Rucksack

This year has been an odd one for me. A year long temporary relocation has me fishing surf, brackish, and freshwater regularly. I have to worry about sand, oyster shells, cyprus, pine, live oak, and toothy fish. On top of all that I got a mess of hand me down retro surf casting equipment from the 70s to 80s I had to fill with line. I started the year fishing braid to fluro leaders. However after several heart breaks where my braid snapped from abbrasion and bluefish, and the need to fill a lot of giant reels, I have converted entirely to mono for everything. Specifically, after reading this forum, to Berkeley Big Game. I've got spools in everything from 8 lbs to 50 lbs for various applications. It's been pretty eye opening fishing quality mono. I still have good sensitivity. The stretch lets me hurl giant weights. I can bring in big fish without really worrying. Big game particularly seems like it's built like a tank when it comes to abbrasion. I've had no issues (that aren't bluefish related) since swapping. It's dirt cheap. Heck, I think I even prefer the feel of a fish on mono as it reminds me of panfish as a kid. I feel like I way underrated mono and am now probably a full convert to it. I had got it in my head it was only good for backing braid. Anybody else experience this?

Double post. Sorry, but wanted to add one bit of additional context. There is a huge range of different triggers for motion sickness. Some people are more sensitive to vertical motion, others horizontal, some to sudden drops (like airplane turbulence). I'm personally running for the bucket if steady forward motion suddenly stops. This is probably accounting for your 50% sickness rate. It really depends on what stimuli you're getting exposed to out there from boat motion. It'll vary day to day. You could try keeping a log if you're curious.

On that note. If you'd like to avoid any legal entanglements, depending on your state, and don't want to feel funny then I'd look into CBD products. They really do work wonders for upset stomach. On the more general topic on motion sickness, I was a VR developer for a good while. It was a constant problem I had to fight. All the general advice here is good, but I think I can offer some technical advice too. One of the safety features we built into products was a small dot that was always visible in the center of your visual field. Most people weren't even aware it was there, but it greatly reduced nausea. We also would put in nearly invisible grid lines that did the same thing. It's all steady points in your mid to far visual distance. On open water you can do the same thing with the horizon line. This is much easier if you can still see land. Find a fixed point and glance and it occasionally. It'll really help a ton. Being away from any visible land, you can still use the horizon line, but it's not quite as effective. A small fan also helped a ton. There was something about the steady air flow. Make sure you're above deck and in the breeze. Also, food does actually matter (eat like normal, empty stomach actually makes things worse), but it's actually mostly your liquid intake. Coffee, carbonated sodas, and alcohol, we saw again and again, would send people into nausea. Probably because it irritates the stomach. Conversely, sweet things (like fruit juice) helped a ton once you were sick. And you can recover from mild motion sickness, but a bad case will put you down for hours. Once it starts coming on, act fast. Horizon, air flow, and fruit juice can pull you out. Also good news. You can adapt to motion sickness, so a bad experience doesn't mean you're doomed. Again we saw this in development. VR Legs/Sea Legs are real. I love being on a boat , but I used to get sick the moment water got rough. Now a days I'm pretty hard to make ill. Was out red drum fishing in heavy seas just this week and was fine.

☝️ Echoing this. You honestly could go your whole fishing career with very little tackle and one combo. Pretty sure a lot of our grandparents did just fine this way. I learned a lot from watching YouTube, which is where I'd say to go other than our site's awesome library, but you've got to also be ready to filter a lot of their gear advice our. They're paid to sell gear. You don't need a lot to get very high quality fish. You do however need a LOT of time on the water. If you're going to spend money, spend it on gas, guiding services, and whatever gets you out with high quality practice -- not tackle.

Plastic worms are a great place to start. Those catch in most conditions. In the spirit of easy heuristics to get you started and learning. Go get yourself a half ounce or lighter white spinner bait. Throw it when it's windy and overcast near wood or other structure. Try different speeds of reeling it back in. To expand it's utility out a bit, and kind of build on the heueristic, you can also throw it sunrise or sunset to good effect. Low light conditions near structure are where spinners excel. Couple ways to get that. Wind generated waves make it harder for sunlight to penetrate the water. Cloud cover reduces sun. Sunset/sunrise are also lower light. The flash and vibration of the spinner draws in bass well in those conditions.

If I'm fishing braid, then totally. Usually about five to six feet. Usually flurocarbon.

I'm a top water novice. What should I be throwing and where should I be throwing it for some top tier night time bass?

Oh man, interesting topic. I have had very different experiences, but I think there might be an underlying principle at work between our experiences. I mostly do what I consider urban fishing. That means lakes and ponds where you can see downtown or just a ten minute drive from it. The pressure there is insane. I carry a trash bag with me just to clean up the piles fishing junk that washes on the shore. I get bit, often times very nice bass, but only because I'm fishing at different times (early) and locations (bushwhacking) than most other city people. They are spooky fish and you will absolutely (even bass nerds like us) get skunked many days Moved out to a more rural spot for the year, at least by my standards as there's no skyscrapers, and it's night and day. There's a little housing development pond I can walk to, it sees very little fishing, and it's almost unbelievably good. I'm hauling four to five pounders out regularly and never leave without at least having hooked up with at leat one bass. They even fight differently, very active, athletic, and angry. Good spots on the nearby sound yield similar results. That matches my experience fishing lower pressure, clearer waters of the upper Midwest. I fished the lake my in-laws live on, probably one of the few LMB anglers out there, and it was similarly lights out. Those fish just were not used to somebody coming for them. So maybe there's some sort of golden mean at work. Zero or hordes of human activity means very spooky fish. Moderate levels means very accommodating fish?

How does that do in heavy wood cover? My gut says it might hang up on submerged limbs, but I'm curious to try it.

I make video games and currently WFH. I've got the ocean and the sound walking distance from me, and I am out there most mornings. I'm back in the studio next year and I've got a line on a nearby pond being excellent from a co-worker, so that might become my lunchtime ritual.

Man consider myself taken to class. Great info! I'm going to try some new riggings next time I'm on the water.

Lots of good information, don't think this got mentioned yet though. Be very picky about how you rig it. Make sure your hook point is coming out of the middle of the fluke and/or the eye of the hook is centered in the bait. Even slightly cockeyed rigging results in "bad" action and reduces bites. At least that's been my experience. Last year I fished the fluke pretty much exclusively to really learn it, and it was eye opening how much even slight variances in rigging effected things. Other tip, not exactly a deep secret, but maybe not obvious. When you t-rig them you can, and totally should, skip them into low hanging trees and lay down situations. I usually let it dead stick a bit when I do that. A lot of people seem to really only talk about skipping them with docks.

Funny this thread got revived. I was just reading it, because I have been throwing craws too. I wasn't catching anything dragging them or bouncing them. In frustration I threw it at a laydown and left the line the water while I was packing up to leave the dock. When I reeled it in a good sized bass was on the other end. I'm now routinely catching them by just throwing them weightless t-rigged near cover, letting it sit there, and just looking at my phone. Often times the bass takes it and just sits there on the bottom with it in its mouth. No line or tip twitch. You don't know it's there until you feel pressure when slightly picking the rod tip up to check, which is when I set the hook. It's been a really weird behavior that's stayed stable.

I started dropping down to only two lures per trip, sometimes just one, and my catch rates have gone up a lot. It makes me focus on technique and think about conditions a lot more before starting out. OP based on your report, sounds like you're already doing this, but I think about my two lures as a "moving" and a "slow" one. Moving being things like bladed jigs, spinners, cranks, etc, and slow being mostly texas rigged soft plastics like worms, flukes, and creature. Colors will drive you wild, so just stick with a natural color like Green Pumpkin until you learn more. I start on my moving lure most days. That helps me know if fish are active and where they're holding. Once you learn more about conditions, you can start making educated guesses on what to throw. Until then a good "hack" is using an App. I use Bass Forecast because it has good lure suggestions.

That sounds like an awesome time! I'd love to get down and fish that region one day.

I've read through the "best reels" thread and did a deep dive through archive, and couldn't find recent advice on this. I'm really hard on my equipment. This isn't a point of pride, but it's the truth. I don't run multiple rods, so all of my wear gets focused on one piece of kit. I'm also, as much as possible, a guy who likes to make a single purchase and use it for years. At least until I wear it out of course, see my previous hard on gear comment above. Do you have a suggestion on a rugged spinning reel (2500-3000 size) that can stand up to some serious punishment and keep working? I'm talking resistance to getting wet, dropped, dirty, over fished, used with probably wrong drag setting, and the whole nine yards. Price isn't really a consideration as much as durability is.

Dropshot is bottom for me. I got setup for them this year after seeing YouTubers swear by them. I can't buy a bite on them. I have much better luck with a Ned Rig in similar pressured, finesse, or just cold scenarios. I'm actually super frustrated by this because I just can't figure out what I'm doing wrong. North Carolina water is maybe just too cloudy or muddy for them.

I have only had largemouth and I thought they were very good fried. Not my favorite lake fish (that would be perch or bluegill), but do want to eat more of them.

Mission accepted. Let's catch and eat as many possible. I'm trying to get better at ID'ing them. Don't think I've seen them in the wild yet.

🤣 The real issue is ChatGPT can't go fishing

I can keep it under ten. I like keeping my lures simple. I do variations in size, weights, and color of this core lineup. - Caffeine Shade in white (don't have luck with color variations here) - Bladed Jig - Senko - Double Willow Bladed Spinnerbait - Brush hog - Ned Rig (mostly only VERY clear water) - Whopper Plopper (least productive bait, but I think they're fun and I'm working on getting good)

Welcome! BR is like a throw back to the good ol' days of quality hobby and advice forums. I bring it up even to non-anglers as an example of what an Internet community should be. Hope you enjoy your time here.

In terms of what's working for me currently. I'm doing well on a bladed jig, because I'm still covering a LOT of water as I break things down. The sound around here is getting more weedy by the day, so I think that will probably keep working for a while My real love is pitching, flipping, and skipping structure with soft plastics. I'm going to switch to some of that once I suspect we're well into post-spawn.

I wanted to pop in for future readers and reemphasize this point , which @JHossalso mentioned earlier, having now experienced it myself. The wind out here is like nothing I've experienced in the Piedmont. Can be pretty calm when you paddle into a protected channel and then very scary white caps when you come back out. Shallow sound + sudden wind increase= big unexpected waves . I consider myself a strong paddler and swimmer, always wear a PFD too, but I don't want to mess around with dangerous water conditions if I don't have to. I've taken to looking at wind apps like "Windy" before even considering getting on the water. The morning speeds don't predict the rest of the day. Look at gust speed specifically.

Bumping this from the future. Did you get any conclusive results comparing the two? Found this thread because I too am ready to toss off the braid to leader setup on my spinning rod due to wind and abbrasion. This has been an incredibly helpful read!