Fishes in trees

Everyone has their own idea about what is and what ain't a perfectly balanced rig. I don't think you can go very wrong with any of those Shimano reels you're considering. It is kind of about how picky do you want to get? For me, I like to throw pointers and rogues on spinning gear. I've found that for that application, I like the rod a little "tipi heavy", that way when it is in my hand it has a tendency to point down and be a little easier to jerk & pull with. With my finesse slider rod and my shaky head spinning rod, I've found that I like the balance point of the rod in my hand. I don't know any other way to figure it out other than trial & error.

I make my own. I fish them for the most part on bait casting tackle. One of the primary points of the rig is to get to the bottom asap, so 3/8 is about as light as I make mine up to around 1/2 oz give or take a couple of grams. I have made some heavier jika rigs, 3/4 and up to a full ounce but I haven 't given them a fair test yet. Last year my best size were rigs that were right around 1/2 ounce

If you use a visible braid line (I like Fireline Crystal, but there are other visibility lines out there) You can get away with a lot of slack because the line works kind of like a strike indicator does when you are fly fishing. You will see the line on the water move long before you will feel anything and then you just tighten up quick and set the hook. For the most part, slack line on braid is a good thing in that it lets your bait fall unimpeded.

If your choice is between car topping a kayak or messing with an inflatable, go with the kayak. Go with the foam blocks to start - they work. Observe the 1st rule of car topping - i.e. don't do anything dumb. Back in the day, I had a 10' pond boat that I kept on a little trailer, because it hurt to lift it to the roof of my car. I would hold 2 people - not totally comfortably by adequately. Anyway I put a hitch on my 98 Ford Escort Wagon and pulled it anywhere I wanted. I could do unimproved gravel ramps. I was not confident enough to just launch off the side of a pond or something like that. You car will pull a smallish boat and a trailer. Back in the day I had a professor pal who pulled a 16' jon boat with a volkswagen and later pulled a 17' LOWE Bass boat with a late 70's model Chevy Impala.

50 maybe, more realistically 40 some, I don't know it is depressing to think about. Basically I go every time I have the time, a few times this past year I had the time and wimped out because of weather.

Please don't remind me of all the different marketing ploys I've fallen for over the past 30+ years. It will make me feel bad and damage my self-esteem. OOPS, just thinking about it a little bit, I can feel my self-esteem slipping, I think I'll have a beer so that I won't remember that I have low self-esteem. In my defense, most of the marketing ploys made some degree of sense at the time, and I never did buy any banjo minnows. And I never bought a Ron Popiel pocket fisherman. And I only bought one pack of the "flying lures" ( which were actually a good idea and worked as advertised.)

LIke most of the other guys here, I own a bunch of different brands of stick baits. Every time I am out and about and see a brand I don't have, I will most likely buy some of those also. That being said, I still find myself using a Senko 99% of time time when I want to wacky rig, and some other brand should I desire to tx rig - weightless or not. I probably use the BPS brand the most, but I will use Dingers and the Wave Worm variety from time to time. A point of order, Strike King makes the Ocho - an 8 sided stick bait in a 7" size.

In my opinion a set of Frogg Toggs would work for you. They are pretty light, I wear mine in the summer over shirts & shorts during rain storms. They will stop the wind and they are pretty warm when you wear a couple of layers underneath. If you are the kind of guy who is routinely hard on clothes, you will tear it up in a season or so. I am not that tough on my clothes, so my current suit has lasted 4 years now and it is still in good shape. I still have as a back up suit the one I replaced it with. I only replaced it because I liked the color of the newer one better and it was on sale. If you want something a little more wear resistant, then lightweight gore tex suits are available, but they cost more. I have a lighter weight 10x Gore tex jacket & pants suit that I got in 1999 and it still works good and looks ok. I've also got a set of uninsulated Guide Wear, but I think that is a little too heavy for your climate.

I live out in the country. I commute to work. I found it easier to get a separate truck for fishing and have an economical car for going to work. My small town Ford Dealer is known for working with people, getting them what they need. Back in 2001, my Ford dealer got me a great buy on a program truck - a1998 Ford Eddie Bauer Explorer. I am mindful about maintenance and so now, a dozen years later I have a 98 Explorer that just recently went over a hundred thousand miles. They are all fishing miles. Maybe you can find a similar deal - hope so. I would hate to tear up my go to work car going fishing and I don't want to drive my fishing truck to work, so this works out best for me.

I'm in the don't buy a cheap reel camp. I can tell you that if you buy a reel that says "Shimano" on the side of it, over time your self-esteem will improve and you will be a better person. Decide if you like round reels or low-profile reels. If you like round reels, purchase a Calcutta. Purchase a size that fits your hand the best. If you like low-profile reels, purchase a Chronarch or a Curado. No need to go MORE expensive to start. Pick one with a medium gear ratio - 5 something or 6 something. Pick one that fits your hand, where your thumb most naturally falls on that thin space between the spool and the frame. Remember that for most consistent results, you don't thumb the line, you thumb the spool. Be mentally prepared, because you are going to backlash the reel so that that the easiest fix is to cut all the line out and start over. EVeryone who has ever owned a bait caster has done this whether they want to admit it or not. Begin your practice with cheap mono and upgrade to a better line once you gain some confidence. There are some videos out there on how to detangle a back lash. You should watch these, because there is a knack to it. BE SURE AND PURCHASE A LINE PICK!!!! This tool makes detangling a backlash much easier. Good luck with your bait caster experiences. Like other guys have said on this thread - you don't NEED one. You DO want one. Like many fishing tools, they are fun to use and certain applications/techniques work better/easier with bait casting equipment. So - what are you waiting for? Bust out your VISA and your cell phone and order one right now. Don't wimp out and "think about it." DO IT NOW

I don't use the doozies - back when they first came out I got a couple of packs, didn't use them very much and when I did use them I didn't do any good. I've got a couple of bags left. I'm going to save them for my soft plastic museum, which is currently in the very preliminary stages of construction. And now to the point, it occurs to me that the last time I was in the Independence, MO BPS, there was a BPS branded long tube type worm that looked just like the doozie. However, I just looked in the 2014 BPS Master Catalog and they didn't show any baits that looked like the doozie at all. You might try Cabelas bargain cave. I often see mass quantities of discounted/closed out soft plastics there. If you are ever in the KCMO area, go to Rogers Lures in Liberty. They have a stash of doozies on close out. Call them up, maybe you could work a deal.

OK, I don't know if the tx rig jig heads that doyle8212 posted the photo of are the right ones or not. If they are close, you can probably find something that will work at the Charlie Brewer Slider website. They market a bunch of different texas rig style jig heads, with both a wide gap hook and a more regular gap hook, with different strengths and sizes of hooks as well. Whenever I need a texas rig jig head, one of the Brewer styles is what I go to first. I'm pretty sure that BPS and most of the other major terminal tackle retailers would have something that would work as well.

What do you mean - other accessories? Put in anything you can think of that you might need. I've got a digital scale - left over from a past life of herbal recreational pursuits. I use it every so often because I want to know how much something weighs. Also if you spill a large box of weights, it makes sorting them somewhat easier. I've got a fly tying vise - I don't tie flies or stuff like that but it works if I need a 3rd hand to adjust a spinnerbait skirt or replace the rubber band with wire or something like that. I have a Dremel Moto tool with all the necessary cutting and polishing, sanding and etching bits. That is a handy tool that I use from time to time. It is better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it. I've got a medium sized air compressor - that is handy, as it makes checking the tires on the tow vehicle and boat trailer simpler. A reel spooling kit is handy - it is really handy to have a few of them, one set up to handle service spools, one for reel fill spools and another for medium sized 800 to 1000 yard spools. A beer fridge might be nice, but I make do with a cooler. A bottle opener mounted to some surface saves time looking for a church key or a pair of pliers. ( I very seldom buy canned beer or twist off bottles) I've got a nice boom box that handles CDs and cassette tapes and AM & FM radio so I can have tunes or ball game as necessary. 4 large plastic ammo cans currently hold the CD collection. I'll get another one as soon as I go on another CD buying binge. I have shelves on nearly every wall plus several free standing shelving units, because I am a great fan of horizontal storage, where I can see where I put stuff. I have a 30' by 50' fishing shed and I've found that it isn't hard to fill it up. Now, storage that is organized and well thought out - that is a challenge and one that I haven't mastered yet at all. I frequently make plans to have everything orderly and tidy in my fishing shed, but more often than not I've got stuff strewn all around it in no particular order. So, does this answer your question? Basically just fill whatever space you got up with stuff that you think you might need from time to time. Oh yeah, don't forget a few decent, comfortable chairs. Sometimes, in you space you will just want to sit and chill. A decent chair helps out with that goal.

How much money you got to spend? Want to go to Mexico? or not? From Ames, Iowa, Bull Shoals or Table Rock is very drivable. There is generally a decent bite happening that time of year - either A-rigs or jerk baits or shaky heads, maybe football heads, I don't know exactly. What I do know is that the Ozark Lakes are pretty in the early spring and they all have fish in them. There are areas on Bull Shoals that if you went in the middle of the week, you probably wouldn't see another boat. I dunno - just a suggestion.

Good luck in your quest to assemble a tackle box that will cover any situation you might encounter. I've been on this quest for several decades. Currently I have an 18' floating tackle box, that I can ride on, with twin attached motors (gas & electric) and every so often I float into a situation that I'm not totally prepared for. Sometimes I think that even if I had Dr. Who's tesseract, I couldn't fill it with enough gear to cover every possible situation. That isn't any excuse to not try though. There are lots of guys here and elsewhere that got more and cooler gear than me, and on some level I think they've got the same problem I have. So anyway, I don't have any advice other than to do your best to try to predict what fishing situations you will face and assemble gear for that. Try not to spend so much money that it negatively effects other areas of your life.

I've experimented with several different kinds of hooks. The 3/0 Gamakatsu have worked the best for me. I've gotten better hook ups with the regular size worm hooks as opposed to the extra wide gap models.

Berkley Cherrywood rods were decent fiberglass rods in their day. They weren't the most expensive rod out there, but they weren't the cheapest either. For the most part, their day has past. If I had one, it would have an honored place in the rack of retired rods.

I like the Timber Tiger brand of crank baits. You can get them in several different running depths. What I like most about them is that they seem to get stuck less than some other brands, due to the little deflector wings on the sides.

I use whatever 17 lb test line that is on January fishing tackle close outs at Walmart with these exceptions. I've had enough bad experiences with Big Game over the years that I won't use that any more and the same goes for P Line. Last year it was 17 lb Suffix Siege and in prior years it has been Spider Wire Super Mono and Stren Dura-tuf and if I ever find any more Berkley Iron Silk, I thought that was great spinnerbait/squarebill line.

If you are co-angler and your boater is fishing jerk baits fairly fast, you've got a couple of options. A - if he is catching fish, get with the program, tie on a jerk bait and put your mind on using it the same way he is using his. B - If he is fishing jerk baits and not doing so well, and kind of back boating you ( as front of boat jerk bait users have been known to do), casting/dragging a heavy football jig is a viable option. (have several rigged up so that if you get stuck, you just break the line and tie on another) Option C might be a drop shot with a fairly heavy weight so that it gets into the strike zone as quick as possible. MY reasoning for options B & C have to do with if the jerk bait bite isn't working, the fish might still be in the area, just not suspending. The most likely place for them to be then becomes relating to the bottom in some fashion.

In square bills, I normally start out with some sort of shad colored bait. As my secchi disc reading gets to less than 2, I will go with something brighter, with more chartruese or orange in it. Usually I start out throwing a Timber Tiger, so in that brand of colors I generally start out with their Texas Shad color.

Where to start looking early summer through fall is an entirely different question than what baits should I start with. Start by researching your seasonal patterns. Read Buck Perry. When he writes that the fish are deep, or shallow, or somewhere in-between - try to get a handle on what he means by that. Read any of a number of In-fisherman books about location bass in a variety of venues. ( Be mindful that in the earlier In-fisherman books, Al Lindner can get really technical, and there comes a point where he is hard to read.) Then ask yourself what are the food sources and where are they at, (or where should they be, given seasonal patterns). That is your starting place on where to look. You can make the search process easier by having a bunch of rods & reels all rigged up with different baits, so that you can pursue fish deep, shallow and in-between without stopping to cut lines, change baits and tie knots. By the same token, it is very easy to over think the search process by having a bunch of rods & reels all rigged up with a variety of different baits. You decide.

You need 2 kinds of lure retrievers. You need the "hound dog" type that you slide down your line and you need the extendable pole type. Most of the time I will grab the extendable pole first, but not always. It just depends on what is stuck where. There are lots of different brands and I think that they are all roughly the same.

If you are stuck for some winter project, go ahead and build it. I think you'd save a little money by getting some used boat. Once you get it done, a wood boat is going to be pretty heavy. Heavy to life and heavy to row. If you are looking to buy a rowboat, new or used - the best row boat I've ever been in was a Hayward row-troller. Mid 80's - living in central Missouri, I had a professor pal from Minnesota who had one. It was a 15' long semi-V fiberglass boat that easily fished 2 guys. It was the easiest, straightest rowing boat I've ever been in, and the only one I've ever seen in Missouri. At the time, he told me that they were pretty popular in Wisconsin and Minnesota, where he went to school as an undergrad. In addition, a medium sized 12 volt electric trolling motor moved this boat around great. If you are going to build, look into that design.

If they don't do nothing, don't despair. It is still a good catfish rod. A 1/8 offset isn't that big a deal. Everyone needs several catfish/bottom fishing/tightline rigs, just so that they aren't tempted to tear up any of their better bass fishing rigs.