strike for round reels.

you already got your like on the gaspergou photo, which I said you couldn't tell it from prime rib with a half-shell grill.

pan-blackened redfish is even better on Louisiana-size redfish fillets. Slot fish here are too big to pan blacken well, and grill blackening of skin-on half-shell fillets is our feast.

half-shell fillet on the grill is about the same as javelina on the smoker - you won't know it from prime rib. Brush butter on the side down plus Prudhomme's Seafood Magic honestly, I never cared for huge redfish fillets until my buddy Josh showed this