Fishes in trees

My issue with the soft plastic - no skirt approach is that, for me - I get one soft plastic - one fish. I have a bunch of toads that I bought when I thought they were the next great thing, and they were, for a short while. I put the toad on a buzz bait and they work until you get bit and then it is a challenge to get that bait to run straight like it was supposed to. Running like they were supposed to means that I get it that the bait will run at more or less of an angle to you, depending on if the pitch of the blades is right oriented or left oriented. Anyway, after one fish, bait doesn't seem to run "right." So I don't throw it very often. Kinda changing the subject for a moment, the buzz bait that runs "straight" for me is one of those side by side double buzzers, with the counter rotating blades. These seem to come through surface grass better also, as long as I keep the rod tip up. In this situation, bites seem to happen within a foot or so of exiting the surface grass. I like a skirt and some kind of trailer on this bait - back half of a trick worm works ok. I just want a little bit of wiggle behind the bait and when the bit happens, I want there to be something kind soft, which in my mind helps me think that it will hold on a fraction of a second longer, enough for me to get a hook set.

I love the weekly world news - it is my favorite grocery store check out line newspaper.

In my opinion, the weed guard is too strong and doesn't always release when you get bit, that is to say, in my experiences it doesn't release when it is supposed to more often than not. The games ain't that much more expensive, so with those. If you must have a wacky hook with a wire mouse trap style weed guard, go with the Falcon K- Wacky hooks - either weighted or not. These are the hooks I use most of the time.

The next step in your fishing evolution is to get off the bank. I might lay off new rods & reels for a while and look to getting off the bank somehow. Pond boat - Jon boat - canoe - kayak - something - waders - belly boat.

I have a 2002 Lowe WF 180. None of the boxes are water tight. Just something that you have to remember and deal with after you've been out in a rain - or tow through a little rain.

How does it work when you fish it as is? Once upon a time I had a Redfin with a hair line crack in it and it developed a unique action when it was 3/4 falloff water. Caught fish better than my other Redfin which didn't have that crack, mostly because it would stop and sit when it was 5 to 6 feet deep and wouldn't start the slow rise a non-cracked Red Fin would. In the case of my cracked Redfin and what I believe to be the case with your cracked popper, it would cast farther when full of water. I'd wait to see if it wouldn't catch fish anymore before I trashed it. Even then, I probably wouldn't trash it. I'd hang it up on the peg board with all the other broken/trashed/ worthless for various reasons hard baits that I own. That board is a memorial - either to my shrewd fiscal purchases, baits that lasted a long time before they honorably broke down - OR - it is a memorial to my optimism & ignorance, as in "YOU REALLY THOUGHT THAT BAIT WOULD CATCH A FISH?!?" Which is which depends on my mood when I look a it.

13 seconds for a uni- knot? You must have practiced. I don't think I could do that with my semi-arthritic fingers. I don't tie knots that fast. I need to take my time and even then I don't always get it right. Not doubting it though. 13 seconds when you're all ready to go or 13 seconds counting prep time? By this I mean checking the line - assuring there aren't any nicks or weak spots - being sure that the line isn't extra curly for some reason, etc. What pound test line? I could see that a heavier line might be quicker to tie, mainly because it can be harder for me to see thinner lines - but that's just me. 6 wraps each or 6 wraps total? Once the knot was tied, you'd need a microscope or at least a decent magnifying glass to determine how many wraps. IF it is 6 wraps total - how well that knot holds under pressure is a fair question. A 6 wrap uni knot in less than a quarter of a minute - I got to see that - to give me something to aspire to if nothing else. Oh yeah - who is on the timer? As a Mizzou fan - over the past few decades, I've witnessed more than a few questionable timing incidents - Tyus Edney of UCLA comes to mind. 5 downs for Colorado's last national championship would be another ( and that happened at home!!) That's enough to think about right now. I'm not saying it can't be done - just that those are some pretty nimble fingers, so that makes me say "huh?" Oh, yeah, - back to the point of the original post - I'm not a big fan of the clips. I've tried several different brands, the names of which escape me right now (although the Norman speed clips were one of them). All of those clips had a degree of difficulty which my arthritic fingers didn't respond to well. In those situations when I absolutely have to use a clip I have to bust out the tiny needle nose pliers and still it takes a while.

I carry both styles - the extendable pole and the hound dog type lure retriever. The hound dog type lure retriever is attached to a retractable 50' dog leash. That is deep enough to get to any bait that I might lose and it stores in a compact package.

I don't know - maybe you're shopping in the high rent neighborhood. I know where that neighborhood is, but I don't shop there very often. Maybe someday . . .. Anyway, on the subject of cheaper wake baits, I don't think that Mann's Minus 1's cost anywhere near $25 and they are a decent wake bait. They come in lots of different colors. I think that they work best when you're waking them pretty slowly, but if you keep you're rod tip up you can make them wake and move them pretty quick. Rod tip down and they dive to around a foot or so. Timber Tiger DC1 works in a similar fashion. The first wake bait that I ever heard of was a Cotton Cordell jointed Red Fin. They would wake right out of the box if you kept your rod tip high and reeled kinda slowly. Take a Bic lighter and heat the bill and bend it down to close to a 90 degree angle and it wakes a little easier and you get a little more speed control - but then I think that a slow waking bait more often than not beats a fast waking bait. Another tip, for what it is worth, when I was fishing BFL's 2 different times, two different guys, they only thing they had in common was that they had both cashed many more tournament checks than I had, anyway, they told me that if there was a top water bite going on, there was probably a better sub surface bit going on at the same time. One guy recommended throwing the Minus 1 and reeling it pretty fast - getting it down a foot or so. The other guy recommended throwing a Dixie Jet spoon - as far as I could and then jerking it back - reeling and jerking so that it never got deeper than 3 feet or so. If you want to go fast, and stay on the surface, might as well throw a buzz bait - or wake a spinner bait. If $25 is your price range, I have 2 adjusted jointed Red Fins ( with a feathered tail no less) and I'd sell you one of mine for $25.

Give it a try and see what happens. Me, I fish 10 " worms quite a bit in the summer time, both for drifting through tree rows and pitching at objects/targets. I have found that regular size Gamakatsu round bend or sproat bend hooks work better for me than the extra wide gap ones do. Your results may vary from mine.

My current thoughts on bait casters & rookies. If you're going to lead off with a Curado or SLX DC, I'd get one of the lower gear ratio ones and focus on throwing reaction baits, like cranks & spinner baits, stuff like that. I'd use a cheap mono to start, then when I thought I was past the frequent backlash stage I'd go to a quality co-poly. I use 15 lb Yozuri on my Curado DC's and it works great for me. Should you choose to focus more on jigs & soft plastics I'm not really sure that the DC feature is necessary. Maybe a regular Curado, or the next step up from that, whatever that is this year. An exception to that rule would be if you're fishing alot of docks. I don't fish reservoirs that have alot of docks, but friends of mine who do love the Curado DC because they say it makes dock skipping easier. I can't really speak to that because I don't fish that way, but it makes some sense to me. I started fishing bait casters with an old red ambassador and I was terrible with it until I acquired a Shimano with magnetic brakes - a Custom X 2000 which I got in the early 80's. Magnetic brakes made all the difference in control for me. I learned to throw a bait caster, mostly using over head casts, because that is what most of the literature at the time said to do. Then I saw Jimmy Houston on TV, and his little side arm roll cast made alot of sense to me and was pretty easy for me to learn. As a mostly bank fisherman at the time, I made many side arm flick casts with spinning gear and transferring that skill to bait casting was just a matter of educating my thumb rather than my fore finger. In hindsight, I think that I would have learned bait casting quicker had I learned how to pitch first. The back lashes wouldn't have been as major for one thing. But at the time, I considered a quarter ounce jig with a pork frog a heavy bait, these days I generally throw a heavier bait. So I don't know, good luck learning a new skill - use cheap line to start. Be mindful that once you start on this trip to learn bait casters, after you learn one, you'll want to own another one, then more as you gain competence with different baits.

For most casts outside of a pitch I make my casts two handed. Seems to work for me - a sort of push/pull - where the top hand does the pushing and the bottom hand does the pulling. I think it is possible to over power a cast and that is when major back lashes happen to me. I've owned a couple of Curado DC's for two years now and I use them mostly to throw spinnerbaits. These baits seldom fly smoothly through the wind and when I was learning bait casters, these baits cause me more back lashes than all the other baits put together. Anyway, once I got my DC reels adjusted I've added an average of 20 to 30 feet of distance that I'm getting - same rod and same amount of force. You can back lash these reels and that happens when you try to apply too much force and ignore technique.

I've seen numerous ribbon tail worms with a similar profile. 7" Berkley power worms are available nearly everywhere, in lots of different colors. As mentioned in a previous post, that worm might be some sort of Culprit clone. Culprits are readily available. Really, almost all soft plastic bait companies make a ribbon tail worm.

I generally carry two or three or 4 rods for throwing square bills & lipless cranks & chatter baits. That is because I often follow up one presentation with a different one. For instance I often throw a lipless crank in 2 to 4 feet of water, but lets say the wind blows me off my line a little bit and all of a sudden I'm looking at 4 to 6 feet of water. I'll reach down and pick up my Timber Tiger DC4 or DC5, and throw that and it is easy to do because I'm already rigged. Or I might pick up a different square bill that's already rigged. The Timber Tiger is my favorite, but I ain't married to it. In a different scenario, I'll give a few casts to the lipless crank and then switch to maybe a chatter bait. In either case they're already rigged & ready to go. If I absolutely , positively had to go with just one rod for lipless cranks/squarebills I'd use my Falcon Bucco Trap Caster. For me this rod works GREAT for lipless cranks and ok for square bills and other hard baits. Another thing - I throw my lipless cranks on 17 or 20 lb mono - or maybe some co-poly, and most of my square bill tossing is with similar lines. 90% of the time I'm throwing a half ounce lipless crank and a similar amount of time I'm throwing the same weight square bill - mainly because I like the distance I get. If for some reason I had to go lighter, I'd use a rod with more flex and a softer tip. Well, anyway, that's my reasoning on the subject. Oh - to answer the question "Does a square bill/lipless crank combo rod exist?" My answer is yeah - probably - maybe.

A youngster like yourself shouldn't be saddled with such an old and "tough" reel. Those Curdao DPV's were notorious for being "touchy". . further experiments with reel could challenge your further development as a fisherman, for the foreseeable future. Allow me to take this reel off your hands . . . .I'll give you $8.50 for that reel. - I'm a nice guy - I'll give you$20 for the pair AND pay for shipping through pay pal. - message me. .

My answer might be a little different. I'm pretty confident that any bait that I select is likely to work if I put it in the correct place. When I fish by myself, which is most of the time, I'm a junk fisherman, by this I mean I seldom start out with a defined notion of what the fish are doing and therefore I have 20 or so different rigs on the deck, ready to go with different baits. If I pitch to an object twice with no results, my reasoning suggests that there must have been something about that object that drew my attention and therefore I will generally throw a different bait at the object, just to see. If I'm leading off with some soft plastic - my next choice will generally be some reaction bait - spinnerbait - crank, something like that. I keep experimenting with different choices til something hits.

I've never minded the noise.

I do things slightly different. I have one of those SPF fishing hoodies, I always keep the hood up because it keeps my cap on. I wear wrist bands to soak up the sweat some. Because of past leg blood issues, I wear a moderate wright knee high compression socks and knee length shorts with lots of pockets. Knees & hands are exposed and so I put quite a bit of spray on sun screen on those areas - no issues with burning last year. I don't like to look skuffy when I'm fishing so I get the upper end spa 50 fishing hoodies that just look better - to me at least. My current favorite one is a Patagonia one - with 4 different colors of light green swirly camp, it blurs the lines between camp & paisley. I wear that with a white cap, white shorts & white anti blood clot socks. Be mindful that it aint just summer when you have to pay attention to this - in the past I've gotten some kinda painful cheek & neck sun burns in March.

I like the floaters - I think that they re cheap entertainment. I never know when they are going to show up or which way they will drift. They aren't really an issue to me, unless I choose to focus on them.

Hook sets are pretty simple, if you don't think about it too much. If you feel a strike - tighten up and set the hook. If you're feeling your bait as it sinks through the water and then, all of a sudden you don't feel it, you don't feel anything - tighten up and set the hook. If, when you're watching your line and it does something wonky, you didn't feel anything, just your line did something unexpected - then tighten up and set the hook. The sooner you get a decent hook set, the more likely you are to land the fish.

I don't know many other guys who own an extensive collection of Timber Tiger crank baits, from the DC1 ( which is similar to a small minus 1 ) to the DC 16 ( a fairly sizable crank that can dive to 16 feet, more of less ) These baits come through trees & brush much better than any other crank bait I've used. I make a version of the jika rig that works good for me. It is my first choice anytime I think that fish are on the deeper end of any main lake point. I haven't seen any other guys fish a jika rig at all, or the Tokyo rig or anything similar.

I had cataract surgery a few years ago. I also have glaucoma. Anyway, it worked for me. I see better now than I did before. While they were inserting the plastic lens, they also put a stint in the bottom of my eyeball to help with the pressure regulation. It has worked. Before the surgery I was having to use some meds, dropped into my eyeball at the same time each day, to regulate the pressure in my eyeball. (At the cost of roughly a buck a drop ). Going on 4 years now, eye pressure has stabilized and haven't had to go back to using the drops. All I can say is that the cataract surgery worked for me. The whole experience was pretty weird though, they couldn't put you totally to sleep, because they asked me questions from time to time, asking me to move my eye, look here or there and I don't know why. Couldn't feel a thing. Intellectually, from time to time I knew that when he was asking me questions, he probably had some tool inside my eye ball, but I was so goofed on the drugs that I didn't care. Good drugs. Then after the surgery the drugs wore off. oh well . . . Recovery was pretty simple. - wear some plastic fit over sunglasses over my regular glasses & take it easy for a day or so. Surgery was early in the am and by 4 pm, I was kinda antsy and went for a hike. Next day check up - everything was fine. So, in my opinion, going to the eye doctor is seldom a mistake. Glad I had decent insurance though. I'd still be broke if I had to pay for all that stuff out of pocket.

At the time when they first came out, In-fisherman magazine recommended a method called tex-posing for how to put the hook into a senko.. The back of the senko had a kinda concave surface so the hook could nestle down in this and didn't need to be re-inserted back in to the plastic like a tx rig calls for. Later on, Lunker City came out with the Texposer a hook which made this presentation a little easier to rig. These are good hooks and I carry a small supply in my hook box, in size 4/0 & 5/0 just for when I desire to throw a senko.

The only bait that I've used o-rings on is a senko and I've found that 3/8 OD and 1/4" ID 0 rings work best for me.

This idea comes up every so often. Back in the days when most of our information came from Field & Stream or Outdoor Life, when the early issues of Fishing Facts & Infisherman were considerred "too technical" by most fisherman, there was a side bar telling you to do this every other year or so. Maybe Field & Stream & Outdoor Life took turns telling you to do this - or something similar. Back when I was a meat fishing bush hippie I fished a "jig & popper" for a while. This consisted of a 1/8 size crappie jig with a leader tied to the hook and 9 or 10 inches behind the jig you tied on a top water fly rod popper. I had a few decent days with this rig, then I realized that I was getting 90% of the hits on the jig and not the popper and I was getting stuck some (bank fishing, you're gonna get stuck every so often) and then I realized that a 1/8 oz maribou jig with a little piece of plastic worm threaded on worked better and didn't get stuck quite as often, so the jig & popper became personal history. With that singular exception, I can't say that in my limited personal experiments that I've had any luck using strung together multi-hook rigs. Several times I've read in Bassmaster that when drop shot fishing you could use a heavy jig in place of your weight - never worked for me - just got stuck a little more often. Again, referring to the drop shot, I've read that you could stack 2 or more hooks on the line - again to cover slightly different depths. That never worked for me - it was slightly more difficult to cast. Back in the 90's Bass Pro marketed the "Missouri Rig". It consisted of a football head jig with a wire leader coming out the back of the jig head with the idea being that you'd attach a 12' or so mono leader and have some other soft plastic trailing your foot ball head (which was generally dressed with a BPS version of a hula grub.). The displays I saw at the Springfield BPS recommended that you use the BPS version of the trick worm for this situation. They were " high floaters" and on the same display they marketed a worm blower so that you could make the worms "float higher" There were numerous pictures of the Missouri rig in action and several different ones tied up on the display. Kinda like a smaller Carolina rig with a hook & soft plastic on the main weight and a trailing, floating , soft plastic bait tx rigged trailing along behind. It looked cool. I bought some of the jig heads buy never got around to trying it that weekend when I was a Table Rock, and in the brushier & weedier reservoirs that I fish week to week it didn't seem appropriate. Anyway, for the original poster, just because any of these multi-hook approaches didn't work for me, that isn't any reason for you not to experiment. If you come up within something that works for you - good. Edit - no clue how the 1" space appeared in the middle of my post and I got not clue how to fix it to make it more readable - sorry