bulldog1935

You can take smart steps to improve survival rates with catch and release. This fish I never took out of the water - she fought so hard, I pulled her against my leg and flipped the fly from her mouth. This was the only photo I got. Two weeks later, she was caught by a guide's fare, and is the state rainbow trout record, though she's not as big as two fish I showed on the previous page, and I know of several fish larger than those. I have little doubt from the photo album I saw, the amount of handling to measure for the record killed her from lactic acid. As others have pointed out, that's their business. The only way to prevent fishing from being a blood sport is to cut the hooks off your lures and count coup. It's a delusion to think otherwise. Liking fish over people is a different kind of problem.

@AlabamaSpothunter That's part of the reason I love the Arroyo Colorado so much (right where those ocelots live) - the one successful conservation project in Texas. In the '90s, terrible brown tides came out of the arroyo and choked miles of Lower Laguna Madre. The problem was agriculture run-off, excess nitrogen from citrus and sugar cane. The tile fields you can see drain the sugar cane fields and allow the nitrogen to evaporate before discharge into the arroyo. Since the project kicked off in 2007, problem solved. The boundary you can see is Laguna Atascosa NWR, the northern edge of the ocelots. We've seen ocelot tracks when we beached our kayaks on Horse Island.

@AlabamaSpothunter Our fight in Texas is to reduce groundwater use against runaway population growth at the source of hill country rivers, by getting desalination for public water supply off the ground - and especially out of court. The problem is we needed it 20 years ago. The Guadalupe tailwater is somewhat protected by court injunction to ensure discharge for whooping cranes in Aransas NWR, though the Medina River above contributes to that watershed. Also, the coldwater fishery below Canyon Dam is a legal stakeholder in the water authority, a status won in court by GRTU in the '90s.

rounding it out, to me, 5' rods are for stream fishing. I'd recommend 7' and longer for bank fishing or boat fishing, but can also see where shorter rods might fit in better if you're tight in trees and brush on the bank.

not my biggest, but definitely my best photo this same fish was photographed again 3 months later by a friend on FFR. this is my biggest many more stud bucks where these came from. But I changed my mind, this is my best photo I run Trout in the Classroom for Texas

I also got and A and excused from the final in Tensor Analysis and Mechanics of Continuous Media.

I have that rod and love it. Mine is matched with Stradic 4000, but JDM Stradic 3000 MHG is an equally great match and a great spool. (Same goes for Twin Power)

Fishing can't get any better than a draining storm tide.

The purpose of a rinse is to push-away salt-bearing water. Cold water is a better rinse than warm water. The solubility in warm water leaves more salt in the residual water film. Cold water rinse leaves less salt residual in the residual water film. hey, I got an A in P-Chem (derived the entire course from Maxwell's Relations, which gave the prof a kick - he excused me from the final exam)

The people who don't recognize a photo is an instant sliced out of time are normally short on imagination, and likely both fishing and photography skills. You expect to hear this argument on a fly fishing forum, but not on BR. Fish photography is a honed skill like any other. Camera on a lanyard, turned on when the rod is still bent. The photo is a sweep, already part of handling and releasing the fish, that takes less than 2 seconds. Camera set on macro and sequential frames. The photo isn't framed, just aimed, and the camera dropped on its lanyard, focusing attention on releasing the fish. The photo gets rotated, framed and cropped later on the computer. The general rule of photography also applies - it takes 50 fish to get one good photo. In Texas, btw, it's a Class B Misdemeanor to harass a legal sportsman. If there's something you don't like, call the Game Warden.

extrapolation from the simple truth takes on strange forms (the ocean came from rivers - not: 2% fresh, 1% clouds, balance ocean) Since I'm here, in this arm of the Rio Grande delta, the tidal boundary goes up the arroyo to Port Harlingen. We fish with gar, alligators, dolphin and night herons. Oh, and Susie. Yeah, pelicans and blue heron are easier to photograph than night heron.

Brackish water should mean salt tidal boundary. Most freshwater gear fishes fine in the salt. Just make sure you rinse everything well.

Cast distance with 1/8 ounce is into next week. We were on opposite banks of a tide pass here, and I had to thumb my casts to keep them out of my friends. We found stacked snook for the first hour of daylight.

@AlabamaSpothunter Yes, I already had the long Avail handle to swap in, so I bought the 8.5-geared Zillion. Easy to swap trim on Avail, and here's how it ended up.

Easy, 13Fishing Omen Green ML - I feel every blade of grass through this rod. I did break it on a high-stick set when a redfish followed my lure out of the water, and the fish exploded at the same time - took us both to break the rod. I called 13Fishing asking for a discount replacement, and they gave me full warranty since it was fishing. Had a new rod in 10 days. finished a Great trip with my 3-pc backup rod

I normally buy rods to fish their light end rating, and will fish toward the heavy end rating in open water, specifically here, big topwater plugs. (rated 1/4 to 1 oz)

I was wondering when we were going to get a photo - thanks to @Maico1 I would want the 150 for offshore jigging niche, but wouldn't use it enough to justify the cost, so I have a Tica Caiman in the niche, a good match for the JiggingWorld 1-4 oz rod.

Of course the thesis and context of the thread was stated up front. It's been argued on the forum that zinc gears are superior to aluminum gears, and repeatedly assumed that brass gears are superior to aluminum gears. Generically, either was likely true at some time in the past. (I know of a very good planetary multiplier fly reel that came with type-II anodized 6061 gears, and the maker's upgrade was Delrin.) The math says the current technology of aluminum gears is superior to either zinc or brass. If you've had good results, it's exactly because the strength of the gears continued to play. Each pinion gear tooth on a 7-geared reel makes 170 contacts on every cast you retrieve. I've fished through nylon gears, bronze rotor bushing, bronze A/R dogs, plated brass worm gears (but never wore through a 440 SS worm gear). I've replaced badly worn brass gears on Ambassadeur, and fished reels until they were ready to retire and replace. I've never had an aluminum gear to worry about until recent Daiwa and Shimano reels, and I'm not even close to worried.

Since I got on the bad side of zinc gears in the post I linked in my OP, and don't care about the peanut gallery, wrote this for a friend and decided to post it here to acknowledge zinc gears their just place in cost-effective spinning reels. Modern high-strength zinc die castings can reach 470 MPa UTS. That's 80% of cold-worked brass or heat-treated 7075, and 30% stronger than heat-treated 6061. Just about any $100 spinning reel will have a die-cast main gear. You can see the worm-gear rider below is also die-cast. Zinc alloys and gears have engineering development and process control, and are the best choice for cost-effective manufacturing - there's no cast aluminum or bronze that would plug in here. You can get strength in thin, complex shapes and controlled surface microstructure for wear toughness. The difference between wrought is the finest grains in the zinc controlled surface are still 100-times larger than wrought, and 2-phase structure with reduced grain cohesive strength, and lower fatigue strength. TackleAdvisors has always been the best on take-down reviews of fishing reels. If you have the time (an hour) his $100 reel shoot out video at least brushes over important design issues. Shimano isn't the answer to every fishing niche, especially cost niche; likewise, neither is Penn, etc. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-xN_kfjBTo At some point in reel cost hierarchy, you want worm drive, quality wrought gears, and light weight. We like to push our tackle to extremes, have it come out of abuse just like it started, and last as long as we want to fish. You do get what you pay for, and when you're in the trade-off price zone, you're sacrificing something. You may be giving up line management and the ability to fish fine braid, make a trade-off for that Shimano smooth feel, instead for a reel that's not going to get crushed by a couple of large fish.

Ebay sellers can also shill-bid with a 2nd log-in. He may have been trying to drive his price up, decided he'd sell to you for your bid. This is Most Probable.

I used an M7 on my Caiman, offshore slow jigging niche. All hex handle nuts, whether M7 or M8, are 10-mm socket - all locking retainers fit the same.

2nd reason I pick up KDW titanium handle nuts when I'm adding up a Hedgehog Studio order - you pretty much can't strip the threads. (yes, this one uses a bolt instead of a nut) @Skeeloco At some point, you tightened it and began shearing-off the threads in the nut. They sheared the rest of the way from normal service loads. Keep in mind that aluminum handle nuts that come on reels aren't the same alloy or manufacturing as aluminum gears - there are a lot of shortcuts they can take producing these nuts inexpensively.

they say hobbies have a way of uncluttering your mind.

I've done the same for fly fishermen, and only spinning cast benefits from wrist flicking. But I'll cast toe to toe with you any day. Above will cast 2 g to 130', below will cast 2 g as far as you need to fish any creek.

@Cbump at 19yo, I landed a 6-1/2-lb largemouth on Daiwa Minicast. The only reason I was able to do that, suckered her into the middle of a bowl-shaped cove with a Jitterbug and long pauses - she ate the lure at rest. My dad was freaking - Get That Fish In The Boat. We've fished mid-length 5-wt glass fly rods to massive river bass in spread-out cold sendero pools in the aquifer recharge zone - you can only get here with private access and a long walk up the dry sendero. And what a place-name, Toadstool Waterhole. While 3 of us caught 400 bass this early March day, we all lost lifetime fish to brush and timber. @CrashVector I think you should beat the rush and try your light lures in winter, when bait is generally smaller. Also think about rods that have more power in the butt than traditional para-taper UL.