Fishes in trees

This is just my opinion. The fiberglass Rick Clunn rods (the turquoise ones) make good cat fish rods. I think that everyone should have a set of cat rods for tight line, slack line and sitting in a rod holder drifting techniques. I think that as bass fishing rods, they are pretty heavy and clunky. They are a little lighter, when compared to 70's & 80's era fiberglass rods, but I think that there are lots of lighter - stronger - better cranking rods out there. At 2 for $50 though, they are a great catfish rod.

I think braid is great with cranks - until you get it stuck. Once you get a deep diver stuck on braid, it is a pain. Your extendable pole probably won't reach it, even if the wind will let you get on top of it. Your hound dog type lure retriever might work, except when you first got snagged you thought it was a fish and so you set the hook and so the hooks are deeper into the branch than they might be with mono. Maybe you can get on the other side of the snag and pull it off - good luck with that. After 5 minutes of messing with it, your best option is to wrap the braid around a boat cleat and back it off with the trolling motor. Don.t try jerking on it real hard with your hands - you will cut your hand. Don't try jerking real hard with your rod - you can break a rod doing that or maybe even bend a spool shaft. Like I said, throwing cranks with braid is great. As a general rule, you cranks will run deeper. Your sense of feel might be enhanced. Once you get it stuck, it is a pain. Pick your poison.

10' jon boats are like corks and not all that stable, in my opinion. Try standing up in one and see for yourself. If you are focused on the 10' length, look at a Pelican or some similar pond boat. If you got to have a jon boat, look at 16 footers or at a minimum a 14 footer.

I wouldn't feel safe fishing them around the cover / sunken thorn trees that are common in my neighborhood. Your neighborhood may be different. Don't be so sure that you can't pull a light jon boat. If you got a car, you can put a hitch on it. A 10 Pelican style boat and a small trailer doesn't weigh that much. I'd check out lighter boats that you don't have to blow up.

Remember to practice like you play. What I mean by is, in my case the front deck of my boat is roughly a foot or so above the water, so standing on level ground and trying to pitch I find myself smacking the ground 6 to 10 feet in front of my all the time. When I made the adjustment to pitch accurately on level ground, when I get back on my boat I found I was consistently throwing high until I made a re-adjustment. I got better on the water results when I started practicing from a platform I made that puts me roughly a foot above the ground. Another thing, remember that pitching is for more than throwing jigs. There are occasions around cover when you will want to pitch a spinner bait or a square bill for instance. Back in the day( mid 80's) before he became a house hold name, Denny Brauer won a tournament on Truman Lake. Guys asked him how he won and he answered " Pitching in 3 to 6 foot of water." What he didn't tell anyone until much later was that he was pitching square bill cranks in shallow heavy cover. Truman Lake had so much over head cover at the time, it was the only way you could accurately throw cranks in trees.

I don't have these rods. I have touched them at the store. I think that at 2 for $50, the 7 or 7 1/2 foot rods would make decent tight line/semi-slack line catfish rods. The tips are flexible enough that you could use circle hooks. The spine of the blanks are strong enough, but have some flex, you could throw an ounce and a half a long way, say to the far end of most long tapering points. I think that for bass fishing they weigh too much and I'd get pretty tired pretty quick throwing half ounce square bills with these rods.

One of the worst things you can do in my opinion is to saddle a child with poor quality fishing equipment. That being said, there are decent quality spin casting reels available. There are outstanding quality spinning reels available. If the child demonstrates any degree of coordination, I'd set up with good spinning gear, something close to a quality level you'd use yourself if the child wasn't along. I'd choose spin casting gear if coordination was less obvious. Back in the day, I got stuck with one Zebco 202 after another. After a while, the local hardware store wouldn't replace them for me because I was "too hard" on my gear. I don't care who you are, a 5 to 15 lb carp will tear up a Zebco 202. Later on, I got a Johnson spin cast reel ( a centurion I think) just like what most of the geezers had at the local pay lake. I landed numerous medium sized carp with that reel. The moral of this story is that decent gear helps a child get better at fishing and cheap gear doesn't. If I was buying gear now for the 8 year old fisherman I was then, I'd get a 6' Med action Berkley Lightning Rod and a 1000 or 2000 sized Shimano reel, probably a Spirex. Those come with 2 spools. Fill one with 6 lb for Bluegills & Crappie and the other with 8 or 10 for everything else.

I only use mono on a few set ups, mostly I use 17 lb for spinnerbaits & square bills. I use 20 lb for throwing rattle baits. I still have a couple of spools of Trilene Iron Silk, perhaps the best rattle bait line ever made. ( once you get it wet & stretched each outing, maybe 5 or 6 casts) Trilene Armor Coated XL is a good substitute, it is the same color and texture, might be the same line, different label. For plain old mono for throwing spinnerbaits, I use whatever 17 lb mono goes on sale at Walmart every January (except for P line, P line sux). Stren Dura Tuff, Spider Wire mono, Suffix all work good. They all require squirts of Line Magic or that KVD stuff from time to time. Last year, I had to buy line when I was at Truman and I needed a tough line to throw deep diving cranks in Timber and I wanted more distance and depth than 17 lb line would give me. The 14 lb Trilene XL Armor Coated worked good for that application for me.

I don't know about NE Pennsylvania, but I know that in Missouri, fish will get pretty shallow in colder open water. Back in my youth, when I was bank fishing and traveling light, using mostly spinning gear, my #1 lure was a Brewer Slider worm (the snag less slider head and not the regular slider head) secondly would be a jig & eel, I didn't mess with hard baits much then. Basically I knew that I was fishing because I liked being outside better than being inside, but every so often I'd run into some fish.

I change senko rods every so often, for no particular reason except that I think that I need a new one. Sometimes I will throw than on spinning gear, but most of the time I use bait casting gear. Currently I am using a Falcon Bucco 6' 10" MH rod and a Shimano Calcutta TEGT reel. That reel has a 5 to 1 gear ratio, but I don't think that gear ratio matters when you are wacky fishing.

You know that the 51E is a left hand crank, right? All Shimano reel numbers that end in 1 are left hand cranks.

I used this bag for a season as a co-angler a few years ago, then went to one that was a little smaller. My last set up was 2 bags. One I would velcro to the seat post on the back deck, the other one would get thrown underneath the console. It just had soft plastics and odds and ends that I didn't mind if it got stepped on. Getting your co-angler gear down is a challenge. I would switch it up nearly every tournament. If you are concerned about getting from your truck to the boat, consider getting a rod bag that holds 6 or 8 rods. I found mine to be pretty handy.

Relatively recently, Pure Fishing (parent company of Berkley, among other brands) purchased Shakespeare and now, as far as I can figure out, All Star and Shakespeare are being run as separate divisions. I've bounced around different web sites trying to figure out who owns/controls who and it can get confusing. On the All Star Web site, there is a contact number, if someone were really interested, that would be a place to start. I read somewhere (and I can't remember where) that All Star rods were being positioned as being primarily available through Academy Sports, but I can't confirm that.

I like 14 lb Fireline Crystal for throwing jerk baits and tx rigged senko style baits in moderate cover. I generally use a fluorocarbon leader of 2' or less. I haven't noticed any difference between the crystal Fireline and the smoke colored Fireline. I throw it on spinning gear.

Are you talking total number of rods or just the ones that make the traveling team? Anyway, when I'm fishing by myself I carry 20 rods, + or - a few. When I have someone else with me in my boat, I try to keep to less than a dozen. When I am fishing back deck in someone else's boat, I try to keep it to 6 or so.

WHAT ARE YOU THINKING? Of course you need a different rod to throw swim baits. It is a well known fact that every bass fisherman needs as many rods as possible. The total number of rods you should have is determined by an uneasy pact between your conscience and your wallet. You need to do your part to support the entire bass fishing industry. I've got several different rods I can throw swim baits with - which one I use depends on how heavy the swim bait. My current favorite is a Fenwick AETOS 7'9" Heavy Action. I like it for swim baits, A-rigs, and it works good as a frog rod.

I got a save phace mask several years ago as part of my co-angler tournament kit. It is a handy tool. I didn't find that it fogged up. I don't carry it in my boat all the time. There are lots of times I go fishing where I never get my boat on plane, but when I am fishing a larger body of water where I am going to run a while, I use the mask. Even in the summer time - a June bug in the face isn't fun.

I don't know about Homer Circle. His hyper-folksy old geezer act got old for me a long time ago, when he was writing for Outdoor Life - or was it Field & Stream - I forget. Later, when he was writing for Bassmaster, I thought he became a caricature of the folksy old geezer. If he had a message or a perspective, it got blurred to me due to the presentation. I know he was in the outdoor writing biz for a long time, and I respect that, but I never thought any of his comments were especially enlightening.

How stained? What is your secchi disc reading? How deep can you drop a white spinnerbait before you totally lose sight of it? Stained means different things to different people. At what point does "stained" become "dingy" or "muddy"? Me, I keep a secchi disc in my boat and check water clarity several times per day, or when I move to different areas. It helps me decide on color choices. Might want to try it.

I got a 7'9" Fenwick AETOS Heavy action rod that works great for both those techniques.

I've got a few rods with micro guides. I have a Falcon Bucoo "trap caster" 7' MH. I have a couple of the Wild Carrot Stix Black rods, a 6'8" and a 7'3". I like them all, and I think that the Black Carrot Sticks are really sensitive. I haven't fished with the micro guides in cold weather yet, but I do think that they would be more prone to icing up that standard guides would be. Regular sprayings of Reel & Line Magic should prevent that, but I don't know yet. On a side note, I could be the last guy in Missouri who hasn't broken their Black Carrot sticks yet. I had one bud who broke 5 of them and Rogers Lures in Liberty, MO won't sell them anymore, mostly because of breakage issues and the hassle of in-store replacement. They don't carry the orange ones anymore either, although they still might have a few still around that aren't closed out yet. On a further side note, don't feel bad about not using the search function, I've been chastised a few times myself for the same offense, and I'm OK, and it didn't further damage any self-esteem issues I might have.

When I was doing BFLs as a co-angler there was a learning curve. All of the advice posted above is good advice. There is a line between being a good co-angler and being a door mat. Everyone has to find out for themselves where that line is. For me, it was a tournament on Bull Shoals where the fishing was tough and there were only a couple of patterns that were working. Boater had plenty of fish early ( would have finished 3rd ) and continued the rest of the day to position the boat to where I had no chance to cast at the available fish. That kind of got me steamed, but I stayed quiet, tried to fish available water, that sort of thing. When we got back to the dock, I packed up all my stuff and said "bye". I refused to sign his weigh in slip. He got angry and threatened me. I walked away, let him put his own boat back on his own trailer. He got an expensive lesson about the results of co-angler abuse. I'm not totally proud of what I did, but guys have their limits and I hit mine. I fished BFL a couple more years after that incident and it was never brought up to me again, except in the motel parking lot where a couple of other co-anglers said "way to go". 99% of the boaters I drew during BFL tournaments were good guys - I say in contact with 5 or 6 of them. All I'm saying is be ready to stand up for yourself when you run into that one genuine jerk.

All of the In-fisherman strategy books are good. The Charlie Brewer book on Slider Fishing is good. I like the format of Roland Martin's. first book - 101 Bass Catching Secrets (or something like that ). There are 101 anecdotes, each a couple of pages, about some concept in bass fishing. I got a book several years ago for Christmas - Fly Fishing for Sharks - An American Journey - Richard Louv . It is a good read about how & why different people in America fish the way they do.

Several things come to mind. Nothing serious broke this year - that is good . . . . . .once this year I out fished a buddy of mine who is a MUCH better fisherman that I am . . . .. .and it wasn't a rotten day either where just a few fish were caught, he caught 7 or 8 keeper fish and I caught a dozen. . . . . . . .I fished the Fishing for Freedom event again this past October at Truman Lake, so I'm thankful that I have a job where I can take a week off in October and I drew a guy who just needed to take a day and ride around in a boat and chill . . . . have a couple of barley pops, etc.

I try to buy local when I can and I'm fortunate that in the KC metro area there is a great independent fishing tackle & stuff store. Price wise, sometimes they are higher and sometimes they are lower. That really doesn't matter so much, I patronize that business mostly because they are nice to me when I come in the door, they say hi, know my name and stuff like that. They generally have the 5 minutes or so of time to let me rant about why the fish hate me this particular week and won't bite, or the current pattern I'm trying to solve or whatever. How this applies to your desire to open up a fishing tackle store, I don't really know. I guess that you've got to do what you can do to make your store a destination, a pleasant shopping experience. Good luck.