SpellCaster

New member, but I've scoped out the forums a few times for tips or answers to questions I've had. I'm from North AL, on the TN River. Hardcore bank fisher, but I just got a kayak this year, so looking forward to being out on the water more. Also love to wade when it's warm enough. If a spinning rod is a fairy wand then I'm the Fairy King. I have a couple baitcasters, but spinning gear just butters my bread. I like to catch and release (into Lake Crisco). My favorite ways to fish are topwaters and big live bait. Smallies are the most fun. And my current belief is the Zoom Salty Super Fluke is the greatest lure of all time.

Where in North AL? I'm in Florence.

Randomly at a thrift store I found an unopened spool of 10# Sufix Tritanium mono for a couple bucks and it has been AWESOME for leader. It really takes a lot of abuse. Other than that if you want to stick with Berkley and similar price there's Trilene XL Smooth Casting

My goals for 2024: - Start fishing toads - Catch a bass with a frog - Learn to fly fish (for bass) - Top my total catches for the year (2022 was 214; 2023 so far I'm at 232) - Fish more from my kayak which I just got this year - There's a local park in town that has two nice sized ponds filled with bass and bream and it's only open for fishing 4-5 days out of the year. Since the bass aren't pressured and are used to plenty of people jogging/playing around the ponds they aren't very skittish, so they bite lures easily. Think I hauled in 5 bass in a row one of the mornings and ended up with 26 within 1 1/2 hours. The only thing that would make those days better would be if the bass were bigger. I didn't catch one even breaking 2lbs, though one kid caught an 11lb there this year. Since the park officials encourage anglers to keep what they catch I've been doing exactly that in hopes of culling out some of the smaller bass so the rest fatten up to DDs. Planning to do more of that for 2024 and, while it's still probably too early to see much difference, I hope to see some bigger bass caught out of there. - Get skunked less

Caught a bass with: - Spinnerbait - Lipless - Squarebill - Hard jerkbait - A-Rig - Vibrating jig - Ned Rig - Frog Understood: - the difference between damiki rig and fishing with a jighead Bought: - Googan brand anything