Fishes in trees

That is good advice about the treble hook caps. I use them some, but I often forget to. I probably ought to buy a sack of them and just scatter them around the boat so they are there when I need one. That is what I had to do with fishing pliers, i.e. I had a pair or two in the boat but they weren't ever close when I needed them, so I bought half a dozen pairs and I scatter them around the boat prior to launching and gather them all up when I take out and I'm putting away stuff for the drive home. Works for me.

I have a spinner bait box dedicated to muddy water spinner baits. In that box are a half a dozen half ounce single Colorado blade spinner baits. Some have a medium size blade on them and some have the next size larger. I like throwing copper Colorado blades in stained muddy water mostly because no one else throws them very often. The heads of these baits are chartreuse with a chartreuse/purple skirt. I have a half a dozen of the old ( 20 years of so old) J & J spinnerbaits in the half ounce size. These baits are white/chartruese with painted willow blades, 1 beads gold & white, the other gold & chartreuse. I always use a trailer, most often a Bass Pro Cajun trailer white / chartreuse tipped tail. Just for the record, my spinner bait game got considerably upgraded last season when I got a couple of Curado DC reels. Seems like I get an extra 20 feet or so of distance with the same amount of effort as before, with MUCH fewer backlashes. I'm a big fan of the DC reels with reaction baits. I'm considering another one this season to throw square bills with.

If you're fishing college tournaments are you front of the boat or back of the boat? I'm not so certain that cost of gear really matters, for instance, - rods. I've come across a number of rods on close out at Academy - All Stars & their house brand for less than $50 each and they fish great. Just for the record I also have an assortment of Fenwick AETOS rods, a few Falcon rods and a few Loomis rods. I think the rule on rods is to pick & choose, buy different brands & price points according to what you think might work. For instance - I experimented for a few years on what was the right rig for me to throw Biffle Bugs. After trying different rods in the $100 to $180 range, I found an All Star Carolina rig rod close out at Academy for $50 and it hands down is more responsive & throws the bait better than my comparable Mojo's or Castaways or Fenwick AETOS. Reels - I think that they are more a case of you get what you pay for. Most of my reels are an assortment of Shimano reels, Chronarch, Curado & Calcuttas. They were good quality - medium of the line quality when I bought them and now years later they still work more or less like they were new. The Calcutta are better - I think that there is a break in period on Calcuttas and they start out pretty smooth and when you fish them for a while they get very smooth. If I was college tournament fishing from the back of the boat I'd be spending quite a bit of time throwing a shakey head/trick worm. What I'd do different from the norm would be to throw it on a 7' or so MH/ extra fast tip bait caster/15 lb flurorcarbon and a 3/8 or half ounce jig head. The purpose of the heavy jig head would be to get to the bottom asap. Good luck in your college fishing season - try to work as a team. That doesn't always happen in blind draw tournaments like the FLW.

Are you fishing out of your boat, or out of some one else's boat or from the bank? For me - it varies. I haven't bank fished for 25 years, except to stand near the boat ramp and throw different baits just to see what they look like going through the water. When I fish out of some one else's boat, it just depends 4 or 5, maybe 6 rods with different baits depending on current conditions. When I fish by myself out of my own boat 20 rigs or so seems to be the rule these days. Which 20 or so rigs go depend on a couple of things - A - How do I think that I'm really going to catch fish that day and - B - what rigs do I want to play/experiment with. For instance - I will play with an A-rig in the middle of summer, not because I really think I'm going to load the boat with the A-rig, I do it mostly for practice, because should I ever get into a situation where the A-rig is the ticket I want to kind of know what I'm doing.

To original poster: Once you get to the point in your fishing that you're fishing "on the water" rather than being bank bound and "throwing into water" your perspective on throwing trebles into/around vegetation will change. The whole thing about how you approach vegetation changes. If you're bank bound, there are still some steps you can make. Get some knee high or hip boots or waders. Fishing 4 or 5 feet into the pond gives you alot more angles to work, don't matter if you're using single hook baits or experimenting with different cranks with trebles. Side note to Bluebasser 86 - I've done that - except that I didn't do it rigging gear. I'm normally a pretty careful person, but one afternoon, a long while back when I was doing BFL's - I stuck a treble hook in my hand as I was storing gear in my fishing truck - after a tournament was winding up - 40 or 50 guys were also storing stuff, so I was instantly "helped" by multiple guys who " knew what to do." Turned out one guy did know what to do and the hook was removed with just a modest amount of pain. That picture brought back memories. X out the bait and substitute a shad colored Timber Tiger and that would be a picture of me. Back to the original poster - Kenneth Yi - . . . Son , face your fears. You're into fishing and you play/mess around with tiny, sharp stuff. Sooner or later you're going to stick yourself good. In some ways it is a rite of passage, in other ways there is something Darwinian going on here, i.e. when your stick yourself you will KNOW you've messed up and you'll be really happy with yourself. Natural selection at work. Anyway, there is some stuff you can do to help face your fears. For example, when I stuck a treble in my hand I had some gear in my fishing truck to deal with this stuff. I had a can of cold stuff, which I could spray around the area and kind of numb it. Then, hook probably got a barb and it isn't smart to try to back it out. Have a thin pair of needle nose pliers to push the barb of the hook on through the skin to expose the barb. Now have a set of snips that will cut through any hook you own. Cut the barb - barbless rest of the wire backs out easily. Nothing to fear about really. Carry the right gear and the right safety gear. I've lost count of how many times I've bounced a crank bait off my hat or sunglasses. Hope this gives the original poster something to think about. Hope everyone else at least gets a snicker out of the story.

I've heard that there was such a thing as fishing reel box collectors. Is that so? Just on the off chance that there is I have a couple of totes full of fishing reel boxes and other fishing related boxes. I keep them because they aren't doing any harm stacked in the fishing shed.

The "Cheap is just as good Chimp" don't come around my house. The "Buyers remorse gorilla" I keep him sedated with semi- regular doses of IPAs - or some other style of barley pop. The bait monkey - I just reason with - I understand he has his needs, but I wave my hand around the fishing shed, then point at the garage & the house. I've done "ok" taking care of the bait monkey's needs, but he ain't the only income sinkhole around. That being said, once I get my taxes done, my current trolling motor has ten years of service on it and needs to be put out to pasture. Last year I put a third year on my trolling motor batteries, they used to be old and not holding power like new - now they are pretty much toast and noticeably lose power after 4 or 5 hours on the water. The bait monkey always gets his, but sometimes I make him wait for a while.

I don't know, not that kind of math guy, however I can't imagine that while fishing it would make all that much of a difference.

My current thoughts on drop shot fishing. Yeah, I think that it is a "finesse" approach, but that don't mean that you can't bubba it up some. For me, mostly because of the cover & brush I the lakes that I fish in, I tend to catch more fish using the bubba shot compared to using lighter gear. My bubba shot gear consists of a 7'5" Kistler pitching rod ( I got the telescopic one because it stores in the fishing truck better ). I use a small Calcutta 50 size reel and 20 lb Abrazx line, maybe once or twice I've used a 3/8 oz weight, much more often than not I'll use a half ounce. My thinking here is that with the bait being above the weight, the weight really doesn't affect sensitivity all that much and the half ounce weight gets me to my target ( the bottom) asap. To the original poster - I think that a 6'9" heavy rod will work but I think you'll get better leverage and reach with a longer rod. I began my bubba drop shot fishing using an old All Star WR 1 and while the rod could handle any fish I might ever hook up with, I got to like the extra reach I got with the Telescopic 7'5" Kistler better. I think that 14 lb line will work, but IM0 an abrasion resistant line will work better. I'm using the stoutest abrasion resistant line I can find that my little Calcutta 50 will handle well and that turns out to be Abrazx. Pretty certain that other lines will work , just haven't tried any others. In my situation that little Calcutta 50 holds a relatively small amount of line, so I haven't tried a braid to fluorocarbon line. If you're using a regular size reel, that might be an option. My lighter drop shot system consists of a 6'10" Loomis drop shot rod and 6 lb test. I use straight 6 lb test, mostly because the reel only holds a modest amount of line and it is just easier that way. I use the max weight that is recommended for the drop shot rod ( 1/4 oz ) because I want the weight to get to the target asap and a quarter ounce drop faster than a lighter drop shot weight does. One of my goals for the upcoming season is to be quicker to pick up the lighter rod instead of the bubba rod and see if the lighter line gets me more bites. When I'm thinking finesse, I want to try to pick up the lighter drop shot rod instead of the shakey head or the quarter ounce Brewer Slider rig. In the lakes that I fish, most of the hits will be slot fish (12" to 15") so I'm more or less confident that the rod will handle them. Last season, the largest fish that hit the lighter drop shot rig was a 17" fish and the rod handled the fish fine, but it was in an area that didn't have an abundance of gnarly stuff. I'm going to start throwing in to the gnarly stuff more and see what happens with the lighter rig. Going to a 10 or 12 lb braid/fluorocarbon leader combo might be an option. A little bit of background - I'm a junk fisherman, every time I go fishing I carry an assortment of different rigs, to hopefully best match the conditions I might run into, so I always carry both drop shot rigs. If you're into a more minimalist approach, my approach might not work well for you. Hope these thoughts help while you're re- rigging, waiting for the thaw.

I'm not so certain that fluorocarbon line is more sensitive on a slack line. I use fluorocarbon on line on most of my bait casters, fishing soft plastics/ jigs on or near the bottom because I think that it is harder for the fish to see and for abrasion resistance. I think that I feel the strike first/as compared to seeing the strike first most of the time. I often fish soft plastics/ jigs on a semi-slack line. I don't know if using braid would lead to seeing the strike first more often than feeling the strike first. I'm a 68 year old geezer and I'm pretty sure that I don't have hair trigger reflexes. I'm pretty sure that I don't have an ultra powerful hook set technique, it has been years since I've broke a rod on a hook set. I use a braid/fluorocarbon leader when I'm throwing jerk baits and I frequently let them set for 5 to 20 or so seconds, pausing after a jerk. My experience is that when you get bit on the pause the braid works more or less like a strike indicator does when you're fly fishing, i.e. you see the bite prior to feeling it. I've tried 65 lb braid for throwing frogs and it works ok. You see or hear the bite first as often as you feel the bite first - so that's kind of a push. I think that frogs work just as well on 20 lb mono and I don't think that I'm giving up that much strength to drag fish out of stuff. I don't know - something to pay attention to next season I guess.

My advice would be to spend the money and purchase a good quality fluorocarbon line. Currently I like Seagaur Invizx or Abrazx. I think that Big Game line is cheap and I've been betrayed by cheap line enough. I won't even use that stuff for mobiles or hanging picture frames. I suppose something in the 25 or 30 pound class would work ok for cat fish, but I wouldn't know, I haven't spooled up my catfish gear for a few seasons now.

Back when I was a bank bound bush hippie, I found that for me jig worms, {aka shakey heads} to be much more effective from the bank for me. Either tx rigged on a jig head like a Brewer Slider or any of a number of shakey heads to going exposed hook on an old time Pow-R head jig, any of those presentations worked better for me that the tx rigged bait with a worm weight. It got into my head enough that I quit using a sliding weight tx rig for a number of years. After a while, rather than constantly mull over my inadequacies, I just went with it, left all the worm weights at home and went with the jig worms, of some style, all the time. My issue with the tx rig was that I wasn't ever certain where the weight was in relation to the hook & bait, where with the jig worm I KNEW where the hook was in relation to the bait & weight - just one less thing to worry about. Now that I've fished out of a boat for a few decades, I'm of the opinion that the tx rig is a better boat bait than it is for bank bound fishermen. These days, I tx rig various soft plastics, generally I'm pitching them to various objects. I think that day in and day out a jig worm option gets bit more than a tx rig does for me. If covering water is a tx rigged bait is the plan, I think that a Biffle Bug is a better option than a worm weight, because it more or less works like a crank bait that always sticks to the bottom and is less likely to slip into crevices than a pointy headed worm weight might.

Since you're buying new - be pretty sure that you're getting everything you want/need. I bought my boat in 2002 and for the most part it still fits my needs - HOWEVER - I got talked out of getting a 36 volt trolling motor because you "couldn't do it." Turns out you could do it, but it was more work than the dealer wanted to do, it would involve rewiring & relocating batteries, etc. He made it sound like it was so much work and so expensive that I got talked out of it. I know better now - it wasn't that much work and re-wiring isn't that hard. My dealer at the time was 100% interested in selling the boat packages as they came from LOWE and wasn't interested in making custom changes. He didn't even try to sell me a spare tire for the trailer. My advice is to make sure that you get everything you want. MY other advice is to make sure that you get the biggest electric trolling motor that you can afford.

I stick with Shimano bait casting reels and haven't been disappointed. The last time I strayed I was at the tackle shop and Guido & Dion Hibdon were there and they were repping US Reels. The interesting thing about the bait caster they were selling was that it didn't have a "level wind" per se. Instead it had a "wave bar" and allegedly tension on the line during the retrieve would force the line down on to the wave bar and lay the line properly on the spool without the need of a level wind that you had to thread the line through when you were spooling up. the 800SX Supercaster worked great in the parting lot, I could easily throw half ounce practice plugs nearly all the way across the parking lot - I was impressed, and at $120 what do you have to lose? Well it turns out you lose $120 bucks, out on the water, with the variable tension on the line caused by throwing variable weights, and with the wind not being consistently at your back, the 800 SX is pretty easy to back lash. And it is heavy compared to Shimano reels of similar size. Even with the plastic side plates. Now this reel sits in its own plastic case, in my fishing shed, isolated from all my other reels. I would just as soon that my other reels never know that I purchased this inferior quality reel. I know the Hibdon's had a long and distinguished fishing career in Missouri and nationally, but when they were repping US bait casting reels, they were repping junk, IMO.

I've tried a number of different approaches to this. Stickers you get from the Walmart office supplies aisle are easy to use, but they often don't stay put/and or the label gets wet and if you used a fine point sharpie the ink smudges and becomes unreadable. I wonder if stickers obtained from an office supply store like Office Depot would have a better grade of glue on the stickers, but not really, I think that is unlikely. I put the labels on the reel rather than the rod because I might move the reel to a different rod. I've tried just remembering, but sometimes I forget, sometimes you can tell by looking, but too often for me the lines, which looked different when brand new, become harder to tell after a few months of use. What I did last year was, A - look at the individual reel and figure out where the best spot for a label might be. B - on an index card or sticky label, write down the pertinent information in a way that will fit the space on the reel, with room to spare on all sides. C - Cut a piece of clear Gorilla tape, bigger than the label and stick it on the reel. D - Press the label down tightly and then bust out your exacto knife and trim the excess clear Gorilla tape. This whole process works best if the reel surface is clean & dry. I am mindful that this method will over time put scratches on the reel, but I don't care about that. If you're really precise with the exacto knife, you won't make any scratches. If you're doing this after several servings of some IPA, scratches are inevitable. So far so good with this process - I only started doing it last year and I often leave fluorocarbon line on for more than one season. We'll see how long this labeling process lasts, right now I know it works better than just a sticky label without the tape overlay.

I don't think that the slightly smaller hook on War Eagle spinner baits is a bad thing. I still have a few of the titanium frame Terminator spinner baits left. I always liked those because they ran straight the vast majority of the time. When they didn't, nearly always it was because I had the trailer threaded on crooked.

I think that a jig/worm combo is a great early season choice. Leadoff choice in this category is a quarter ounce Brewer Spider slider head. I throw this on a 6'10 Falcon Low Rider Finesse Jig rod paired with a Chronarch 50 size reel/ 10 lb Seaguar Abraxz line. Pick a 4 to 5 inch finesse worm in your favorite color and you're set. My choices in this bait category would be a BPS Paddle Tail Stick-O ( officially discontinued but you can still find them at different BPS stores) or a Zoom Magnum Finesse worm or an original Brewer Slider worm. I make my early spring color choices based on water color/ clearer water = more translucent colors with a significant amount of glitter & more stained water= more opaque colors, nearly always with a chartreuse dipped tail.

Every time I'm on my boat and I pick up a fishing rod, odds are I'm going to use it for some fishing technique, which by definition makes all of my fishing rods that I own/ have owned in the past/will own in the future application specific/technique specific rods. Given that my experiences have been that some rods work better at certain stuff than others do. I have many rods that various manufacturers marketed for one style of fishing that I find work for other stuff better. BPS used to make a 7'4" Extreme rod - a Woo Davis model - that I heard him promote at a seminar I attended as a "perfect worm/pitching rod". I bought one & didn't like it because it has too much tip - IMO it sucked as a pitching rod. Later, on a whim, I tried it as a reaction bait rod and it excels at throwing DC 8 Timber Tigers & Buzz Baits, so when I came across that rod as they were being closed out I bought a few more. Sometimes rods tell you what they are. MY 6'10" Falcon Lowrider Finesse Jig Rod is a great finesse jig rod. Just one of many examples about how all the rods in my arsenal choose to be technique specific rods - or they get left home on the back up bench.

To the original poster: You live in Wisconsin. The factory story for St. Croix rods is in Wisconsin. The stories of bargains that come out of that factory store are legend. Take a road trip and drive to Park Falls, Wisconsin. Bring your checkbook & Mastercard. Talk to them about what rods you need/how you fish. If I lived in Wisconsin I'd have all St Croix Rods, I might be a little poorer, and have a few more miles on my car, but I'd have all St Croix Rods, living within a day trip of their factory store.

It is wintertime - on one level it might be interesting to explore what is and what ain't an application specific rod as compared to a general purpose rod - on another level, that would take a few more IPAs than I feel like consuming right now. maybe later.

My experiences with the line pegs is that I might start out the day with the peg tight to the weight, you don't always finish that way. Sometimes after a fish I'll find that the peg has moved a foot or more up the line - I guess as a result of the sinker banging into it. Anyway, I've learned not to worry about it as long as I don't inadvertently wind the bobber stop through the guides. If I'm throwing soft plastic, I'm generally pitching and I'm not too worried about if the peg is butted up against the weight & bait or slid down the line a foot or so. With the peg a foot or so from the hook the weight can freely slide away from the bait, but not too much. A buddy who throws soft plastic quite a bit tells me that I need to put 2 pegs on so that the weight stays much closer to the bait. I don't know - something to think about in the wintertime.

He knew something you didn't, that's for sure. The optimist in my says that those were just his fish and you couldn't catch them. The pessimist in me says that you just got back-boated. The realist in me says that somewhere in the middle of those options is the truth.

That is a cool looking bait. I've never fished Preacher Jigs much, but it makes me think about areas I know about in lakes that I fish from time to time where that might work. Thanks for the late night winter inspiration.

To quote Bankbeater - "That's Cool ". I'd maybe as an exclamation point or two. Never knew that Rubbermaid was in the tackle box business. If that was mine, I'd never, ever fish with it again. I'd clean it up and keep it in my office, fill it with a variety of baits to pull out and play with when I was stumped for something to do, like a writing block or something like that. I'd use it as a place to store spank brand new baits, before I transferred them to my fishing shed. That is a neat toy - hope it cleans up ok.

This is hard to say, I like the Netbait Paca Chunks and I use them from time to time. Mostly on skirted jigs. I throw unskirted jigs quite a bit, as well as my home made jika rigs that more or less fish like jigs. On half ounce football jigs I like threading on a Chompers or a Chompers imitation. On my home made jika rigs, I generally lead off with a full size brush hog. (Green pumpkin/orange flake). Throwing half ounce & 3/4 oz Biffle Bugs, I like the original Biffle Bug or any number of 4" to 5" crawdad imitations. Zoom makes several different styles that I've caught fish on, and I still have a modest, but dwindling supply of the original Guido Bugs, both the Gambler & Lucky Strike versions. Basically for me a jig trailer has to at least pretend to imitate a crawdad. I haven't had much luck with soft plastic shad imitations on jigs. (I'm ignoring swim jigs for the purpose of this post only.)