casts_by_fly

Got a pair of pickerel last night. This one was about 20-22", so a pretty good one. Glad it was a longer jerkbait as he had almost 4" of it in his mouth. The back hook was almost to his throat hole. I think I need a longer pair of pliers if I'm going to be fishing jerkbaits more this year. Maybe a pair of jaw openers in case I get into the muskies and northerns.

I'm not a dragger myself. One technique that I never learned or really put any effort into. Maybe one day. The bucoo version of the dragger 1 though was one of my 3 main rods for a while. It was my bigger bladed bait rod for 1/2 oz chatterbaits and spinnerbaits. Its a great rod for that, but not what I'd call a fast action per falcon's website. Definitely MF, but it does have good power up high on the rod. It will flat out fling a 1/2 oz chatterbait with a big trailer like a zako or a 110 sized plopper (another thing its really good for). I didn't fish texas rigs much when I was using this rod, but I could see it as a really good 1/4-3/8 oz texas rig rod. I'd love a slightly lighter (weight) and more crisp version in the cara or lowrider lineup and I thought I had it in the expert but that's a totally different rod. And now that I have the heavy cover jig a lot of the things I'd do with a dragger are already done with that rod.

thanks. I'm not sure which I'd prefer- no weeds ever or too many weeds to deal with. That happy medium is the perfect spot- sparse weeds, clumps here or there, but lots of open space between them. The type where you can run most baits through it, but you're going to bump into a clump or two most casts. The lake I fished with my dad last year had a lot of that and it was glorious. Out here, one of my favorites had zero because it was 25' low when the -8 degrees hit last winter and it all died. The norm for us is mega weeds since its mostly natural lakes. This picture of curly pondweed was April.Probably 5 acres of it in that particular bay but that wasn't abnormal. That's 6-8' deep.

if it wasn’t for the leap year your be right on here. It’s now 20 mph steady and gusts to 50 mph here. The power is flickering enough that some electronics are kicking off and restarting. The generator hasn’t kicked on yet though. This continues tomorrow but by this time tomorrow night it will be still for a few days.

I posted in the reports forum but I got a couple. Plenty for February bass fishing.

one of those is calipers, one is a micrometer. A micrometer is always going to be more accurate.

the weeds are going to be bad no matter how mild the winter is. An early ice out just means they can kick off sooner. At this rate, it will be late April to have heavy grass.

I made a few casts with mine tonight. Not that I thought it would catch fish, I just wanted to see how it felt while casting, what it felt and looked like in the water, and how it looked on ffs. 1- it’s as big to cast as it seems. Two handed on the big rod. I used a falcon amistad (1/2- 1 1/2 heavy) and it works, but if I had a bigger rod I would have used it. If you have it, a 1-3 oz, 7’6” or bigger would be the better choice. 2- with the trailer in the picture above, it looks like a bigger shad in the water. The skirt adds bulk over just the swim bait. I thought it might fold back along the body better but only if you’re reeling it faster than you should be. If you want a big shad profile like a big gizzard, this is your jig. 3- yeah, it’s tough to miss on ffs. Even before I dialed in my settings tonight it shows up like a big chunk. Good to get an idea of what a 6” shad or crappie looks like on live imaging. I still see this as a situational bait. I’ll throw it in a couple places but not everywhere. I could see this being pretty good coming through some of the pad pockets we have here and putting it into open water (if the weed guard will stand up for it). I think this will be a good one to pull bass out from under docks, not dissimilar to a mag draft. I am going to throw a big keitech on it for next time. I don’t love these zoom trailers for movement.

Thanks! I think we’re all looking forward to your first trips this year. Hopefully sooner than later.

Hi all, We’ve had a very mild winter and I tried to get out a couple weeks ago but the wind and weather weren’t cooperating with my schedule. The stars aligned finally with the cold front coming through tonight and I was available this afternoon. The wind was forecast for as much as 18 mph for this afternoon at various points this week. By this morning it was down to 10–12 so I picked a little remote lake that tucks under a mountain. as with all first trips there is a bit of shake down to remind yourself what you’re doing, lots of testing out any new lures or rods, and a lot of excitement for the first trip of the year. I had all of that for sure. But anything caught today is a bonus. It’s February. In New Jersey. The water is still cold, but at least it’s soft. I was expecting 39-42 degrees but it was 44-46 already. Two years ago I tried to fish February and it was 34-39 degrees. With 55 degree air and 45 degree water I’ll take that this time of year any day. With the incoming weather (mid 50 degree highs and rain) for the next 10 days, the water isn’t going to get any colder either. My best early season producer has been a chatterbait (a Siebert Tremor) so that was the first off the deck. Picked one small one on that quickly, but then nothing for a bit. I went through a couple lures, some new, some old, and saw fish on FFS but nothing really doing. I saw what I thought were crappie but couldn’t get them to eat either. I chased the shad balls and the fish under them for a while but they didn’t want to eat what I was tossing at them (sonar minnows, small fluke, jerkbait). After fighting the moving wind, the moving boat, the moving fish, and the moving lures I turned off the FFS and started casting to the bank with a jerkbait. I ended the day with two small bass and two pickerel. Not a bad shake down trip. Also saw a bald eagle, two red tail hawks, a pair of beavers, 4 deer, and not another soul. not a bad place to be. P.S. Thanks @A-Jay for the new pickerel lure…

can’t wait to hear your thoughts on it. Per above, the 7’ 6-power is maybe something I’m missing to the point I almost pulled out the bucco from the basement. I didn’t realize the lowrider had a short rear grip. That’s the same grip length as the cara 6’8”. Depending on how fast it really is, that could be a dandy Texas rig rod for pitching cover.

How about your own boat walkthrough Glenn?

Being able to put down double power poles like he did will clear up an image incredibly and let you tweak the setting even more than the guys already are. Plus, he wasn't scanning back and forth while moving like the open water guys do. He was also using landscape mode if I remember right. It was actually a really clever way to use the technology that I hadn't seen anyone else do before.

not one bit. The prop 65 warnings trigger levels for most chemicals of concern are below the detectable limits of the testing we currently have. Ergo, if you know that its present in some level in your widget, you can't prove that its below the prop 65 labelling level thus you have to label it. Obviously things like lead weights are clearly made of the concerned chemical. And I wouldn't want to eat lead. Maybe even biting splitshot with my teeth was a bad choice, if more convenient than grabbing pliers. But general handling gives me no concerns for anything that is put out as a consumer product.

You'll be right back on an early thaw track shortly. I bet even if you get 5" it is gone before the end of the weekend with the 10-day forecast you have. And with the wind, that will break up the ice. if I were you, I'd be planning to fish next week. So far so good here today. The wind forecast has dropped 5 mph and its only 10 mph later today. And, its lighter here than the forecast so here's to hoping. Either way, I'm pretty confident I'll be on the water this afternoon for my first February start to a year. Now I just need to catch my first February bass.

We’re dropping from 60 to 26 tomorrow. Fortunately it’s from 8 pm to 8 am and I can maybe get out ahead of it.

from the picture it looks like the ceramic holding ring broke at the base of the foot. If that’s the case then you need a new one. If that’s not right and the full foot is still attached (I.e. it just pulled out of the thread wraps) then you don’t need a new guide. But you do need to rewrap it. You can try to push it back into the threads where it came out but it will come out again. A spot of epoxy might keep it in a little longer and you can try it. But the only way to fix it properly is to strip the old thread, rewrap the guide, and finish it.

I do the same as well, except someone on here taught me how to do it with an iphone. Works just the same. I pick the largest size that will get me to 1 MB. Dead simple.

There are all sorts of materials out there to play with. Barlows has a lot. All of the fly tying shops have a ton also. Maribou is great for motion without moving. Rabbit strips are similar (try wrapping a body with cross cut zonker strips over a maribou tail). Deer and other large animal hair is good for structure, just keep in mind that it floats. Whole feathers like a chicken cape feather makes for great streamer and jig bodies with a nice blend of stiffness from the feather core and movement from the fibers. And then there's flashabou/krystalflash/supremehair with varying degrees of flash and floppy. Fly tyers have been imitating everything that can be eaten for a long time so there's a lot of source material to tie up bass jigs.

do they ban them now? The only rule I was aware of was that you had to fish the same boat all year, i.e. couldn't swap between a 21' glass boat for the big water and drop to a small aluminum for skinny stuff.

I too started on MS-DOS and floppy discs. Technically it was the 5.25" actual floppy disc and not the 3.5" 'hard disc' floppy disc. I had a TRS-80 in my bedroom growing up, both the one with the monitor /disc/keyboard/built in and the one where those were separate and you connected them with serial cables. You're savy because you're interested in it. You want to do a 'thing' with it. In your case its church. For some it might be fishing. For others it might be programming or 3D printing parts. If you're interested and you put in the time you can be quite good with it. Most people don't want to put in the work/time to be good at it (for lots of things!). The advantage of those who have grown up on the technology is that they have an innate baseline to start from. You're not wrong about this. if I had a baitshop nearby I would do this a couple times a year with perch. They are easy to find on FFS and I can watch them follow artificials. I've never thought about it for bass, but a 3" shiner on a ballhead jighead would be eaten immediately.

Not surprised at all. There are plenty of bluetooth capable headsets that will do that for other things. Fish finders are bluetooth now. Sending live video over a bluetooth connection is tougher but doable if you have enough battery power. The google glass glasses would have done this. All you need is an HDMI output from the FF into a bluetooth video transmitter.

Yes and no. It all about what you use and have used often. My parents aren't tech savy, but they grew up in an analog age (they are late 60's now) so I wouldn't expect them to be. They use devices/tech less than most and don't have a need for it since they didn't grow up with it and haven't embedded it in their lives. They would be the people in that service center getting an explanation (in fact they brought a new truck home yesterday, so fitting timing). More than a few times I've set up their electronics settings (truck, fish finder, computer stuffs, etc). They also don't care to spend the time to learn it. They just want it to work. I grew up straddling analog and digital (currently 43). The internet was happening when I was in middle school (I had a 14.4 dialup modem). I learned cassettes and VHS but also .mp4 and streaming. I was learning digital things as they were developing so I've seen version 0.1 of things. I understand electronics and am a good user of current tech, but I also want to know how it works at its core. I have an idea how things should work, whether I can make it to it or not is sometimes a question. I'm definitely not up to date with the latest things though, so I can see my own interest and need in tech/digital waning into a 'i just want to use it' mentality at times. Our nieces and nephews who are 11 YO and younger could fire up a brand new fishfinder and have it showing fish in 5 minutes. They've been using the latest and greatest of digital/tech/internet since they were 2 years old. Its innate to them. They may have no clue on lots of things, but tech comes naturally to them. I liken that to the guys on the tournament trail. Someone who is 24 right now would have been 5 years old in 2005. Their first phone was probably an iphone or similar. Tablets were common for kids of that age. In school they would have had digital projectors and maybe tablets instead of overheads, transparencies, and (gasp!) paper. When you have that foundation in touchpads and digital instruments, moving from one to another is a lot easier. Its just the way you do things rather than another thing you have to learn.

The big screen in front alone is $13k (for a 22". He might be as big as a 27"). Hard to tell the size of the rest with that big one there, but let's assume one 16" up front and 3 12" on the helm. That's 4k+10k and you're at $27k just for the screens. I've heard (but not seen a picture of) that he's running multiple LVS transducers including the discontinued saltwater one (LVS 90 I think). That's a solid $10k worth of transducers there. Add a black box and the batteries/chargers to support all of that and yeah, I can see why airplanes are so expensive. I would take that bet, certainly for a lot of the younger generation of anglers that have youtube channels (and probably the older guys too). A lot have full tutorials of how they set up their electronics, how they adjust through the day or by body of water, etc. Wheeler used to run all three brands and was/is fluent in all of them (I think he's consolidated to two now).

Its broken and not repairable (the guide). You need a new one, need to wrap it onto the rod, and finish the threadwraps. Its not hard, so watch the tutorials above and go gently with any cutting instruments or heat.