Raul

A snap swivel ? ---> no A snap ? ---> yes you can, if you are trying to cut corners like not checking your line frequently then I suggest you continue to direct tie, but if you are one of those with OCD like I am who constantly cheacks his line condition, yes you can use a snap .... as long as you use a good quality snap.

This weather SUX ! >, only 2 nice days in two weeks and it continues to rain and to make it worse, now I got a cold ! the pre-sapwn is only two weeks away and what 's the point if you can 't go feeshin ' ?

It 's pretty annoying when you ain 't the fighting kinda guy but your partner is, after a few drinks my friend Paco literally transformed from being a very nice guy to a total fight seeking arse. Like if I cared he got a beating, being 6'2" and weighting over 220 of pure muscle the guy could take a beating ( or give a good beating ), I was worried about me getting a beating cuz I was there with him :-/. But on those ocassions I used The Force ( the force is strong on those with a weak mind my young padawan ) not on the other guys but upon Paco, always managed to talk him out of a fight.

That 's the kind of bait that puzzles me, doesn 't look like anything a fish might eat, yet they work. It 's like those tail-less grub, they look like a turd but they are pretty poisonous to bass, actually, saying poisonus is underestimating their fish catching capabilities, they are lethal.

The "wrong" lure in the right hands is a thousand times more effective than the "right" lure in the wrong hands. The art of catching fish and more importantly, catching fish consistently, is not in the lure itself but where it always has been, in the person behind it, there 's where the pus is.

Learn to know your baits, learn to know your prey.

If you want to believe so ... You didn't quote my entire post, thus some perspective is lost. I see bass chasing and eating the small tilapia all the time. None of the factory baits in their tilapia colors really resemble the actual colors of the talapia they are chasing. You don't think it would make sense to create a bait that is much more realistic for my local waters ?? :-? I read it entirely, I stick to it, if you want to believe so... Well then you MUST be right based on your informative reply. I'll change my order to just clear over the bare balsa You are overthinking it, why ? you are giving bass a credit they don 't have, you insist that an ultra realistic paint job imitating exactly the color of, in this case, tilapia and to be more specific the tilapia that lives in the exact body of water you fish should be an advantage, however you are overlooking several points: 1.- You are giving the bass a sight seeing definition which they do not have, bass can 't see with the level of defintion we can see, their world is blurry so athey won 't be able to see all that pretty paint job. 2.- Bass do not see colors the way we do, so unless the paint can be seen just exactly like they see the colors of the tilapia the paint job will not be seen as you think they will see it. 3.- The colors of the fish change depending upon turbidity, background, light penetration, season and mood, for that purpose they posses specialized cells called cromatophores which contain a pigment named melanin, to those specialized cells you add muscular cells that squeeze the cromatophores and depending upon how much they squeeze or how much they do not squeeze the cromatophore will change color because the distribution of the melanin in the cromatophore changes, more squeezed the darker, less squeezed the lightest. Those muscular cells are ruled by the SNC and depending upon what the SNC detects it 's what it orders the cells to do. Your pretty painted crank is not able to do so, it will always look as it 's painted so in within the multiple variations of mood, water tutbidity, background, light penetration your bait can only match in the best case a minute number of psossibilities, in other words, the paint job will only "match" to the forage in very few ocassions. 4.- Bass will feed almost on anything it can get in it 's mouth, which is an advantage to us, if bass could see the way you think they see, if bass had the ability to reason like we do bass would not strike a bait, you would not be able to fool them, yet all of us fool them over and over again. The fish acts on instict and if it 's instinct tells him that what he is able to see, taste, listen, feel and touch resembles to something that it 's alive and an easy prey the fish will strike, even it it looks unnatural to you. 5.- Bass can 't recognize species for what they look like, what they can recognize is the movement and wounded/injured/dying/handicapped/ill animals have a very peculiar movement pattern, predatory animals can recognize that pattern and that 's the reason why predators prey on them before trying to prey on a healthy animal. Lures imitate that wounded/injured/dying/handicapped/ill pattern, reason why they are effective. So do unnatural color patterns work ? sure they do, bass in my neck of the woods have never seen a trout, a shad, an ayu or a perch however painted baits in those patterns which the bass can 't recognize as prey catch fish. Bare balsa will work if you put the bait in the right place and if the lure has the right action.

If you want to believe so ... You didn't quote my entire post, thus some perspective is lost. I see bass chasing and eating the small tilapia all the time. None of the factory baits in their tilapia colors really resemble the actual colors of the talapia they are chasing. You don't think it would make sense to create a bait that is much more realistic for my local waters ?? :-? I read it entirely, I stick to it, if you want to believe so...

Daiwa when it makes something good it makes it reely good, the ergonomics are great, the reels are very refined, good looking, tight, perform very well and last a long time; BUT, Daiwa also has skeletons in it 's closet, so as long as you avoid the "novelties" from Daiwa you are in safe territory.

Well, a couple of years ago I was going to fish this lake called La Pólvora about 100 miles from home, checked the weather forecast on Monday for the weekend ( we were going on Sunday ), here 's in general terms what came up: cloudy with 20% probability of rain. I said "koool !", why kool ? cuz if you happen to live where I live cloudy is like a blessing when you are fishing in the middle of the summer where temps can soar above 100 degrees. So on Sunady 5:00 AM we went fishing to La Pólvora, we arrived at 7:00 AM, put the boat on the water, not a single cloud in the sky and no clouds in sight :-/, oh well it 's early morning so clouds should not take long to appear .... yeah right :. Not only there wasn 't a single cloud in the sky all day long, we got roasted from above, roasted from the glare and to make things worse, the lake being formed by damming a canyon is rock in any form you like it, no problem when the water is high and the surface reaches the vegetation level, but the lake was missing 15-20 ft of water so what 's left is only the bare rock and that gets hot and irradiates heat like an friggin ' iron. Ahh, and the breeze don 't help either, it 's like having a blow drier blowing on you set on HOT !. So my point is, don 't plan ahead based on the weather forecast, you 'll get dissapointed more than often.

If you want to believe so ...

BowHuntingMonkey got you ? Well, he must have fled the premises when I kicked him out of here and went your way. My friend Pedro got the Bow Hunting Monkey a few years ago, he still hunts with powder but he prefers the string & arrow more. One day I went with him to practice and man I liked it, but not the target practice, I liked the safari ( 3D ) practice a lot. We discussed about all you can do in that kind of practice and I got interested, but after thinking it thoroughly I lost interest. The BowMonkey got kicked from here.

Dang...I have to disagree Raul..I know you have a ton of experience, But...I have gammies that I have sharpened 3 months ago, and they work fine, yes I have caught fish on the hooks I sharpened. So..my question is, why would a hook be trash due to a dull point, that has been sharpened...? When you sharpen a hook not only you remove material from it making it weaker, the sharpened end will last less, it gets dull faster, the point thickens and you remove the protective coating, the hook will rust at the point. Corrosion will continue to the weaken the hook just where you want it to be sharp, right at the point. Things like hooks are quite inexpensive compared with the rest of your gear; the only thing in direct contact with the fish mouth is the hook, save on anything you want except in two things: 1.- Hooks 2.- Line

If you think/believe that red hooks are going to help you catch more fish I 'm the first one to say you should use them. However, there no reason why you should sharpen any hook, hook that needs sharpening is trash.

Oh baby ! :-* Yabba, dabba, dooh !

The bad news ? never The good news ? everything he makes you purchase is going to make you happy.

SIZE !!! But the kiddo gets bored if he ain 't catchin ' so if lil Rul is comin with da then it 's numbers. "Paaaapii, ¡ ya pesqu é una !" ... and he shows he 's trophy ( which is smaller than the bait :-? ) but what the heck, that big grin on his face is worth a thousand 10+ pounders in my book.

Since neither manufacturer has shallow spool reels for the domestic market if it were me I would get a 2000/2500 reel, spool half of the spool with 10-12 mono as filler and the rest with 6 lbs test Hybrid or CXX.

Man, it 's been raining cats and dogs down here, 5 days of non stop rain last week :-?, algae is starting to grow in my ears :-/, then Friday cleared up, clear skies, sunny and bright, screw the Super Bowl !, I went fishing, today ? well .... It 's getting cloudy again ! >

The limpest mono I 've fished with was Stren Magnathin ( don 't know if they even make it anymore ), sure it was limp but had absolutely no abrassion resistance. Then comes the ever popular Trilene XL, very limp, very little abrassion resistance too, great for fishing places with little or no cover and non abrassive bottom composition. Regular Stren is also very limp but as any limp line the abrassion resistance is low. So you can have very limp but poor resistance to abrassion or resistant to abrassion but poorly limp. You want both ? well, try copolymer but don 't over do it, above 10 lbs copolymer is as limp as a slinky.

The Holocaust didn 't happen either, 6 million jewish bodies just can 't dissapear and I 'm only counting the jewish.

Missiles or bombs don 't leave debris like this,:

Yeah, we lived in Mexico City and the climate is a lot colder than León because of the height above sea level, León is warm and we do use sweaters in late December and January.

Yes, the Pixy is the ultimate finesse baitcaster but it 's an import. From what is available now there are several options: Right away right now ---> Daiwa Sol E-baying ---> Chronarch 50 Mg, Curado 100D

Yep, he had nice pieces, the Clothesn 'accesories Monkey was strong in him, by the time he died he had 45 3 piece taylor made suits, a good hundred of Countess Mara silk ties, dozens of french cotton taylor made shirts, dozens of those English shoes ( Trickers and Saxons ) silk raincoats, cashmere socks, cashmere and vicuña sweathers, coats. Too bad he was bigger than I, all that nice stuff ended up given away. Me ? I 'm happy with denim trousers and short sleeved shirts. Like I said, I 'm a redneck !