Fishes in trees

Lubricate the hook some prior to trying to attach the trailer. All it takes is some spit. I use the BPS Cajun trailers on that bait, the white ones with the chartreuse tails and when one splits like that grub in the picture it means that I didn't take the time to put it on correctly.

I remember from my days as a bank fisherman that a decent machete doesn't cost very much and doesn't weigh very much and is pretty handy for knocking down overhead obstacles. Be sure to get a scabbard for it. Be sure to keep it SHARP (sharp enough to shave with isn't too sharp). A dull machete is a pain and it is easier to hurt yourself with a dull one than a sharp one. I remember back in the day I had a blunt thumb. Give me any edged tool and I could get it dull in no time flat. Back in the day, Ace Hardware did tool sharpening for pretty cheap. These days I'm a little better at it, but I have to be careful or my fillet knives & kitchen knives & garden tools get pretty blunt pretty quick. These days I am very fortunate that I have a good friend who is good at sharpening tools.

I believe that Fenwick puts some kind of lifetime warranty of the HMG line, but not on the HMZ, but I'm not sure. I have several Fenwick HMG rods in various denominations and I don't have any issues with any of them. Every time I've broke a Fenwick Rod ( upper end ones, HMG, AETOS ) Fenwick has replaced them for free.

Perhaps Chebrushka means Biffle Bug in European talk. True fact, some of those people talk different than me, and it might be possible that they have different word for similar baits/rigs/ techniques than I do. I'll tell you what, all you Chebrushka rig throwing guys, while I furloughed, wander over to mid- Missouri and I'll show you how to throw a Biffle Bug on rocky, gravely, stumpy points on Truman Lake and save a couple of syllables in the process. Actually any Ozark lake will do, but I have most experience on Truman.

You're fishing a strip pit. From the bank or a boat? There are shallows, some kind of ramp somewhere on that lake, that goes from the bank to the deepest part of that lake. That has to be there because that is how they got the mining equipment in and out of the hold. All strip pits have shallows, generally not a lot of shallow water and often not really obvious because of age, erosion vegetation growth on the bank & stuff like that. Back in the day when I was fishing strip pits, your best strategy was to parallel the bank at different depth with vegetation resistant baits. My bait of choice at the time was (a) surface areas buzz baits or poppers. (b) depths down to 3 feet or so I'd throw a spinner bait and deeper than that I'd throw a Brewer Slider head & worm. I haven't fished a strip pit in a decade or so, mostly because all the ones that I know of within driving distance have poor ramps, and getting into or out of a lake these days, I prefer a decent ramp, with nearby dock.

Most other lines stretch more than braid does, so there is probably a learning curve there. My experience has been that fluorocarbon stretches less than mono, but I haven't tried all brands of fluorocarbon or mono either for that matter. Crank bait rods are inherently more flexible than other technique specific rods, maybe that was it. Maybe the drag was a little loose, I don't know. You are experimenting with new gear, so experiment, try different stuff and then decide. Opinions of sensitivity don't translate into print real well.

Ok, here's the thing. You've seen how the bait drops, by watching it close to the boat. You have to trust that it is doing the same thing when you cast it away from the boat. You have an idea of how fast it drops, that translates into feet per second, more likely inches per second. Throw the bait to the object and let it drop, don't twitch it, touch it, feel like you've got to feel it, nothing. When you get bit you will feel the fish, or the line will move, something. It is a finesse approach and takes some time to get used to it. For the record, I seldom throw senkos tx rigged. I think that there are other more durable soft plastic stick baits that work just as well tx rigged, but wacky rigged, I think that the senko is unmatched. What a guy told me, when seiko's first hit the market was that pitching a wacky senko was like throwing a knuckleball. Throw it, let it drop, and don't do anything, trust the bait to do what it is supposed to do.

They are similar to the Brewer hook. I believe the Brewer hook is a 2/0 or 3/0. With a kinda skinny worm like a Zoom Speed worm I don't think it would make much of a difference. I think that the Brewer hooks are cheaper, but they are harder to find retail. I order plenty from Brewer every few years.

Any Medium action St. Croix would work. I've got a 7 'Mojo that I fish with for that purpose occasionally. More often than not, I go MH/ extra fast tip and I have a Fenwick HMG for that. I don't think that the Mojo is bad, I just picked the other one.

That yellow line appears to be some pretty stout line. How much line does that reel hold? I have an Eagle Claw rod and an old deep sea fishing reel, just slightly bigger than that reel and I use that outfit for flying kites. My reel will hold just under a third of a mile of 60 lb test mono. Using the snagging rod I can fly a kite in 15 MPH winds or so. A couple of times I tried flying the kite in bigger winds, and the kite broke. Back to speaking as a fisherman, previous posters are correct in that, that reel is too big to be a decent bass reel. As long as it still works, it has great potential as a muskie/ big fish reel - maybe a trolling reel. IMO it is way too heavy to bass fish with. ( Unless you got forearms & wrists like Popeye, in which case knock yourself out )

For me, the jury is still out, as far as using tungsten for drop shot weights. (I haven't bought any and don't plan on buying any.) However, for tx rigging, the jury has been in for a while now Tungsten is far superior IMO. 3 years ago a buddy told me and told me to go to tungsten and my worm results would be better and I didn't believe him, because after all, weight is weight, then I bought some - had a GREAT day tx rigging 10" worms dropping through standing timber. So I bought some tungsten on close outs, then that winter bought more - I'm convinced that tungsten weights catch more fish than lead weights.

Broke off or fell out? Big difference. Did you lose the bait also? Did it come back with half a weight or no weight? One of the dirty little secrets of Neko fishing, from what I can tell, is that if you muscle up and get too aggressive throwing the bait, it is pretty easy to throw it off, and you lose the bait and the weight.

I generally use a 3/0 or 4/0 hook on tx rigged 5" stick baits. I don't tx rig senkos because (a) they are pretty fragile and I only get one fish per bait using senkos and (b) I think that there are lots of 5" stick baits that are tougher plastic and work just as well when tx rigged. When the subject is wacky rigged stick baits I believe that senkos out perform all the other brands by a bunch. I use o-rings to attach the hook to the bait and I often get 3 or 4 or 5 fish per bait.

I tend to hop more with round head jigs and drag more with other shapes of jig heads. (Darter heads are an exception to that rule, as are swim jigs). I don't know why that is, except I guess once upon a time, someone who I thought knew more than I did told me to do that. In regards to Ned fishing, I think that "hopping" is different than the " lift & drop " technique. The difference being that when I'm hopping the jig is dropping on a slack line and when doing the lift & drop, the drop is more controlled, kinda a semi-slack line.

If you feel you need another square bill rod, if only for comparison purposes, don't let the voice of reason or economics stop you. Indulge your addictions. Go ahead and get another square bill rod. Be mindful that you're going to need another reel to go with it, again if only for comparison purposes. Sooner or later you're going to buy a bunch of magnum cranks, so be prepared and get a rod for those as well, again knowing that at some point you will need a reel for that rod as well.

I have one - I remember I bought it at a local tackle shop - don't remember the name. It holds 5 rods comfortably, you can stuff 7 rigs is you're careful and don't zip the back all the way up. I was co-angling BFL at the time and the rod bag just made transporting stuff easier. Doesn't matter which style of rod bag you get, rod socks are necessary when transporting spinning gear. You might not get them all tangled without the rod socks, but the rod socks mean the vast majority of the time they won't get tangled.

17 or 20 lb fluorocarbon for what? I use 17 lb for throwing 10" worm, because it casts the 10 worm and 5/16 weight a little better than 20. (5/16 is where I generally start when 10" worm fishing When I'm throwing my bubba drop shot rig I've got 20 lb on it because, why wouldn't you. It is a little stronger and casting distance isn't ever an issue. On my Biffle Bug rig, I use 20 because, I'm starting with 5/8 or 3/4 ounce weights and I'm bouncing them off deep rocks all the time. Most of my pitching soft plastics to objects I use 15 lb Abrazx.

Digital & manual calipers are relatively cheap at Harbor Freight.

IMO those 7' glass or graphite/glass rods sold as cranking sticks make great catfish rods. To me, any glass rod is too heavy to throw stuff for very long.

You're just a few years in, it is to be expected that you're not particularly happy with your gear. Assembling gear takes time, in that you need to learn what you like and what you don't. Should you desire to use the Mojo rod more, then do. Me, that would be my primary soft plastic pitching rod. You can throw anything with that rod - 10 " worms, tx rigged stick baits, assorted other soft plastics. I'd put some 15 or 17 lb Abrazx , maybe start off with a quarter ounce tungsten and just start pitching at stuff. I use a very similar set up for my home made jika rigs, which is mostly a deep weedline thing You didn't say what kind of spinning gear you got, spinning gear definitely has a place in bass fishing. Ned rigs, shakey head rigs, lightweight crank rigs all come to mind. Currently my dedicated wacky senko rig is a 7' MH/ EXF Fenwick HMG spinning rod. This is a pretty stout rig, but it is easy for me to skip the bait underneath stuff. I have issues skipping with a bait caster. Your 6'6" rig seems like the one you ought to use for reaction baits, spinner baits, chatter baits, square bills and the like.

I don't think that there is a right or wrong way, just different guys have different ideas on where to start. You're probably going to fish this lake more than once this summer so try different approaches. Me - I ask myself the question, "which spot looks best?" and then I'll throw at that spot. If I get bit I tell myself there might be another fish there and throw back to the same spot. If I don't I'll probably throw to a slightly different spot. Throw til it is time to move on - then maybe come back later.

In the summer, in nearly all lakes that have some decent depth to them, there is a deep edge to the weedline. On any point, down the bank a ways each side of the point, there is a deep edge to the weedline. That is where I live for summer fishing in lakes with vegetation. I throw a home made jika rig, half ounce or so, to this area, at the end of the cast I want my bait on the bottom within 3 feet or so of the edge of the deep weedline. The past 5 years or so, this has been my best technique for big fish. If you need a commercial version of my home made rig, the VMC Tokyo rig is the tool to use. Favorite baits for this technique would be a Zoom Brush Hog, Zoom magnum trick worm or a YUM Zellemander. Now if you feel you got to throw a weightless tx rig into the vegetation, forget it, peg a weight to it - and it will go through the vegetation better. Go as heavy as you need to go to drop to the bottom. If I'm throwing a worm in to summer vegetation, I throw a big worm - either a 10" Berkley power worm or a thickish 6" or 7" stickball - again with a pegged weight. I go with 17 or 20 lb Segaur Abrazx. Reason for the pegged weight is a faster drop gets you more drops over the course of a day. Don't waste alot of time hopping it once you get to the bottom - once or twice is plenty. Bring it in and pitch again. For me at least, the vast majority of hits come on the drop. If you've got surface vegetation, there is a potential frog bite. Many guys go bubba - with the bigger frogs and 65 lb braid - and that is an option. Summertime, I always carry a bubba rig with me and sometimes that is the ticket, with the big floating frog. Last summer, or maybe the summer before last, a guy on this site wrote about "finesse frogging". He was using slightly smaller soft plastic frogs, spinning gear with 20 or 30 lb braid and smallish ( 1, 1/0 or 2/0 ) finesse hook with a mono or wire weed guard. He was throwing this bait and landing it less than a foot from the outside edge of the vegetation, lily pads, what have you. After letting it set for a moment, he would nudge it off and let it drop. When I did this the vast majority of my hits came on the drop, between a foot and 3 feet down. Never caught a big fish doing this ( big fish to me is 20" or more ) but, middle of the summer, middle of the day I caught dozens of slot fish ( 12" to 15") doing this. Yes, a few time I got buried in the weeds and had to go get them, thus ruining that particular spot for a while - but it seems like when this was working there were lots of other spots. So, there you go - 3 summertime approaches that have worked for me. Here in Missouri, many lakes have modest to thick vegetation. My guess is that lakes in New Hampshire have more similarities than they have differences. Lastly, be prepared for summer fishing. Long sleeve fishing shirt, sunblock on exposed skin, I carry a 1 1/2 or 2 to one ration of water to beer in the cooler. And a sandwich. And some of those one bite candy bars. Current favorite fishing beer either Founders All Day IPA or Bell's Light Hearted Ale (labeled as a lo-cal IPA)

I'm pretty sure any of them would work. Me, I'd go with the 7' MH/ extra fast tip, just cause when I fish a "feel" presentation, like a worm, I like an extra fast tip. I think that the rod would handle a quarter ounce weight & worm fine. I'd start out with the worm pegged, so with 8 lb line be sure you buy the smaller size of bobber stops.

The old discontinued Berkley Frenzy poppers were very similar to a Rapala popper, marketed more or less around the same time. The difference is the Berkley Frenzy poppers were plastic. The Rapala poppers were balsa, with a fitted plastic lip. Rapala finishes were markedly different from the Frenzy paint jobs. Both baits worked, both were a little light and IMO didn't throw real well on bait casting gear.

The 6'10' All Star spinner bait rods ( available through Academy Sports ) work good for me. They come in various grades, at various price points. I got 4 of them on close outs a couple of Decembers ago. I paid $30 each. After a couple of seasons fishing with them, they are worth the full price (under $100 as I recall ). I wouldn't hesitate to throw a square bill on one. Later edit . These rods are rated as MH, but they have a little more tip than my MH jig rods do. As labeled, All Star makes them to throw spinnerbaits with. They work for me.