Driftb

I am going to bust some chops if I see someone NOT casting overhead in my boat. It is a real pet peave of mine when guys are casting sidearm, or whole arm. I want to see an over head flick cast. it's the most efficient way I know of to cast long. The movement should be 90% wrist, 10% elbow, not the shoulder or upper arm. With a fast or extra fast spinning rod you'll be able to cast farther and with less energy than using a "nightcrawler or doughball sling" You should be able to load the rod just fine starting at 11 o'clock. The long windup is just going to cause problems with the other anglers in the boat. Plus casting all day you want to use as little energy as possible to get the job done. Flipping and pitching are another story. These are relatively short underhand casts using heavy lures and casting reels. You control the splash with your thumb. If you are on the bank, just do what you gotta do. Watch out for low limbs.

I like to use a jerkbait. Find one that works for you. I like LC Pointers #78 and 100. I also like X-Rap #100. If your river is very shallow, try a Flat rap. They can be killer in shallow rivers. The Keitech swing impact or Berkely Havok Beat shad is also a great cold water lure on a 1/8 or 1/4 oz jighead. If the water is super cold, try a hair jig.

I am OK with either, but I also really like the rubberized cork composit "TAC" handles that Fenwick is using on some of it's rods. Very light and it is even grippy when wet.

With soft plastics- I hesitate a few seconds before I set. This is a necessity. With braid and a sensitive rod, it's very easy to set too soon. I try to get my guests to set a few seconds after it, especially with tasty soft plastics. A fish will carry a soft bait off, then stop and eat it. that's the time to set. When you feel the initial tic or the pull of him swimming off is too early. set when he stops pulling. It takes some patience. With topwater lures, wait until the lures has been pulled under. Setting on the hit will usually get you zero. With jerkbaits, set as soon as you feel the hit. The trick here is feeling a hit on a slack line, as most hits will come on a suspending jerkbait during the pause after the jerk. Sharpening your hooks helps a lot. If your hook is absolutely sticky sharp, the fish is going to have a harder time throwing it even on a slack line. When you start to pull the line tight, if you feel a hit or if it feels mushy, set hard! About missing hits- This has a lot to do with quality of equipment and skill. I do not think that there are many hits that I do not notice. If there were, I assume I would be reeling in a fish occasionally that I didn't feel hit. Doesn't happen often. That being said, I have been fishing for more than forty five years. I am pretty familiar with my equipment, and at this point, I really only use rods and line matched to the technique that I am very confident with. I cannot tell you how many times I have a client in my boat and as I watch his line I see the hits way before the client notices them. Many times I tell them to set, and eventually they do it and as they reel in a fish, ask l me in amazement " How did you know I had a fish on?"

The worst day I've had I lost a couple of Pointer minnows and a rapala product. Another guide friend of mine had guys in his boat guys lose eight Rapalas in the first hour of a full day float trip. Luckily there is a tackle shop about a mile from the start of that float. They stocked up with $150 more in lures then spent the rest of the day losing them too!

Do you think it's possible that most of the posters here do it too?

Those rods make a decent tomato stake if you cut off the handle.

I Am in NY state a stone's throw from the Northeast corner of Pa. Wnters can get pretty chilly around here, but occasionallly we get a thaw that allows us to get the boat in the river for a few days. Those days cqn be the best days for numbers and size of the whole year. Be ready for a short bite window though. I have gone all day without a touch, then BANG! Fish on! Next cast...Fish on! I have put thirty to fifty fish in the boat in the hour or two that the bite is on. You have to put in your time and find the wintering holes. Sometimes it is the deepest water yoou can find. Other times it is shallow water nearby. It's amazing that sometimess you'll see bass chasing bait in the shalllows in thirty-eight degree water. You have to reallly slow down your presentation. I mean way slowwwwwww. Like crawl a grub or hair jig, then just stop it for thrity seconds or longer. Other times a jerkbait rules. You'll need to ppause a long time between jerks with that, too. When you do find them in the deep spots, the a blade shines. There is only so slow you can fish that when the water is fifty to seventy feet deep. But sometimes you'll get a fish almost every cast that the lure doesn't foul on the line.

I re occasionally, member a number of years ago when I committed to use and learn the jig and trailer. In this case it was a chigger craw. I had fished jig-and-pig, and also jiigs with other trailers with mixed results for years but never really had much confidence in that style of jig. I had decided that I needed to commit time to the method so I was ready to spend the day deep jigging with some heavy jigs. On my first cast a heavy fish crashed the jig as soon as it touched the water. It turned out to be a three or so pound fish, and that was the wasy the day went. Some fish took the jig on the bottom, others mid water, and I had a couple more reaction strikes as soom as the jig hit the water. So now I have confidence in the jig.

The first time I took my neighbor Ed to a pond I hit that you have to drag the boat over three beaver dams to get to, he proudly showed me how he uses a piece of vinyl tubing over the line tie on a spinnerbait so that he could use a snap swivel. I told him he should get rid of that snap swivel because if he hoooked a big bass it would likely break. He laughed at me. "Why would it break? I always use them" I told him go ahead, but he might lose the fish of a lifetime. I am guessing it wasn't more than an hour and Ed had a big one on. When it jumped, I am guessing it went 24" or so, about the max you will see in this area. Long story short, the bass ran and Ed's line suddenly went slack. When he pullled it in, he had half a snap swivel. I didn't say a word. I do use duo lock snaps though, on crankbait, jekbaits and topwaters, and I have had a few come open while fighting a fish. I make sure the snaps are the heavier wire ones, not the real light flimsy ones.

i was out yesterday too, on the Upper Delaware river on the NY/Pa border. Water was back down to normal level, with a slight stain. Windy again, 5-15 mph, and the front was coming in as I fished. I had one quick heavy downpour, then it was just cool and windy. The air temp dropped fron 62 down to 46 within an hour. This time I must have really been looking for a challenge. I brought a few fly rods and one spinning rod. My plan was to throw an X-rap until I spotted rising trout. As luck would have it, every time I would pick up the spin rod, I would see rising trout, despite the wind. Not one to pass up a fish with a dry fly, I would trade in the spin rod for the fly as soon as I saw that rise. It wasn't easy, but I ended up catching three cookie cutter 18" wild rainbows, a seventeen inch smallie on the X-Rap, and two chubs.

Not the all time biggest fish I'v e ever seen or caught, but certainly the most exciting. I was in Northern Ontario at a fly-in lake. I had gotten up early and gone out on the lake alone. I was jigging up 18- 25" walleyes almost as fast as the grub hit the bottom. I felt a hit, set the hook, and realized that I must have been snagged. It was the first snag I had found in that lake, so I was surprised. I was about to start shaking my lure free when I noticed the line starting to move. The fish started to take drag and all I could do with the 6lb test light action rod was hold on. The run took me only a few wraps of line fron the spool, before the fish turned. I reeled it all the way back to the boat, and it took off again. this time it was closer to the surface, and after two more runs it started to tire. On the third run, I started to make headway. The fish would stop, right under the surface, and I would pump the rod, pulling him back towards the boat. As I was pulling, his tail came out of the water, and when I saw the white on the tail, I realized it wasn't a northern, but a giant walleye. Eventuallly I got the fish back to the boat. It looked to me like I had a new world record walleye. I am guessing that this walleye was easily 45" long. I know this sounds like a likely story, but I am sure of it. I have caught many large wallleyes up to 34" and none of them was even close. As I was trying to figure out how to land the fish, alone, without a net, in a catch and release lake, photograph it and file for a new record, the walleye opened it's mouth and spit out a smaller wallleye that still had my jig in it's mouth. Then it swam slowly back down to the bottom. The smaller fish the the monster walleye had swallowed whole was 22" long!

I don't know what other people here are seeing, but both tangles look to me like they are in very heavy line. Heavier line than I consiider appropriate for spiinning reels. It's possible that your spools are undersized for your line diameter. This will cause line to jump off the spool in coils and if the line has a twist in it, knots like you have will be the result, especially when casting light lures. I have had terrible luck with flourocarbon line, mainly because it is so stiff. I I use 30 series reels and the spool diameters are too smalll for any flouro but the lightest pound tests. When I want to use heavier, stiffer lines, like flouro, mono, or heavy braids I go to a baitcaster. I reserve spinning reels for lines twelve and under, superlines (braid) twenty and under. Casting reels shine with heavier lines, monos 12 and up, braids 20 and up.

I fished the Upper Delaware today. Today's charter was postponed to next week due to high water from wednesday's rain. Today we had post frontal conditions with winds between 20 and 30 MPH. The river came up 3' yesterday and came down two feet today. Water color went from Gin clear to 6" visibility chocolate milk color. I fished a deep long pool with my outboard instead of drifting the river, Water temp was pretty stable at 60-62 degrees, and most of the bass are still in the fast water. . I managed to put some decent fish in the boat, but nothing big. 3 16-18" smallies and a few 11-13". I thought the spinnerbait was going to do the job, but I should have spent more time on jerkbaits, as the x-rap accounted for most of my fish. we ended up with about a dozen fish. All in all a tough day.

I try to support my local tackle shops. There are a few in my area and they do their best to carry my reccomendations. If I send clients to big box stores, they usually show up with the wrong lures. If an individual lure costs a buck or two more than at a big box, oh well. By the time you cover C******'s or B*** ***'s shipping, or gas to drive the hour or two,you may as well buy locally. As for rods and reels, I do have to go online, as the local boys just cannot afford to stock the equipment I use. It's also nice to have a local place to buy a license.

Really? You could ruin a perfectly good day of fishing, and likely make that beautiful girl think your out of your mind too.

A friend had some rods stored on his boat in a shed and squirrels or mice, or rats chewed up the handles on 8 Loomis IMX rods, and handles on his reels too. He was not too pleased.

I do find music or a radio to be very out of place on the river or on a small lake. I am lucky enough to fish weekdays and except in the summer, I hardly ever see anyone on the water. I have always felt like being on the river is a rare opportunity to get away from all of the mechanized noise of modern life. The quiet places are getting harder and harder to get to. I't a shame that some others don't have any respect or insight.

Should the question be what do the bass see? Maybe we should be asking what the prey see. I fish a medium sized clear water river. It isn't uncommon for the bass and trout to bite better when the sun goes behind a cloud than in full sun. The bass are taking advantage of the fact that it is hard to see from a sunny area into a shaded area. Fur.thurmore, baitfish's eyes will be adaptedto sunshine so when they swim into the shade they will be blind until their eyes adjust. As for the raptor effect? I notice that the larger fish are less likely to be found near the surface on sunny days. In the Delaware, any fish that isn't deep or near cover won't get much bigger. We see eagles catch fish every day.

When they are on Jerkbaits sometimes you cant miss. Of all lures I use, I think that a walking type bait catches the most doubles. Maybe it's the rattles making all those vibrations when the bass shakes. I think the spittin image gets the most doubles.

I usually will fish in shallow fast current in the fall untill I can't find the fish shallow anymore. Usually it's about 42-44 degrees. If the water comes up, muddies up, and the current speeds up, the fish will commonly drop back into their winter holes and eddies earlier. They will usually stay, but I have seen the water warm up again and the fish will move right back out into the shallow water again.

I had a nice smallie on maybe a 3-4 pounder. Another, slightly smalller one was trying to get the lure away from him, and grabbed it. The two fish fought like the devil, taking line and gettting further and further from the boat. Eventually they started coming in, and I saw that the bigger fish ahd come off. Another, smaller on came out of nowhere as I was about to swing the fish in the boat, grabbbed the lure, and they took off again, and it took me a while to get them back to the boat. I was about to net them both and the bigger fish came off, leaving me with a maybe two pounder. So I almost had two doubles on the same cast!

I used to use a rod that had a fat, pistol-style griip. At the end of a season throwiing walking baits, cranks and spinnerbaits, I had a painful case of tendonitis. It cleared up over the winter, but it also came back later in the next season. I gave that rod away and replaced it with a split grip. Now I have six split grip casting rods and another couple of split grip spinning rods. Although the split grip has a very thin handle and I have huge hands, I now find the split grip much more comfortable and I haven't had the problem since I got rid of that rod. My buddy has been complaining of a sore arm though......... I think that changing it up and using diifferent rods instead of one rod can be a help. Using lighter rods is also going to help with musce strain. As for using your arm rather than the wrist? You'll probably end up with a shoulder issue. Plus you are going to end up fishing like a guy who can't figure out how to walk the dog because he is using his arm, not his wrist.

I really don't know what you are talking about. popping and walking the dog are two very different techhniques. Most poppers move in a straight line when popped, then stop. Jerkbaits will glide in a curved path from side to side when you walk the dog. A few poppers will also walk the dog, like a BPS Slim Dog, or a Lucky Craft Gunfish. Maybe I should say they are jerkbaits that pop. Most of those other poppers are just poppers. They pop, but they don't walk.. Yesterday we tried Pop R's, Chug Bugs, and Torpedoes. We had a few fish roll on them, and a couple hit a Heddon Sppittin Image. Then I tied on a lucky Craft Sammy 100. I caught three fish in five casts, and another dozen smallies in the next forty-five minutes. The strikes were pretty savage and if a fish didn't get caught on the first strike, it was attacking that Sammie until it did get caught.

I have heard that the old saw originated in Ohio or Michigan in the Western Basin of lake Erie. Winds from the North or East will bring cold and rough conditions as the wind has travelled over water for a long time and will kick up big waves and storms. Winds from the west or south do little to affect the water as the wind is coming right off the land. I've spent a bit of time on the Western Basin and seen those storms coming out of Canada. When they pop up, you want to get off the water quick.