Fishes in trees

3 different rigs for different situations, IMO. I like a shakey head (in various weights & head styles) when I'm fishing sparse to moderate cover in 6 to 15 feet of water. IMO, baits for shakey heads are generally larger than baits for Ned rig. (trick worms, 7" power worms, and so forth). Ned rigs are for shallower spare to moderate cover. I may be in the minority but waiting for a 1/10 oz jig head with half a sinker z stuck on it to drop 10 to 12 feet drives me nuts. I'm fairly confident that it would work deep but waiting for it to drop would drive me nuts. A wacky rig is a different bait for different circumstances. I throw wacky rigs at objects and let it drift down next to them. I never randomly throw a wacky rig - got to have a target. As the name implies I often throw a wacky rig at mid lake trees and let the wacky rig drift down 8-10 - 12 feet or more. (I feel it requires at least 5 to 6 feet of visibility for this to work, which frequently doesn't happen). In cases of lesser water visibility I favor a 10" worm and a 3/16 or quarter ounce tungsten for the same scene, i.e. drop down close to a tree trunk. Other than the ned rig, neither of the other two techniques have to be a "finesse" technique per se. Depends on how you look at it. I don't have to use Med or ML rods and light line to finesse fish. I can have my 7'2" jig rod and be throwing a quarter ounce jig head in 15 feet of water and I'm "finesse fishing". I think the term finesse fishing applies more to the attitude and pace of your fishing than your gear.

If I'm throwing wacky worms, I'm using a Falcon Weedless K Wacky hook (3/0 - 1/16). I use the o-rings, like you bought. For bait though, for wacky rigging, I think there isn't any substitute for a senko. I'd go buy some senkos. You can throw those on a wide variety of gear. The senko/hook combo is heavy enough to easily throw on a bait caster setup. A long time ago I used to use a 6'6" Med action All Star rod with a Calcutta 200 TEGT and 14 lb fluorocarbon. Then after I broke that rod I graduated to a 6'10" Falcon Eakins Jig Special ( which is on the med side of med/hvy) and an old Shimano Curado. Currently I use a 7'2" Fenwick MH Aetos with a Chronarch 50 and 15 lb Abrazx. This doesn't catch me any more fish than my original rig did - however it is a lot lighter and I like fishing it better. My wrist feels better after a day of pitching at things. Or you can use spinning gear, which I often when my Aetos rig is scheduled for other duties. The spinning gear I currently use is a 7' Fenwick HMG MH and a smaller size Pfleuger spinning reel filled with 20 lb braid. I like a light colored braid so that it acts kind of like a strike indicator i.e. the line moves and you nearly always see the strike before you feel it. I like a short 1-2 foot fluorocarbon leader. Well, that's my current thinking on wacky rigs, along with some history, hope it helps. Again for wacky style fishing, ditch the dingers, get some senkos.

What neighborhood do you live in? You're just 0 for 4 - as a rookie - that ain't so bad.There are a few different ways to look at this. Is it a presentation issue? When you ask, do you look "skuffy" or are you presentable. Are you sure you're asking the right person? ( might be you'd have better luck with the guys wife, or visa versa ) Are you "cold calling" or have you met these property owners through some other means. (cold calling is tough ) My advice - figure out where you want to fish (Google Earth helps here). Find out who owns the property. (county court house) BE PRESENTABLE - and have something to offer.

If I'm storing those baits in a non climate controlled area, I'm keeping them packed in plastic shoe boxes - more to protect the packaging than to protect the baits side the packaging. I prefer the plastic shoe boxes with the attached lids to the ones with separate lids because they stack easier and it is MUCH harder to lose the lids. Every so often when they go on sale for around $2 per box, ore or less, buy 20 of them. Do that a few dozen times and eventually you'll have enough plastic boxes. I use the same size boxes in my garage to sort stray tools, sockets, and assorted other necessary garage tools. In a non climate controlled environment, dust is your enemy. Whatever you can do to protect your stuff is money well spent in the long run. Mice are another enemy. Don't skimp on rat & mouse poison. I switch brands every so often. When I put the boat away and cover it for the winter in my shed, I buy some stuff called Cab Clear - or something like that. It has a smell that mice don't like (allegedly) and it isn't totally putrid for you to sniff. I've used that stuff the last two years and I've found zero mouse turds when I vacuum out the boat prior to the first trip of the year. One more tip for non climate controlled storage - invest in shelving. Keeping stuff up & off the floor makes it easier to organize and a little more of a challenge for pests.

Back in the day, when I was bank bound, I had a different attitude about fishing. I was interested in catching fish to eat AND I liked bass fishing rather than panfish. In the ponds I had access to, crappie weren't stocked, so I never got into crappie. I had read the recently released book on Slider Fishing by Charlie Brewer. Those days, Slider heads weren't readily available so I had to make do. I would buy 1/8 crappie jigs by the card, tie on to 6 or 8 lb line on my do it all light action spinning rig and put a 4" Uncle Josh Split tail eel or a double tail as a trailer on the crappie jig. Crappie jigs had to be red head, chartreuse chenille body and a white caribou tail. Pork trailer had to be brown. The idea was to "polish the rocks" or whatever the bottom was made of. In grass, nick the tops of whatever grass was there. I lost a lot of baits but I caught a lot of fish.

A number of years ago, I built a shed to house my fishing truck, boat, and assorted gear. It isn't heated, but I did run electricity to it, so that I could leave my boat plugged in all the time. You should also. (Run electricity, not park your boat inside the house) If you don't you won't be able to work in your shelter at night. Even during the day, lights are a big help but I still have to move into better light to tie knots sometimes. As mentioned previously the heat and cold won't damage your soft plastics. (At least it doesn't in Missouri). Mice are an issue. I try to keep everything sorted and sealed in plastic shoe boxes. They go on sale every so often. The west interior wall of the shed is a rod rack. Every time shelving goes on sale at Home Depot or other similar stores, but some. You can't have enough shelving. I used to use those Halogen job site lights. Those go through bulbs, don't buy those. LED job site lights are better. I've got to say, I like having all my gear centralized and out of the way. It gives me a place to hide out.

The correct size for O-rings is 3/8 o.d. and 1/4 i.d. I got a lifetime supply for a penny each. I started at o-rings.com and after several stops found a supply house in St. Louis $10 + shipping got me a lifetime supply - at least I'm still breathing and I have many hundreds of the o-rings left. Jury is still out as to which will run out first.

You're doing better than me. I can't get bit using the neko rig.

OK, I'll confess. I invented the wacky rig in the mid 60's - using a Creme worm and my Zebco 202 after reading about it in Field & Stream. I forget what they called it in the article, however once I tried it in my granddad's pond and exclaimed, "This is a wacky way to fish!!", the name stuck. People started to talk which culminates in this post. I'm glad I could set the record straight. Speaking of setting the record straight, I don't know anything about Pee Wee Herman, except that I liked watching his Saturday morning show with a coffee and a blunt while I was in college and so did my girlfriend - I think it was her idea, actually. I liked his movies also, I think they were funny and silly at the same time.

My advice would be to just deal with it. If my problem was that a certain color was getting bit a lot and the baits were getting ruined after a strike or two, I'd just make sure that I had enough bags. I wouldn't start complaining until all the stores in my area were out of that color and I had to order off the internet. Every so often you/me/everyone has a problem that can be solved by throwing money at it. Those are among the easiest life/fishing problems to solve.

You're in Wisconsin, you just got a new to you Muskie reel or maybe a trolling reel. I have one of those and I think it is a little heavy for bass fishing. For a while I used it as my designated lipless crank reel because I could throw stuff a long ways with it and retrieve speed was consistent because of the large line capacity. However, as I got older it got too heavy as I acquired other lighter options for lipless crank service. I've seen some guys use that reel for throwing slab spoons in tail race conditions. Fill it full of 25 lb line, - Get a 8.5 to 10 foot MH to H casting rod and you can throw a 2 oz slab spoon a hundred yards, with a little practice.

I don't have any issues throwing square bills with a 5-1 ratio Calcutta. Back in the day, 5-1 was considered "High Speed". I throw most reaction baits (cranks, spinner baits, chatter baits, swim baits) on 5-1 ratio reels, mostly older Calcutta 200 TEGTs.

I've never had much success with Strike King spinner baits. I prefer Terminators or War Eagle spinnerbaits.

I won't bad mouth Johnny Morris. Johnny Morris loves me. He loves me so much he sends me a new catalog every few weeks, just so I can stay informed about what kind of gear is available. His catalogs are an important part of my daily hygiene rituals, they occupy a prominent portion of my literature rack. I like to go to his churches - I mean stores.

Perhaps you misunderstood. Perhaps I didn't state myself well. Anyway, I don't get on plane very often. However, when I do get the very occasional trip to Truman or Stockton, other than the boat being a little doggy ( heavy boat with only a 100 HP motor), I don't have any issues getting on plane or leaning in either direction.

I have the same boat with a 100 Yamaha 4 stroke. I don't have that problem. I don't get on big water where I can run on plane very often. I do fish on lakes where I have to putt around a lot - not on plane. My lake is so stumpy that a hydrofoil would just be asking for it.

I down' switch out fluorocarbon lines until I've broken off enough that my casting distance suffers. I just changed out a Curado 50 that I filled with 10 lb Abrazx 3 years ago. I had a different Curado 50 filled with 15 lb Abrazx that I changed out last month and it had been 3 years on that reel also. I only changed it out because A couple of decent fish ran me through trees and bushes on a longer distance strike and I got paranoid about how many nicks the line had in it. I think that the rule of thumb for fluorocarbon is different than for mono. I change it when I think it needs it and that is often a couple of years.

No, the screw lock isn't too big. Using scissors, snip off a quarter inch or so of the nose and that gives you a solid flat surface to screw it down tight to the jig head. I've found that most screw lock jig heads work better if you snip the nose of the bait a little bit so that it gives the screw a better surface to grab.

I've fished both of those jig heads and I like them both. The Mega Strike shakey heads aren't readily available where I live. What few I have are in my tournament box. The Chompers brand is more readily available. I use both the 3/8 and 1/4 oz size - using the 3/8 more often. I use them with a regular trick worm and they work great - just as good as the Mega Strike IMO. I haven't tried either head with the Magnum trick worm.

I think that doing a walk the dog retrieve with a Lucky Craft Sammie is pretty simple. I use 17 or 20 lb mono and a rod that is more medium than medium/heavy, with plenty of tip.

Take your lures and go to the fishing tackle store where you have options. Hold the lures up to different hooks and make a decision.

I try to be timely about buying gear. Walmart close outs happen end of January/early Feb. Academy Sports recently located in the KC Metro area last year and they had a monster winter close out sale. Most of the time though, my gear purchasing strategy is if I see some gear that I want, I buy it. If I want to slow down tackle purchasing, just don't go into tackle stores. Should I enter a business that sells fishing tackle, I'm going to look and probably buy something.

My guess is that you just missed your cue. If you're fishing wacky baits on a semi-slack line or even a really slack line, like dead sticking, you should see the strike prior to feeling it. The line will move (or stop moving) or do something out of the ordinary, indicating that you might think about setting the hook. Hooksets are free. Fluorocarbon line can sometimes be a challenge to watch. Braid/fluorocarbon leader set ups are relatively easy.

I am into getting rigs for specific situations/fishing styles/ what have you. Rod brand doesn't matter so much to me - reels I stick to Shimano. Looking at you list of gear, you might need a Ned Rig, you might need some drop shot rigs, Finesse & Bubba Style. I have dedicated spinner bait rods, a dedicated Buzz bait rod, several dedicated crank rods. I have a dedicated wacky senko rig - currently a MH 7' spinning stick. You might want a shaky head rig. A spinning rig specifically to throw light weight diving cranks, like 5 size shad raps is a very fun toy and some days you can wear them out on that bait. My point is that rather than buying a rod & reel and then trying to figure out what style to fish with it, approach the problem from the other end, i.e. figure out what style you want to fish and get a rig that meets that specific need.

A long time ago - mid 80's, I worked for a guy who tried to start an upscale, boutique type, hunting, fishing, outdoor gear store in Columbia, MO. The store folded after less than a year - not a broad enough customer base - actually there were many reasons why the store didn't succeed. However, we did have an electric line spooling station that handled all spool sizes, that was a gift from the Berkley line rep. That was a great toy and I wish I had another one like it. It made QUICK easy work of taking line off and installing new line, once you learned how to use it. I'd like to have one.