Will Ketchum

I'm only speaking from my experience. I got a rod building kit from Netcraft many years ago and the instructions were to thread wrap the guides and coat with polyurethane. Maybe new rods today have guides attached differently. I have not bought a new rod in decades.

When my mother passed away, I went through her stuff and came upon her old cast iron pans. They looked like they could use some washing, so I cleaned the heck out of them and put them away. My brother asked if I still had them, so I gave him one. His wife cooked something in it and it came out "rusty". Moral is, don't over-clean.

I never used epoxy on a rod. I have only thread wrapped guides. The hook holders I have seen have been thread wrapped too. You may want to try it yourself.

I've used polyurethane after wrapping guides. It makes a nice finish, covers any imperfections and makes your work blend into the rest of the rod.

Once you scrape it off and redo it, give the area a light coat of polyurethane and it will all blend in.

Welcome. Looking forward to hearing about fishing in your country. My only Abu reel is an old Abu Garcia Cardinal 754.

Susquehanna River smallmouth are having the same problem. It's supposed to be cancer.

The water is colder in the fall so I would wait for the sun to come up and warm things up a little.

There is meat hunting and then there's the thrill of the chase. Some will use a recurve bow for hunting deer. It's all in the category in which you fall.

If you have a junk box with screws, nuts and bolts etc., dig in there for a screw and maybe you get lucky. Otherwise, since it's a cheap reel, you could jam a self threading screw in there and call it a day, and there's epoxy too if necessary.

Driving long distances to go fishing. Why go far to not catch anything when you can not catch anything close to home? ?

Shade and a good breeze helps, but sometimes even that's not enough.

It's probably the way the gears are cut. "Why are straight cut gears so noisy? Drawbacks come in the shape of their convenience and operation. They naturally create a hell of a lot of noise; helical gears mesh together in small segments at a time while straight-cut teeth are in contact with each other fully and for a longer period of time which makes for a very distinctive whine."

No sense repeating all the good suggestions above. I'll add to them that you could watch some comedy you enjoy on TV and go to bed with humor on your mind. That tends to stick with me even when I get up in the morning. A horror movie will stick in your mind too and you don't want that.

Stupidest thing was "Let's get married".

Last week, the third week of August, I got bored and went to a place nearby where I go in late fall where crappie school every year. I had a great day no different from late fall. It makes me wonder if these " rules" hold as much water as we think.

A rookie? I'm 80. What do you think? ?

If the weather is decent and I'm in the mood, I go.

If I find I'm stuck, I don't try to pull harder. It will only get me stuck harder. Instead, I jiggle the rod tip and hopefully the jiggle will travel down the line and get me loose. When I had a boat, I would move the boat to the other side of the snag and pull from the opposite direction. If I'm fishing the river, I let out a bunch of line and let the current take it downstream and then give the pole a good yank. I'll effectively be pulling the jig from a different direction. Otherwise, it's everything previously mentioned.

I wear an old light grey long sleeved cotton dress shirt in the summer. In winter it's flannel.

I change the retrieve. I go from a steady retrieve to reel and drop etc. to see if it works.

When I got out of the service, I was adrift as far as jobs go. I was a roofer's helper for a while until I got fired and rightly so. I wasn't getting much done apparently ripping shingles off with one hand while hanging on for dear life with the other. The killer was when I was on the roof on a hot day and looked down and saw a dog sitting in the shade of the next house and looking up at me. Who was the dumb animal? It was then that I learned the value of an education so I got one.

I just drink according to thirst and don't think about it. The urine color says a lot as mentioned above.

My guess is a snapping turtle. If the stringer was along the shore, I don't think any predatory fish would be that shallow, but a turtle would. I had one persistently come after my stringer until I just had to remove it from the water.

Nice fish plus nice waters. The creek photo looks like tannic acid waters like some places in the Pocono Mountains here in PA.