Fishes in trees

I've got a Curado 70. In the hands of an experienced bait caster user, a dedicated member of the Shimano cult ( which I am, more or less), that reel can be tricky to adjust. If this is your first bait caster - my condolences, it can be frustrating as it is very "touchy", in my opinion. It took me a while, most of a season, to find out how to use it best. This isn't a reel that you can muscle up to get more distance. That is just begging for a back lash. I've found that everything about this reel requires a soft, finesse approach. I'd learn to pitch with it before I considered learning to do more distance with overhead casts. The rod you've got ain't exactly conducive to pitching, but you can make do with it for now. Sooner or later you're going to want a MH rod with an extra fast tip. On a positive note, I find that this reel is very light and very sensitive and once you've learned this reel, there are lots of other Shimano reels that will be a cinch to learn to use. The directions that come with the reel work, you've just got to take the time to learn the reel and educate your thumb. Practice - a bunch. For now, I wouldn't buy any expensive line, no fluorocarbon, nothing like that. Get some cheap Big Game or something similar to learn on. You are going to get backlashes, no sense in unnecessarily bruising your wallet when you do. Get a pick, those sometimes make backlashes easier to untangle. What are you going to use this reel for? In my opinion, it is a pitching reel, for throwing soft plastics, jigs, jig worms, "feel baits", that sort of stuff. I don't think that it has the line capacity to throw reaction baits like cranks or spinner baits. Good Luck

Back when I was a bank fisherman, my favorite spring technique was a 1/8 or 3/16 oz Brewer Slider head with the 4' Brewer Slider worm. Cast it all over, paying more attention to paralleling the bank as much as possible, then polish the bottom with the bait. By this I mean going as slow as possible without hanging up or actually dragging on the bottom, trying to stay 2 to 6 inches above the bottom. On the good farm ponds that I frequented at the time, this resulted in a fish every 10 minutes or so. I'd try a little spinner bait or a jerk bait or a buzz bait if the slider technique didn't work. A variant of the slider technique was using a 1/8 oz crappie jig with a #11 pork frog hung on the hook. (These days, there are a number of plastic jig chunks that could substitute for the pork frog). I'd try to swim this a little higher off the bottom, mainly because of the open hook. Very occasionally, I'd run into a situation where bigger fish were suspended, a foot or two down over the deepest water in the pond. Nearly every trip I would check to see if this situation existed. I'd check by throwing a Heddon Sonic or a Cordell Spot, straight out from the bank as far as I could and bring it in pretty quick. You'd find out in 10 or 12 casts if that pattern was on for the day. Actually it was this pattern that first motivated me to bring multiple rods for various patterns that might exist. Eventually I was bringing more rods than I could easily carry and that is when I found a boat. Never really went back to bank fishing after that.

Over the years, I've had that notion several times. I'll do it for several trips, and then there will be that one trip, normally in the middle of the summer, you've fished til past dark thirty, it is hot & you are sweaty and because of that it takes longer than it should to load all the stuff back into the truck and get on the road. OK, you're all loaded up and the last thing you want to do is to take 10 minutes and jot down different things that happened that day. Next trip, the journal ends up on the floorboard, with mounds of stuff piled on top of it, then several trips later, you've forgotten about it til you clean out the truck, which might not happen til fall. Now, all of a sudden another year has gone by and you've made notes about maybe 2 or 3 trips. Maybe you can be more dedicated to this project than I ever could be. One season I tried using a small voice recorder, the idea being to keep it in the zippered chest pocket of my fishing shirt, dictate notes as necessary and translate them later. I filled up the recorder with notes, it was the "translate & write down later" part that was my downfall with that. plan. Again, I see the virtues of having a fishing log, I've just never been able to maintain the inertia to keep doing it for very long. If you can - great for you.

A rod that extends the fight of the fish isn't doing the fish any favors. There will be more lactic acid build up in the flesh of the fish. If you're going to keep the fish, not a problem, if you're going to release the fish - a problem, maybe a serious problem. One goal of catch & release is to release the fish in as healthy condition as possible. If the fish is seriously weakened, then you aint' doing that, so when it is released, its chances for survival go down. It might very soon become prey for something larger & hungrier, like a turtle, an osprey, maybe an otter. I don't think that a rod that lets you/makes you fight the fish until it is totally tuckered out is a good idea. But, to each his own . . ..

Strong

Best compared to what? Everyone has different opinions so my best might or might not be the same as yours. Given a baseline of $1600 per rig, you need to be prepared to spend in the neighborhood of $6400 to get a decent answer to this question. Why is this? Once you've popped for one, thinking it is the best, you won't be satisfied that you KNOW it is the best. Then you got to pop for one or two or three similar rigs, so that you can make an honest judgement. If you decide that finesse spinning ain't enough, you can get into finesse bait casting. Then BOAT (Bust out another thousand - or two)

I use the Gambler BANG spray from time to time, on baits that I'm pitching, when I think that I've been handling the bait too much. Normally I try to grab it by the slip sinker or the bend of the hook. I use chartruese dye sometimes to dye the tips of a chigger craw, or the end of a stickball, stuff like that. The brand that I use (Spike It ) comes in a garlic stench that I guess helps attract fish. The Chompers brand of soft plastics have a very distinct garlic stench straight out of the package and my thought is that if the folks who make the stuff didn't think it works, they wouldn't do it.

I'm thinking that when you feel the debris build up, a sharp snap of the rod should dislodge most of the stuff, nearly every time. I do that with my Falcon Bucco Trap Caster all the time, generally using lipless cranks on that rod, but it works ok on square bills & shallower divers as well. Perhaps a crank rod that has a little more backbone might be the ticket.

Being on the other side of the planet and whatnot, more or less, I ain't familiar with your seasons, or what your lakes even look like. What season are you in right now? According to seasonal patterns, what should the fish be doing now? What kind of lake are you fishing? What is the average depth? Is the lake more cover oriented ( various types of vegetation, with not so much depth changes), or is it more structure oriented, with rocks & stumps, standing timber and more pronounced depth changes? Are these natural lakes? Lakes built for electric power generation? Lakes built for flood control. Lakes built because some politician has his hand on the shoulder of the Corps of Engineers and he just wants another lake in his district, so as to make re-election easier. Are bass the primary predator or are there other fish that act as the apex predator? Do you have to watch out for crocodiles & hippos & stuff like that? I'd love to go fishing in Zimbabwe, but to give you any better advice than "put a 10 worm on 20 lb line and throw that bait close to as many objects as possible". I need to know more about the water and the while ecosystem, for that matter.

My Curado 70 doesn't seem to like real light baits. It functions ok with a 3/16 oz tungsten weight and a 5" BPX Stick or similar size bait. I tried 10 lb fluorocarbon on it, but it seems to like 15 lb Abrazx better. My Curado is " touchy" in general and any time I try to muscle it to get extra distance, it responds by saying "I don't like that" and it back lashes. These days, if the target is more than 50 feet away, I don't even try it, I'll move the boat closer or pick up a different rig. I'm pretty sure that if I spent alot more time with the 70, I'd learn its whims but all the other reels in the pitching/soft plastic arsenal are 50 size Chronarchs or Curados. I like the set it & forget it aspect of these reels, so I just tell myself to pay attention when the 70 is in my hands.

What happens when you send that picture to Bandit? They might know. Cool color though. My guess would be red golden shiner, because of the gold belly.

I have some of those baits. I've gotten many more hits on them than landed fish, that is some pretty thick soft plastic. My most recent attempt to get a better hooking & landing percentage involved using an appropriate sized weighted swim bait hook and with my box knife slicing a groove in the belly of the bait, so that the hook was skin hooked on th back of the bait and totally unimpeded by all of the belly plastic. It made the bait a little fragile, only lasted for a few fish, then it wouldn't run right at all. It occurred to me that if I had one of those worm welding tools I could repair the damage, but I haven't purchased on of those yet. The fragility of the bait affected the casting, so I resorted to using MH spinning gear and 20 lb braid instead of bait casting gear and even then you kinda had to lob it rather than sling it. The baits do work in the right situations, but for me, landing the hits has so far become problematic. Good Luck.

I'm not a fan of the Carolina rig - never did get the hang of it. While we're writing about baits that maybe didn't produce like the hype, lets not forget the Banjo Minnow. Surely we remember the bait that would elicit a "genetic response" Actually, I did have some modest success with that bait, one day, springtime, throwing down a line that later in the year would become a deep weed line, but in April was just a modest drop off that for some reason congregated fish. I tore up most of the kit in a couple of hours - caught a few dozen or so slot fish, drift the drop off for a couple of hundred yards, then troll a wide circle back to where I started and do it again. I switched over to flukes when I ran out of the banjo minnows and the action didn't slow all that much. Gained some degree of confidence in minnow style soft plastics, although these days I prefer the Strike King Caffeine Shad to the Fluke. The notion of nose hooking baits stuck with me and these days, when I'm throwing the bubba drop shot I prefer nose hooking over Texas rigging nearly all the time. So the banjo minnow wasn't a total bust, there was some learning that happened. I have had issues throwing the larger soft plastic swim baits, but I'm pretty sure that is because I'm throwing them at the wrong time into the wrong places - maybe this year.

To the OP - I fish totally different areas than you fish, plus I fish out of a boat 99% of the time, so my choices might not apply to you. Lots of people have mentioned poppers, I have a coupe of Pop-R's, but the think that the Lucky Craft version of the top water popper is a better bait because it spits a little more water on each jerk and it seems like it walks better for me. Same for the "spook" type baits. The Zara Spook is an iconic bait and I own several of them, but I think that the Lucky Craft Sammy is a better walking bait, because for me it seems like it responds better and walks/glides better. I don't think that color matters too much on these baits - I like a whitish/greyish belly, a red spot near the mouth of the bait and I like for the sides to be shiny. If you're like me and distance eyesight is an issue, a chartreuse stripe down the back of the lure makes it easier to see when it is resting away from the boat.

A number of years ago, I got a set of these baits because they had cool finishes, just like the Lucky Craft baits, but they were much less expensive. I found out that there is a reason they are less expensive. They don't have an action anywhere close to what the Lucky Craft have. Mine came with galvanized hooks - maybe they were supposed to be an inshore thing. I don't doubt that if you happened to be throwing into a school of active fish, those baits would get bit. Nearly any bait will get bit in those circumstances. I can't think of any jerk bait that these compare favorably to - action wise. Now, years later, I've just chalked that jerk bait purchase, along with some other crank bait purchases that have happened from time to time, as just a bad buy. They are kinda pretty in the Plano box that I got for them.

Most of the time when I want a weighted wacky approach I use the Falcon K-wacky weedless weighted hooks. 90% of the time I use the 1/16 oz size.

You need a depth finder. If you're trying to fish competitively in a kayak tournament, with out a depth finder, you are basically shooting yourself in the foot. Your best hope for success, on this small 100 acre or so lake, is to guess who is the best fisherman and just follow him around and fish like he fishes. After a while, this will make you very popular. A Hummingbird Little Buddy depth finder is less than $300, does everything you need, it comes with a clamp so that you can point it down into the water when you need it and then pull it up when you are so shallow you don't need it.

Please understand that if you're going to try to Ned rig & drop shot wit the same rig, you might get disappointed. 2 different techniques that kinda need different rod actions to work best. My advice would be to decide which spinning application you want to try and get a rig best suited for THAT. This will shorten the learning curve considerably. Then as additional disposable income accrues, get a rig for a different spinning technique. While there is some overlap between various spinning techniques, there isn't a lot of overlap between drop shooting & Ned rigging. IMO

Trying to decide what is and what ain't a good spinner bait rod has been one of the banes of my existence. I'm pretty certain that I've spent, over the years, more than two grand in pursuit of the perfect spinner bait rod. Choices have went length wise from 5 1/2 feet to 7 1/2 feet. Various companies - various actions rated from Medium to Heavy. I wore out 3 of the old All Star Well Rowland Spinner Bait Specials. 2 sizes, 6'4" & 6'8". Those rods had a great blank that threw 3/8 & 1/2 oz spinnerbaits well but the handle was crap and after a couple of years it wouldn't stay tight consistently, then it wouldn't stay tight at all. Currently I have a couple of different rods that I switch back & forth on because I can't decide. First is a 6'8" Fenwick Aetos MH. ( discontinued a couple of years ago, maybe more ) and an All Star 6'10" spinner bait rod that I got on close out at Academy. (the purple one ). I'm always on the look out for a better spinner bait rod, but I ain't so wide-eyed hopeful as I used to be. I think that every spinner bait rod is going to be a compromise.

Tackle is accumulated over time - even if you're trying to do the pro/semi-pro thing. Time moves at its own pace. It is really hard to get older quicker. Actually it isn't - just eat a bunch of Meth , day in & day out for a few months or so - you'll look a lot older pretty quick. JUST FOR THE RECORD - THIS IS A JOKE - ADMITTEDLY MAYBE NOT A PRIZE WINING JOKE, BUT A JOKE NONE THE LESS!!!

I'm all for diversity in my fishing lures, but the more ethnic ones tend to go into the collection side rather than the use now side of the collection. For example, Salmo hard bait are made in Poland, and they have some very unique shapes & actions. Those are collectors items - I don't actually fish with them. Rapala baits, made in Finland are pretty common, but for a while they manufactured part of their line in Ireland, and some of those baits are considered collectable. A few years ago my younger sister went to Ireland, and she took $200 with her (of my money). She was to go into a tackle shop, the first one she saw, and spend in money on " baits that the clerks said worked in Ireland " She had a couple of male Irish musicians go with her, so I don't think she got fooled too bad, but I got an interesting collection of in-line spinners, made in Ireland, Scotland, Italy ( She was specifically told to not buy anything that said Mepps on the package. ) Still on the subject of diversity I'm pretty sure that I could easily import multiple thousands of dollars of Japanese baits if my wallet would only allow it. They seem to have lots of cool stuff to choose from. Many of the Pradco baits are made in various places in central & South America. This seems to be a good fishing collection goal, i.e. how many different countries are represented in the various baits that I own? Wonder what the record is?

Last year I had very good luck with the new Berkley Fusion hooks. I'm not tex-posing these hooks, but I am skin hooking them, burying the hook point just a little bit. I don't suppose that I'm throwing into any denser cover than you are, but I had very little problems with skin hooking. I never felt like I had to leave the point all the way in the bait with the Fusion hook.

I think that some cranks respond better being thrown on spinning gear. I carry a spinning crank rig in my fishing truck, don't pull it out often. I think length is important in a spinning crank rod - extra length equals extra distance, for the most part. I want a quarter to a third of the top part of the rod to be kinda tippy & flexible - this seems to help in distance. From the handle, 2/3 or so of the rod needs to have some to alot of backbone. There are times when you need to lean on fish when throwing cranks and good backbone on the rod is important. 8 -9- maybe 10 years ago, when Cabelas was closing out all their Kistler products, I got a spinning rod in the Argon series ( the blue ones ) which meets the specs I need. It is 6'11' and Kistler wrote MH finesse jig rod on the blank. I've never tried this rod for throwing shakey head, although it would probably work ok, but it works pretty good as a crank bait for me. For line, I have a fairly large, 5 something gear ratio reel. I've experimented with various 20 lb braids, currently I think I'm using 14 lb Fireline - don't remember. I love this rod for throwing Wiggle Warts and other similar size diving cranks. If I'm throwing half ounce Timber Tigers, DC13 or DC 16 or other heavier cranks. into & around trees & bushes, I've got a different rig for that. I have tried using my spinning crank rig and throwing larger deep divers , like a Norman DD22, trying to scrape bottom in 20' of water. Not alot of success. I chalk that up to my inability to recognize good 20' shelves, rather than anything in particular being wrong with the rig. I can attest that in the spring time, during BFL tournament conditions on Lake Ozark, Grand Lake, Table Rock & Bull Shoals lake, that rig accounted for 40 or 50 fish during various tournament days. I blame my boater that all those fish were in the 13.5" to 14.5". I'm pretty sur that should there have been any 15" + fish in the neighborhood they would have bit.

To the original poster - my buzz bait choices are based on 40+ years of experimentation. There was a time in my fishing life when I thought 10 lb line was pretty heavy, so why would I throw a buzz bait, where casting distance & covering the water is important on such heavy line? I threw quarter ounce buzz baits on 6 lb test. At that point in my fishing life, quarter ounce seemed to be the size to go with. Point of this rant is that over time you change your mind. I don't own any quarter ounce buzz baits - haven't for a couple of decades. As I've gotten schooled in where are the best areas to throw buzz baits, throwing them on 6 lb line seems pretty silly to me. Point is - use what you got and maybe adapt here and there. Should it work - ok - not so much? - reason to upgrade when finances permit. There is a point in your growth as a fisherman when you more or less limit your dependence on other folks opinions and learn more to rely on what you think. When you start you own decision making in one area, then that attitude flows over into other fishing decision areas.

The one that I have is made by Rod Saver. With a little aftermarket adaptation mine will hold 20 rods & reels, more or less. I haven't found a better way to transport rods, with the rods being accessible AND out of the way while traveling. True, the rods are visible from outside the vehicle - more or less visible as my side windows & rear window have a pretty dark tint. I don't know about anyone else's insurance but according to my insurance if rods are stolen from my boat (no lockable compartments ) theft is NOT covered. This happened to me in 2003 - roughly 3000 worth of rods & reels were stolen from my boat when I left it tied up in a slip at Lake Ozark. My insurance agent, after the fact, informed me that had that gear been taken from my locked vehicle it would have been covered. So I don't worry so much about if folks can see inside the truck, if they have to break their way into the vehicle, theft is covered. I have an extensive list of what is in the truck AND I keep a copy at home. Hopefully I'll never have to find out if my insurance agent was correct or not. (When I checked with the insurance company over the phone, they told me basically the same thing) So, that is why I use the overhead rod saver and I'm conscious about keeping my truck locked.