casts_by_fly

Yeah, not sure I could survive that…. Just too many targets to cast to. I’d wear out an elbow or two. Beautiful in so many ways. Thanks for sharing.

I was about the say the same as Dwight. If you only have one weekend and have to pick it now, I’d pick the last week of April or the first week of May. If you have flexibility, go early and go often. The bay warms faster than the lake and the bigs come in earlier than the bulk. If I was in the area I’d be starting the second week of April pending weather.

@Joedodge - I think the Cara HT is going to be my next rod. I have the bucoo and the expert but I keep finding myself wanting a Cara. The expert is awesome, but I want just a touch lighter tip at times which is what I think the Cara has. Then I’ll probably add a low rider jerkbait.

I think 90% of the time it doesn’t matter. How much do you value the other 10%?

Despite losing what would have been a significant upgrade on my PB a couple springs ago on one, I have yet to really dial in a jerkbait bite. I’m going to put significant time into it next spring and maybe this winter (if the ice cooperates) because I know they catch fish. I carry them every trip in the boat and occasionally plan to throw one as a first or second option. And then something gets in the way. Maybe I need to do a trip where I leave all else home and just fish jerkbaits. The other for me that just hasn’t panned out the past couple years is the frog bite. I think a ton of guys must throw them around here (May through July I see it with my own eyes) and the fish turn off to them. I’ve stopped throwing them most of the year at this point and am using other stuff.

@ohioguy25- a set that covers all the depths I’d fish them at (so a 4-6, an 8-10, and a 12+) in a couple colors and at least two sizes. Some with duplicates or overlap. I have that now in KVDs. In 110s I’d need to get 2 dozen or so ultimately to do that and I know once I start down that path that’s where I’d end up if they worked for me. At $15 a pop that’s $350 but I could get started for about $150 to cover a couple core uses. To pick one? I’d need either a +1 or +2 in something clear/natural. But then it would work pretty well and I’d need to drop $150 or so to fill it out. Then those would work well so I’d have to spend the rest to get the full set and retire the KVDs to the basement.

Up for debate. They refreshed the expert lineup (check out the labels) and supposedly they moved production (word on the street was to Korea, but there is nothing online to support that). Like when they moved production from US to CN, rods were (and many still are) out of stock as they run down the old and stock in the new. TW has a bunch of “!” on Cara rods right now and some are backordered until March. The same happened on the expert lineup a couple months ago. Now the new ones are decently stocked (and $30 higher I think). It could just be an aesthetic revamp to justify a price increase creating the stock transition, but there was chatter in another group about a move a couple months back. @Brycecover - I don’t know the low rider finesse jig. I have the expert version which I believe is just a touch stiffer. The expert lineup are just a touch stiffer across the board for what I’ve seen. What feels off about it and what are you using it for?

Not yet for me. They’ve only moved the expert line over to the new lineup so far and the next rod I’m buying is probably the Cara head turner or another swim jig. Those are my two main rods and I’d have a second of either of them.

@Susky River Rat- fair point. At the same time, the infraction is the same competing in and “verifying” yourself, trying to register a fish, etc without a license is against the rules and thus technically cheating. Whether he could gain from it or not isn’t the point. Nor is it the point of the comparison. The point of the comparison is that there is ‘little’ cheating for minor things and then there is what this guy did. I think what this guy did is at the highest level of cheating, up there with leaded fish and pre-caught fish in a basket.

@ohioguy25- sure, but then I’d have to have a full set. And I have basically the full set of KVDs for what I need. So owning one isn’t an option for me. Owning one means owning about $150 worth.

@OldManLure- while I agree for the most part, you clearly didnt read the thread about Milliken and his Texas bass from earlier this year.

You’d have to ask a guy who owns a vision 110.

Cheating in the broad sense is bad. If you forget to buy your license and fish a tournament you're technically cheating because you broke rules. Inadvertently maybe, still on you for sure, but that's minor cheating. This is a whole nother league of cheating. Using a boat in a kayak tournament and then cutting up a kayak to make it believable. That is every bit as bad and intentional as stuffing weights into fish. (maybe not as bad for the fish). "Oh ninja of the nasty..." I totally forgot about these but they are so good.

The susky at Bloomsburg is an interesting choice. Not that there aren't fish, but it's a lot smaller there to host a big tournament. And then it's a small town to set up a 'weigh in' type event (I know there isn't a true weigh in, but there has to be some form of event space). I would have thought they'd been closer to HBurg. I wonder what boundaries they will set for the tournament. I'd be willing to bet that it takes 80+" to be in the money and 90+" to win it. @Kayak Koz come august the water will be low (absent storms). But the pools will have all the fish at that point. With a kayak tournament, you have the option of loading and unloading and that would be one option for you. Another would be pairing up with another entrant as a 'float' style trip where you pick a couple of the pools and work through them for the day. Certainly that's how I'd look at practice. The AP would be fine from a depth perspective. You'd have to pull the motor in the riffles to float through, but you only need 4-6" draft for the AP which will get you through most places.

The fish are 10' below the surface of the water? In that case I'm throwing a 6-8' jerkbait, watching it on live imaging, and adjusting from there.

With the numbers of ~12" bass you're catching, I suspect you are using lures that 8-10" crappie would be eating. Certainly throwing worms it would be. Beetle spins or small grubs would have caught one or two. It doesn't mean they aren't in there, just that you haven't caught one yet. If you want to know for sure, you need to fish for them. In the spring when the water starts to warm up, throw some little jigs under a bobber around cover (2" bobby garland shad for instance on a 1/32 head). Then after the bass spawn start looking for crappie spawning. They are easy to catch when they are on the beds. If you can't catch them shortly after ice out or during the spawn, then I'll suggest that the numbers are pretty low.

@Rodney Smith- if the chair leg rubber balances it, then you have a good idea how much weight is needed. if you want to make it permanent, get a new butt cap from mudhole or similar and replace the one you have on the rod. Add some lead inside the butt cap that approximates the weight of the chair leg. Epoxy it all together and you've got a clean setup. Balance is user choice. I prefer mine to be balanced regardless of what the rod is for. It just feels better when you pick it up, are casting, and in use.

we had a surprise squall come through yesterday. It didn't put anything on the ground, but visibility went to nothing for about 10 minutes. It was cool watching it swoop in from the northwest sitting at my desk. The wind has been incredible the past 5 days (never less than 10 mph at any point in those 5 days) but it has calmed down a little now. Tomorrow is looking bearable for a fishing trip so...

I can fish just about anything, but cork is my by far preference. I have a couple EVA grip rods still that occasionally make it into the boat and I notice it. Winn grips are the worst for me also. I won't have one of those. They just look and feel cheap to me even though I know they aren't. I mostly have split grip rods, because those are the rods I've chosen but given the choice I would have them all as full grip. But it's not worth my time to rebuild them that way.

Going to a new lake (ignoring electronics for a moment), I like to think about what the fish are doing for the time of year. Around here, the water is about 50-52 depending and has been dropping. The fish are pulling out of their fall feed up to a little deeper water. A hot sunny day might get them in a feeding mood, but there needs to be deeper water close by without the fish expending a lot of energy. That means steeper banks, bluff walls, and especially where steeper stuff meets a more rounded edge. That gives them easy options to be in shallow or deep without swimming a couple hundred yards across a flat. Put some cover there and maybe some current (wind blown or otherwise) and that's a spot that will hold fish often. When my energy and concentration are highest at the start of a trip, I'll find a couple likely areas like that and work them over decently well with a couple different things in a couple different ways. I'll also revisit them later in the day if there has been a good sunny day and the shallows warmed up a little. Sounds like you have a topo map of the lake so I'd look at that and google maps to pick up 2-3-4 spots like that to start from. More generically (not time of year specific), I like to get a feel for the lake by covering some ground. A hundred acres is a good amount to cover on a half day if you're in a boat (shore conditions will vary your ability on shore). After hitting some high likelihood spots I like to meander around and throw lures at what I see. Start to get a feel for the layout of the lake for other seasons of the year. Learn where there might be good cover spread around. Electronics are good for this if you have them. In my case, if it is when the grass is dead or gone I'll map the lake so that when the grass is thick later in the summer I already know the depth areas. Also, go in with the right expectations. If I show up to a new lake in the middle of May I have different expectations than the middle of March.

plenty. For a long time I resisted getting a 'heavy' (in the true sense of a 1/2- 2 oz type rod). I was catching fish just fine so what did I need it for. We don't have heavy laydowns to pitch or hydrilla and hyacinth mats. But the monkey got me and I bought one and then it just happened to come with me on every trip. And then another one appeared. Specifically, I'm talking about falcon 7-power heavy rods (Amistad, eye crosser) so truly 1/2+ bottom end rods and a bunch of backbone. The eye crosser is my primary frog/toad rod when the grass grows in but before then it is a great 3/4-1 oz spinnerbait and vibrating jig rod. It is basically the big brother to the head turner. The amistad generally has a 1/2 oz weight texas rig on it, but that's not for heavy cover all the time. When it is windy and you're dragging a 15' rod patch the extra weight helps with bottom contact. Closer to the original question, could I throw a 1/4 oz plus 6" trick worm on either of them? It would be close but probably. But I wouldn't do it unless I needed the power of the rod to pull fish back out of the cover. I'd never grab my amistad with 20 lb big game to throw a light texas rig around the edges of stuff. There are better tools for the job and I have them in the boat. Now if you expand that to Heavy labelled rods that aren't truly 'heavy' power like the 6-power falcons (head turner, heavy cover jig) then yes all the time. Those are the 'better tool for the job' rods that are in the boat. @bulldog1935- which bladed swim jig is that? I want to add a couple to the box for next season and I really like that one. MB Uoze?

I was just about to type this as I was reading the original post. I can understand some of the manufacturer mandatory things that you can’t select in options, but most of this list is actually quite useful. Lane assist, adaptive cruise, and similar ‘semi self drive’ type features are great safety features. I hear the argument of ‘well if you need it you shouldn’t be driving’ but that’s not the right way to look at it. Assuming you are a competent driver, these are features that take away the mental load in one way or another and keep you fresher while driving. The constant hyper attention to staying in lane or ensuring you are not running up on the car in front of you while in traffic are all mental load. That might not be critical for a 2 hour drive or your commute to work. But when you are doing a 4-5-6 hour drive or longer the mental strain adds up. You can be as attentive as you want, but inevitably there will be a time when you are changing the radio station, noticing a deer in a field over yonder, or just otherwise paying less attention. That’s what these features are for and what they are great at. I too don’t prefer auto high beams and wipers, but that’s because the systems in both of our vehicles don’t behave the way I want them to. When the sensitivity and timing is adjustable in a menu, then I’ll turn them on. In the meantime, I’ll just do them myself. My peeve is washer fluid. And not the fluid specifically, but the size of a tank and when the ‘low fluid’ light comes on. Washer fluid is sold in a gallon jug. When the car tells me I need it, I take the jug and dump it in. I don’t want a part bottle to sit around. So put a 1.25 gallon reservoir in the car and tell me I need it when there is .25 gallons left. .25 gallons is plenty to get you around still but if I have to buy a jug then let me put it all in.

SiC guides are fantastic guides and have been around for at least 25 years. If there was a problem with them, they would not have lasted that long. I suspect the “as people say they are” is a relative term here. If you’re not a significant rod abuser, and someone considering an expride likely isn’t, they you should have no problems.

Same as the remedy for a few things. Keep it clean, keep it lubed, and keep it in use. Never go wrong if you stick to that.

@Jar11591- I’m off today and not fishing so I’ve had espn on all morning. It was announced and the basically let it pass because it is the least interesting or surprising thing happening in sports right now.