casts_by_fly

Rhombauer carneros Chardonnay. It smells and tastes like butter (and kinda smells like buttered popcorn). On top of Chardonnay flavors of course.

i didn’t have full surgery, but I talked about it with my ortho. It would have been 3-6 months of recovery after. Because of the level of damage I had (or didn’t have) I was a good candidate for PRP and TENEX which are less invasive. With PRP they use your own plasma and platelets, concentrate them in a centrifuge, and then reinject them into the injury site. The recovery was 3 days of ‘do nothing’ followed by 2 weeks of stretching and light use. Then it was 4 more weeks of gradual easing it back into my routines (gym, housework, fishing, etc). It was 4-6 weeks before I could use a baitcaster again. TENEX is more intense and is like a sonic needle that blasts out the scar tissue. It is more of a 3-4 month total recovery but it is a more proven technique and insurance will usually pay for it (they did not pay for my PRP).

Actually I can. We’re big winos (I’ve got about 400 bottles here). A lot of wine is aged in oak barrels and depending on how many times the barrels have been used and what they have been used for the barrels will impart characteristics into the wine. New, unused oak has a very characteristic flavor and smell to it. A lot of cheaper wines and mass producers will try to get oak aging into wine by putting oak staves into steel tanks instead of properly aging the wine in an oak barrel. The more sophisticated way is to use used barrels that have a milder oak flavor and age the wine a bit longer. Oak done properly is what makes some of the most complex and sophisticated wines in the world. Oak done poorly gets you 1990’s California Chardonnay. Buttery is one of the characteristics that you can get from wood aging. It also comes from a specific type of fermentation called malo -lactic fermentation. Primary characteristics (flavors) are the fruity flavors that come from the grapes themselves. Secondary characteristics come from the winemaking process itself like fermentation, pressing, etc. A buttery flavor is a secondary characteristic. Chewy and grippy are largely describing the same thing- tannin. Chewy can also relate to the mouthfeel (does it feel thin and watery or rich and ‘coating’ on the inside of your mouth). Tannins are molecules in the wine that come from either the oak barrels or from the stems and skins of the grapes. Tannin molecules (the same tannins that make your bogs dark) are big organic molecules that come from woody/stemy plant stuff that grab onto other organic molecules. Picture a hand and that’s what tannins look like at the molecular level- a central chunk with fingers of atoms stemming out that grab stuff. When tannins go into your mouth, you can feel them gripping onto your tongue. They give the same sensation as bitters and bitter things. That’s why grippy and chewy are good descriptors- the tannins are literally gripping onto your tongue and cheeks and it feels like you have to chew through them to get them off.

First, don’t reel without the spool. Second, yes if you’re able to reel backwards then it sounds like the ARB is broken.

I think I look at this the opposite way. Be as creative as you want in naming lure colors. I don’t shop by the name anyway so make it fun. Reaction innovations has some fun ones in the beaver lineup. Sure it doesn’t help someone who is new to the sport to understand what a given color name is but we don’t shop by a catalog name list anymore. Also, once you look at names for a while, you’ll see common themes. Sexy means a chartreuse stripe, usually with some blue on top and white on the bottom (e.g. sexy shad). Ayu is a known color that is a specific darker olive over a lighter olive color. California is a green pumpkin variant, usually with red and/or gold flake. Ghost means it is likely translucent.

I too was on the minor but nagging injury train for the past couple years. It started with a right knee injury from being stupid at a concert. Turned out to be a soft tissue injury only ( I thought it was a torn meniscus) that needed PT and time to relieve the scar tissue. My rotator cuff was messy for a while from a swinging/hanging/monkey bar type injury during a tough mudder event a while ago. Strengthening exercises for all the support muscles in the group was the solution. The latest was tennis/golfers elbow. Back in Oct of last year I was working out with a lot of heavy weights. My muscles grew faster than the tendons could support them and my left elbow got tendinitis pretty bad. I did PT for 6 weeks and then went and saw an osteo. Long story short, I ended up doing PRP therapy which hurt like a mother for a few days after but has largely sorted it out most days. I still get the occasional twinge, but nothing like before. You have to plan your fishing and work around it (the first 2-3 weeks is minimal stress and only stretching and a 6-8 week nominal recovery time). I’m a left hand rod holder with a baitcaster and the first time I set the hook on a fish with a baitcaster I thought my arm was going to rip open. But after that I’ve found the more I use it the better it feels. the important thing is to fix it while you can. At 37, your body is young enough that it can heal after an operation or PT.

No, but I wish they did. I’ve considered rebuilding one or two of them but it isn’t worth it for all the more I’d want to change.

If that’s what it is, it shouldn’t do that. That would be a warranty replacement/fix. It is weird that you have three all doing the same thing though. I’m not easy on my reels and I’ve never broken an ARB before. And a Bantam is a hefty built reel.

yeah, the spool itself isn’t moving forward and back. it is rotating on its axis which means the spindle and bearings aren’t broken. I think what you’re seeing is a combination of the play in the anti reverse baring plus braid slippage on the spool. Back in the day before infinite anti reverse bearings, spools would rotate even more than that just on their own before the anti reverse would pick up.

I highly doubt that you got 3 broken spools from the factory. I’d doubt one but that’s what it sounded like. If you have three doing the same thing then I’m inclined to believe either something else is wrong and it is user induced.

In the boat, I have a 4” wide patch of floor between the rod locker and the step that is my catch all. There are probably 25 soft plastics there right now. When I cut lures off, that’s where they go. It isn’t wide enough to step there so I’m not worried about stepping on lures. They can dry out on the ride home and will get put away the next time I’m prepping for a trip. I also have a small plastic tub inside the step that I’ll use for treble hook lures before I put them on. As in, I know I’m going to fish that crankbait or jerkbait, but I don’t put trebles in the rod locker. if it is a rainy day I still do the same because when I get home the boat is getting dried out in the garage with a fan. In the kayak, I had a space under the seat that would fit a 3600 sized box. I took a utensil drawer organizer (i.e. forks, knives, spoons, etc) and trimmed it to fit. It had openings to let the water run out while on the water and when I loaded the boat into the truck I just pulled the full tray out and put it on the back floor of the truck.

Sounds like either the spool spindle or a bearing is broken. I’d get in touch with shimano for warranty replacement.

I don't need a sawzall, but now I'm thinking about where the nearest pawn shops are and what I could find in them.

I wish that was the case here. the island is a steep sand/silt bank and the main shoreline is a steep cliff type bank. I've fished through it multiple times, run FFS through it, etc. Not a fish. When the water was 10' low the first time I took the kayak through it to see what was there and it is just a featureless U shape with nothing interesting. BUT, the only way to know is to run through it with your own electronics.

What do you call mid-priced? If a $30 walmart special is the bottom end of the market and a Loomis NRX at $999 is the top, that would put the middle at $500 which I think most would consider still pretty high end. On that basis, I'm going to assume that $250-$300 bracket and suggest the Falcon Cara lineup. There is a rod for everything in the lineup and that's what's on Jason Christie's deck for every tournament so...

Don't I know it. And pickerel also. Wednesday night I made my SECOND cast with a brand new 3.8 on a jighead and a perch bit off the tail. I decided I wasn't going down that route that night and put on a mooch minnow instead.

have a look at the strike king rocket shad. They make them down to 1/4 oz which might be a little faster sinking that you're looking for but they are small and would be great for fishing river smallies.

Color is just preference. My maps on my FF units are set up in shades of blue because it works for me. Then I highlight depth ranges with other colors. For example, on Wednesday I knew I wanted to concentrate on 20-40' because 0-20' is heavy standing timber and deeper than 40' is a pain to fish. I was looking for isolated cover. I set the map to shade 0-20 with red because I didn't want to be in there and 20-40' with green so that it showed up clearly against the blue. Your eyes might be different, so the only thing you can do is play around with your settings and seew what looks best. As to gradation, I want 1' increments. Below is an example from Navionics online and I swapped between sonar chart and nautical chart so it is an extreme example (20' vs 2' increments) but in the first picture all you can tell is that deeper water swings closer to the bank, maybe following the cove's contour. In the second, you can clearly see the flat in 12-15' and how the bank on the northwest side is decently steep while on the southeast side is more gradual. If you're doing map study to check out locations, that would be a pretty solid place to check out in the pre-spawn and even summer depending on the lake and what the fish are doing. Sometimes the difference of 1' or 2' is all the fish need to gather in a spot so I want the map to show as much of that detail as possible. Incidentally, the example below is a place where mapping can also fail or mislead you. I'm not sure of the source data that navionics uses, but if you look at the third picture it looks like there is an island with super shallow water between it and shore (like a swamp or bog) just down the shoreline from the first two pictures. The map data says it is super shallow along the shoreline northwest of the island which is what rounds out that point/shallows going into the cove in the second picture. However, that's a figment of navionics interpolating the data from a bad set of data. In reality, the water is ~15' between the island and shoreline and that continues all the way down parallel with the bank. So it is a much steeper bank than the map indicates and you can only know that by going and looking at it. The flat is still there but the detail around it isn't what is on the map.

On a spinning rod I only have my pinkie behind the reel stem and most of the weight of the rod is on my index finger which is 2-3" ahead of that. Not a huge level arm, but enough that the reel matters.

I think the aird x posted above is the go to at that price point. That’s really hard to beat.

I’m another Plano 3700 user like mn fisher. I did it to hold spinnerbaits and buzz baits when I could only take 5 boxes or so in the kayak. I kept it since I have it. It works fine. I moved my buzzbaits to a plastic heavy bag and they are fine there. But I only carry a dozen buzzbaits at a time so that’s plenty.

A spot of super glue (especially if you trim 1/4” off the head) will get you a half dozen to a dozen on a basic jig head.

the blue text is actually 'a little play' in that definition. They say get to zero play and then back it off a hair, which if you got the exact point of zero play means you'll get just a touch of play. I do the oopposite on my shimanos- find the point of no play and add just a speck (maybe 1/16th of a turn). On heavier lures I might add a good bit more and back off the brakes just to save my thumb. Regardless, getting close to that zero play point is where you want to target IF you use the brakes (or your thumb) for spool control. If you use the spool tension as your control then it will be a completely different setup.

A jitterbug is the original wake bait. In the smaller sizes they get a little twitchy about the retrieve speed, but when you get up to the 3" ones or the musky jitterbug (which isn't that big at all) they are more forgiving.

I meant to take a picture last night but was so fed up with the tangles I just had to clean it up and put them away. I was fishing a lake where I knew I was going to be using FFS all night. I had 3 spinning rods rigged, my BFS rod, and my big swimbait rod. But, I had two lures that I wanted to trial for action (new to me lures) so at one point I had 4 casting rods and 3 spinning rods out. There was no way I could have fished like that. I had to stack casting on top of spinning to have enough room to walk up to the trolling motor. I had a half dozen casts with each new lure and quickly put those rods away. As it was, 3 spinning rods is too much on the deck. They stick out soo far that you can't get any 'nesting' of rods together like you do with casting rods. 6 casting rods would be fine. 3 spinning is not. Nah, just a flogger.