Fishes in trees

It is good to see that folks other than me have solved the "What does this weigh?" issue. $20 to $30, a trip to Walmart and all of a sudden you're the proud owner of a postal scale. If you buy a decent box to put it in and remember to take the battery out when you store it, they last a long time. I got mine in 2008? 2009? Anyway, now it is where it is supposed to be, in a box in the fishing shed, waiting to get called on to weigh something.

You can use spinning gear for top water frogs. I have a Fenwick 7' mh/ ex fast spinning rod and it works great for " Finesse frogging . " By finesse frogging I mean taking any frog or frog imitator and nose hooking it with an appropriate hook and throwing it to the edge of the pad line/weedline - pulling it off the spot and hope. You can throw regular topwater frogs with the same gear and be more or less hopeful that should you get bit, you'll stick the hook and land the fish.

Buy the 7' one to start. Most/probably it will get you more distance compared to the 6'9". My guess is that the casting distance issue is negligible . So that means pick the rod that feels best to you. As I don't fish from a kayak - ever I got no other opinion.

So who is smarter - us or them. From afar - I've seen what happens when some unknowing angler smacks his boat into a tree that also happens to host a buzzard roost. It is kinda cool when they all leave the roost and "lighten their load" when they take off. Not funny when buzzard poop hits your boat carpet. Buzzard poop actually eats through boat carpet. Not good smelling at all. It is challenging to fix at the car wash - and you won't fix it while you're on the water. When you're fishing a tree line, look up from time to time and see who's living in the branches. Just saying . .. . .

Then only way to know for SURE if you got the rod you want is to buy the other rod you thought you might want and test them side by side with the same bait. You will need to buy another SLX reel if you want it to be a fair test. If you ain't so concerned about a fair test, then get a Curado DC or upgrade to an Antares or something like that.

Academy Sports is currently the exclusive marketer of All Star Rods. 3 years ago I got 2 new All Star Spinner Bait rods ( 6'10" MH Action - little more tippy than their worm rods ). These new rods are very comparable to the old All Star Zell Rowland Spinner Bait Specials - which were available in 6'4" and 6'8" lengths. At first, I didn't like the purple color of the rods, but after a few years now, I'm ok with it. A new marketing deal seems to be bright colors with the All Star Line. After the purple ones, they had a bright chartreuse color and I've also seen bright metallic lime green ones and bright red/orange ones. They will have to be extremely on sale before I get any of those colors.

Go to work with a Sharpie and clear lexan can be any color you want. Just a thought - don't know how long it might last - would be pretty cheap to try.

I think the 8.3 to 1 ratio is a little high for the computer controlled reels. I have 2 of the Curado DC reels and I think that they excel in getting extra distance with the same or a little less effort, when throwing spinner baits & square bills, and the like. With the 8.3 ratio, I'd have to consciously slow down when retrieving

Another recommendation for the Brewer book, "On Slider Fishing". We've got access to MUCH better gear ( lines, rods, reels, everything, really ) than Charlie Brewer had when he wrote the book - or dictated it to some ghost writer or however that book happened. The fact that this book stands the test of time is an indicator of how timeless his fishing notions were. The man was an innovator. Was he THE creator of finesse fishing - probably not. Ned Kedhe and the other folks involved in Midwest Finesse have a different opinion as do several guys out on the west coast. More than a few Japanese fishermen were doing finesse fishing, roughly around the same time. Makes you wonder how much these guys talked to each other. I know I was living in Columbia, MO, late 70's - early 80's and I fished alot and I never heard of Midwest Finesse fishing, but Brewer jig heads and 4" worms were readily available at the Bass Pro franchise. Most of my finesse fishing derives from concepts I got from the Charlie Brewer book. Another good read is the old Roland Martin book, 101 Bass Fishing Secrets. This is more of a story book than step by step fishing instructions, but it is 100 short stories about how Roland caught fish at some point in time and there is lots of information that you can apply to your fishing situations.

I think that the rule on electronic devices on or near water is that NONE of them are waterproof. They are all water resistant to some degree or another. Sorry to hear about your Tom Tom. I got a Garmin Nuvi around the same time period and while I don't use it very often, it works great when I need it. The cheapest Garmin is the E-Trex and I had one for a while and I never got it submerged, so I can't speak to how waterproof it is, I got it damp and rained on often and it never failed to work. I lost that unit when I left it in a motel room and when I realized it wasn't in the truck, I called the motel and they didn't know anything, so I'm guessing the cleaning help got it. Currently I have a Lowrance Endura Safari Outdoor GPS Navigator, which does everything the E-Trex did plus it has better mapping. I think I paid around $200 for it several years ago. To make it do all the tricks it capable of, you need to buy the right mapping chip, which I never did, but the base model suits my needs well enough. When I'm in my car, the Garmin NUVI is much better than the hand held Lowrance - mostly because I like the bigger screen.

I'd vote for some wacky plastic, to throw back as near as possible to where the hit happened. I've been on some decent top water bites over the years but most of the time, I find that if there is some sort of top water bite going on, there is probably a better sub- surface bite happening at the same time.

If I walk into a store and there is a rack of fishing rods there, I'm going to look. I don't let silly questions like "Do I really need another fishing rod?" bother me all that much. Pawn shops for sure, you can find decent bargains at pawn shops sometimes. A cautionary tale - sometimes the rods at the pawn shop don't feel "right". Maybe they are " grey market " i.e. stolen & pawned - I don't know. If I find a rod at the pawn shop that doesn't have the right feel to it, I won't buy it. Maybe a wife pawned some fishing rods because she was steamed at her husband - don't laugh, stuff like that happens. When I was in college, a friend of mine returned to the dorm on a Sunday evening driving a 6 year old Porsche. Turns out some guy took his secretary to Cancun and his wife found out and sold his Porsche when he was away - for $500 - to some nameless college student.

There is a Zen Koan - where a guy decides that he has to purchase some pottery as a wedding gift. Because the wedding involves prominent people, he decides it must be a most beautiful pottery piece. So he goes into the city, finds a fine quality pottery shop and informs the manager of the shop, "I'd like to purchase some of your finest pottery." The shop manager waves to the pottery on his right, then waves to the pottery on his left and says, "Take your pick, they are all the best." Choosing the "best" fishing rod is something like that.

Question #1 - Are you sure you want to stay with the inflatable style boat? A rigid boat more or less the same size might drag easier and make putting in and taking out a little easier. I'm thinking of a Bass Pro Shops Pond Prowler, one of the smaller Pelican boats, something like that. I've seen some pretty cool aftermarket wheel systems that make dragging the boat up hill much easier. I get it that your husband. is useless, but I would enlist his aid in launching and retrieving the boat. Next the electric motor - I'm not sure what a "dual purpose" electric motor is. The basic rule of thumb for electric power is to buy as powerful as you can afford and handle. I'm guessing the 34 stands for pounds of thrust and that will probably power your boat ok. I have a 55 lb thrust 12 volt Minn Kota that I use every so often when I can't launch my boat at a pond, but there is a boat on the premises. It isn't that heavy. my guess is that the weight difference between the 55 and the 34 would be negligible. ON the subject of batteries, Lithium Batteries are lighter than lead acid ones. They are more expensive - you've got to decide if the lighter weight is worth it. They also require a specialized charger (also more expensive ). Next - that Bimini Top on the inflatable boat - I'd ditch that. It looks like it would function as a sail out on the water and make boat control problematic. If you're that worried about the sun (and you should be) get a better hat and wear sun screen. On a positive note, there are very few issues in fishing & boating that can't be solved by throwing money at them, so there are solutions to all your fishing issues out there. Good Luck.

The crank looks like one of those cheap Matsu ? Matso? I forget the exact spelling, that you'd find at Walmart. Maybe a Renowsky ? Kind of an American Shad pattern, but nowhere close to the Lucky Craft version of American Shad. Not really sure - did it have decent hooks on it or cheap hooks?

I don't know. I don't fish spinner baits deep very often at all - seldom deeper than 6 feet or so. I use the old Jimmy Houston method of determining spinner bait depth most of the time, i.e - if you can see the bait real well during the retrieve, you're too shallow and if you can't see the bait at all during the retrieve you're too deep.

That toy isn't exactly light. It is more or less a precision instrument. However you decide to attach it to your belt/pants it is going to become a pain pretty quick,banging against your leg as you walk around. And you're going to smack it against stuff - is that any way to treat a precision instrument? Just keep it close by in the boat or if you/re bank bound, keep it in your tackle bag. I'd consider a padded case for it. You spent alot of money for that thing, you're not likely to forget where it is. Anyway, do you catch so many weighable fish that you have to have it hanging from your belt, instantly available as you check the weight of each and every fish you catch?

I trust my knot tying ability more than I trust a snap swivel - so I just tie to split rings. I do think that the oval split rings are easier and when I think about it and I'm in the tackle shop and they have oval split rings in stock, I generally buy some, and so over time, probably about half my cranks have oval split rings.

If I had to have a bunch of senkos in the same color I'd call up Yamamoto and ask how much.

I don't know - I think the correct answer is maybe yes - maybe no. I have a several years old Fenwick HMG Spinning rod 7" MH / ex fast tip. I don't use it often, but when I was fishing as a co-angler once a month, I found it helpful to throw 3/8 & 1/2 oz jigs. I used to have the exact same rod in the bait casting format - but it broke (operator error). So I think some companies, from time to time, might use the same blank in a spinning and bait casting configuration. I don't think it is common, mostly for the reasons listed previously. I got both rods in the same tackle shop, in Clinton, MO - one year apart.

I like my Trap Caster. It is the only rod that I've paid full retail on, going back 15 years or so. I came across one - was looking to upgrade my lipless crank action - and I bought it right then. Paired with a Shimano Calais ( recently cleaned & tuned ) and 20 pound mono, I can throw half ounce lipless cranks a long ways AND you have great hook setting ability when you get bit a ways from the boat.

I've got a couple of the original brown/brownish ones - but I don't fish with them all that much. I broke my telescopic SJ2 rod this year - doing something stupid with it - nowhere near the water. I've bought a few of the All Stars that are distributed by Academy and they are pretty good rods, really. Very comparable to the original ones. Not a big fan of the bright colors that they come in now - but I've had a few purple ones for a couple of years and the obnoxiousness of that color has worn off somewhat and doesn't bug me as much as it used to .

I own many jerk baits - last time I made an educated guesstimate - more than 100, less than 200. For the record - I'm NOT into the very high dollar - collectable - Japanese market only jerk baits. I've got lots of the various Smithwick Rogues that have been issued & re-issued through the years. I've many Bomber Long A-s - as well as many Rapala variations. Strike King has marketed different jerk baits over the years - and sucker for jerk baits that I am - I bough sets of each iteration. AC Shiners a wooden bait from the 80's - I bought a set of those. Bass Pro Shops has marketed a number of different jerk baits from time to time - I have some of those. Stacy King has his own line of Lucky Craft jerk baits that were marketed through the Bass Pro catalog. I've got a set of those. Anyway, if I had to go with a half a dozen jerk baits and that's it. I'd go Lucky Craft Pointers the 100 SP size. I'd get 4 in the Table Rock Shad color ( some regular hooks and some in the red hooks ) and 1 in the black/silver color and the other in the AYU color and you'd be set. For the record - I know that Lucky Craft has marketed many different color schemes over the past decade and it would probably be hard to find a color that didn't work.

I seem to recall when they first came out - late 70's - early 80's - more or less? Anyway, I recall I had a few decent days with that bait - throwing them in ponds, small reservoirs in the Central Mo area. I was throwing them on 1/8 oz jig heads with 6 lb line. It was around that time that I realized that a 1/8 ox crappie jig (red head/chartruese body/ white feathers) with a 4" Uncle Josh Split tail eel worked ALOT! better. Mostly I fished this bait just like I fished Brewer Slider worms. A few years later when I got a bait caster and started getting into spinnerbaits - the Sassy Shads were what I tipped my spinnerbaits with. It has been a while since I've noticed the Mr. Twister brand in tackle shops that I frequent.

Isn't this why spy baits were created, for just this situation?