bulldog1935

I also fish XUL spoons for winter glass minnow imitation These are 3 to 5 g The white is glow for nite-lite dock fishing yes, they came from Japan, and the stinger hooks are Vanfook

holding the temperature to 185 except for those 3 or 4 hours above 250. The stuff of side-box smokers. I've mentioned before, even javelina is exceptional smoked that slow. ps @CountryboyinDC here's venison backstrap off the smoker. The thing about a smoker, nothing dries out - chicken, sirloin, pork, venison - all running with juices and the meat flakes between your fingers. pss - and when it gets cold, we can start talking about chili

A side-box smoker lets you grill, roast, and slow-smoke - all at the same time. Nothing quite like redfish grilled on the half shell. I roast chicken to chile rellenos. Slow-smoke tri-tip, tenderloin, venison, wedding sausage - and there are no words for a Boar's Head uncured casing frank after 2 hours in the cool part of the smoker. I smoked a turkey for 20 hours one Thanksgiving, and there wasn't a crumb for leftovers. Mine is getting even more use lately, because with my mom out of the kitchen, and my dad cooking for them, I'm keeping them in smoked meat to heat and eat, too. The smoked meat makes caesar salad, perfect pulled carnitas for tacos, sliced thin for sandwiches, or thick-slice slice and quick sear in skillet for a beautiful steak. How about a venison backstrap breakfast taco? Whoever came up with grilled sirloin steak is an idiot. Ribeye is a steak. Sirloin is a beautiful roast that belongs on a smoker.

Always. Even a spinning reel gets index finger on the spool. Lever drag gets pushed forward to set position, and then backed off to fish-mouth setting. Back to UL spinning, this all-metal MTCW TD (touch drag) knob has a spring inside that won't let you set the drag over about 1-1/2 lb. But you push on the front of the drag knob with your finger tip, and it gives you more drag to hook-set or slow a run. You can feel the spring compressing further. If you think about it, even the stock plastic-lump drag knob adjusts drag by elastic strain in the plastic lump. The spring gives you 100-times more elastic range in fine drag adjustment. They include a red stiffer spring to swap in that gives you the full drag capacity of the spool.

..., Pilgrim.

@Bluebasser86 I grew up targeting first-light jumps in highland lakes with my dad. Yes, all kinds of fish are drawn to the feeding frenzy (similar to blackwater in the surf or jetties). If you hit a white bass run just right, the big males and females will push the shad upriver ahead of them. Here, the white flagstone is black with bait and a white footprint opens up for you every step. One day like that, I caught the same largemouth 7 times - couldn't miss him for the scar on his head.

We get a similar result on speckled trout feeding in winter tide passes on tiny glass minnows - the flash is all you need. Small baitfish "ball up", and as far as the trout are concerned, they're slashing into a bait ball. Noteworthy, redfish won't buy it then, and for them you need to "match the hatch"

@CountryboyinDC I wouldn't even have the Werner Coreyvecken except for motivating my T160. Pushing the opposing rudder pedal becomes an automatic part of speed tracking with high-angle stroke in that boat with the big paddle. Riding the Kestrel with this big paddle, the largest blade area made, every time you put it in the water, you feel like you're going to flip, and the Kestrel is actually faster with the smooth tracking of the narrower touring paddle. For comparison, here's the traditional Danish paddle.

The hull has no chines, and you lean against the curve of the hull to steer. Sitting still, you need thigh straps to keep your balance. We joke about every time you get in it, you have to get your sea butt. Secondary stability is high, at least partly because it's so fast - faster than my buddy's Hobie Revo 16 with Turbofins. @flyfisher is also correct about stroke and even ballast tuning. My big Coreyvecken paddle oversteers the Kestrel badly, and it behaves best in waves with my Camano touring paddle and bow ballast. And with touring strokes, it's still faster than anything around. The hull shape next to my T160 - The Kestrel 140SOT is 2" narrower beam, but it's much narrower at your feet, both the source of speed in the Kestrel, and the source of greater stability in the T160. and just to be clear, I'm not recommending the Kestrel on this thread for anything except a pocket rocket. Most people will never know the feel of infinite glide in an old-school Danish kayak.

Sliding rings on cork or wood was the standard from the inception of spinning reels and of course before that on fly reels. Also cap and band - the rod is a prewar Heddon sold by Folsom Arms. This is a Lami 605, but the reel seat was copied after Lee Wulff Conolon rods. And the same idea, it lets you balance the rod by sliding the reel position. c. 1960 H-I Star and Luxor A spinning reel. This is an Arjon cane rod, which were exported from Sweden by Abu, and would have matched an old Thommen Record, which became the Abu Cardinal.

@CountryboyinDC and @flyfisher and then there's my kevlar Kestrel that turns on thigh straps. A fast taxi to wading water - 39 lbs and 5 kts is no effort.

Same thing happens to fly fishermen. Their vest accumulates 35 lbs they don't need carrying on their neck and rotators. If you figure it out, you switch to a bag that only carries what you need today. My vest is a filing cabinet on a hanger on a pegboard.

kayak box for my local no-motors reservoir - no shad here throw in a pack of TRD bodies, and a second small box with finesse spinnerbaits and more jigheads.

Growing up fishing clear, deep hill country reservoirs, it had to be chrome shad. We use a lot of blend colors in water that often has 50' visibility. One exception - trolling up the river channel with Pico Texas trailer, a white-bass-marked Bomber brought the most attention to the spinner-trailer. A shad in cover is lost and easy pickings for prey. A bluegill in open water is lost and easy pickings for prey. The 400-acre no-motors reservoir I kayak now is the first thing high in the hill country, and there are no shad, so my go-to crankbait is bluegill. Different place, my favorite YoZuri wakebait is "real gizzard shad" - it reflects green and transmits pink - just what you want at sunrise.

? Cortland CS2000 with nice thick and smooth alloy rings and I'll raise you a CAP 4th model with half-bail. It gets worse - this 4-1/2' Airex with 1937 Luxor was always my older daughter's go-to for creek fishing. She got very good at fishing without anti-reverse - all on her own. She could hold the rod and reel handle in one hand, and handle the fish with the other.

I just finished tinkering up that 1500C. It's on a 5-1/2' UL rod for stream fishing (hill country limestone creeks), and shooting for 3-5-g lures. The reel was raced-out by Don Iovino, who removed 1/3 oz from the LW using Avail parts, and delivered with the stock spool. The stock spool is heavy, and the capacity is also too great for fishing 0.20 mm line, either 5-lb Maxima Ultragreen mono or 10-lb Sufix 832 braid - over 200 yds. The mass of the stock spool needed centrifugal brake. @Log Catcher Casting my target 3 g, right off, the spool mass was goosey, with start-up backclash even on my lightest lure. Adding 2 centrifugal shoes, I was able to cast to 50' reliably, which is enough to fish any creek. I swapped in an Avail spool with mag brake. The spool is only 7 g, 2 mm deep - loaded with only 40-50 yds of either mono or braid, probably 1/4 of the mass of the stock loaded spool. The internal mag brake will attach to either side - attached to the frame side, it lets you use centrifugal, as well. When I tried this light spool with 2 centrifugal shoes and 4 magnets, it wouldn't cast the light lure more than 35'. It also took a lot of cast effort to get this distance. I swapped sides on the mag brake, reduced it to 2 magnets, and removed the spool centrifugal and replaced it with the spacer for it that comes with the mag brake. Note it's also a lot easier to remove the drive pancake to add or remove magnets than to disassemble the spool from the palm side. Without centrifugal and with light mag, the result casting 3 g was 80' casts with 100% reliability. I could throw it fast and near horizontal, or lob it up high to the same distance, and no hint of backlash. I don't need to fish 80', but the result means low effort fishing with total cast reliability. Again, when you have big inertia, you need centrifugal. If you can greatly reduce the inertia, the centrifugal is just in the way, and mag works better.

Kastmaster is a staple for both surf and jetty fishing. A black-nickel Johnson's Silver Minnow is a perfect crab imitation in shallow grass, and I've seen some back-bay wizards work wonders on them. My kidfish story about a natural ability to read water. On a family vacation, sweeping from grandparents in TN to family friends in MO and cousins in WY: My first new rod at 12-y-o. Walked up to a cove on Lake of the Ozarks. Cast a Johnson's Sprite over the top of a sunken log, skittered it back across the surface and let it drop on this side of the log. First cast, a 3-1/2-lb smallie.

I was reminded of these photos by Rita photos @BayouSlide posted on the Ida Check-in thread. Didn't want to post them there, so instead, brought them here. This was 3 weeks after Harvey, about 15 miles W of the eye. Great fishing, though, and the RV park was happy to get our business. SH-35 drainage ditch was lined with boats from the 5-story boat condo at Cove Harbor that was demolished. Rockport recovered quickly, though - a lot of money there. The facilities had a new skylight.

Rather than low-grade Shimano, I would recommend Tica Libra SX3000 for sealed A/R roller-bearing, great ball bearing line roller (better than Shimano), and general balls. SX3500 is the same reel body with deeper spool, though the 3000 spool holds right at 200 yds 12-lb fluoro.

Ida is currently doing what hurricanes do, slowing and building energy from the Gulf. She's going to make landfall at Cat 4 guys.

@A-Jay Breakaway saddle clamps on surf rod

Phillipson patent seat will secure the reel anywhere along the cork handle. Phillipson Reel Seat / Burl Tennesee Handle - RodBuilding.org This is a Phillipson ES-76R rod and the Hardy Exalta reel has a square boss on the reel foot that reverses.

I swap a lot of hooks and buy a lot of Gami SpMH - for one thing, I use freshwater plugs in salt. I've had YoZuri salt minnows rust the hooks after one use and even given a bath at home. The weird thing to me are the crankbaits that come with a smaller treble in back. A couple of examples - a small minnow with the tiny trebles replaced with salt singles. On the Jackall lipless, I swapped the back treble that came off one of my larger surface plugs (in turn swapped with salt hooks). ps - these Smith split-ring tweezers are amazing if you need to work on any split ring smaller than #3.

I like both answers here. There's something about dog-walking plugs - you want to own them, you have a narrow window to fish them, which is also probably how you begin your morning. They do go back in history as the oldest described bass lures. "Walking-the-dog" was coined by Paw-Paw Lure Co. c. 1918, but in his 1881 book, Doc Henshall referred to "The Bob" and said it went back to Florida and pre-Revolution times.

in SW Florida, you'll be in the rain bands. This morning, snipped this for a parallel discussion on TKF forum - all we'll get is a good storm tide to fish, and which I'll be fishing next Friday... Here was a great trip on TS Beta storm tide last fall: Estes after Beta - TexasKayakFisherman.com