fishwizzard

The two brands I use are "Cox & Rawle" and "Cultiva", the latter being a JDM brand. I have also crushed barbes before, using round-jaw pilers makes it easier to get a smooth and flat pinch. With inlines and spoons I have found that you need to play around with the single-hook size a bit to make sure the action is not effected, for cranks it seems to matter a lot less.

I am a short-rod lover! Portability, accuracy, and style, short rods have it all! Seriously, I really think they offer a lot, especially for bank or yak fishing. I do a lot of hike-in fishing and the QoL difference between a 6' and a 7' rod when trying to work through thorn-choaked banks/bottoms is huge. When on the yak shorter rods let be pull up close to cover/under stuff to get out of the sun for a moment and make it less nerve-wracking to position myself parallel to the bank under trees to fish shallow. Functionally, I really like shorties for any presentation that I want to pop/walk/twitch/jerk. Being able to work tip-down really opens up a lot of options in terms of action and I feel like I can make smaller/softer moves with a shorter rod vs a longer one. I also think shorter rods, esp shorter casting rods, are just fun to fish with as you can make one-handed casts as you wade or walk along the bank.

I went through a big tiny-crank phase a few years ago. I would swap the hooks to mostly-barbless singles and would throw them when wading the smaller creeks around here. Using a short MagL/XF spinning rod, they were great for practicing my fighting skills against the various panfish and dink bass. I should dig them back out for this spring, the barbless hooks let me release fish w/o getting my hands in the water, which is nice during waders-weather.

I prefer a much shorter rod for poppers, 6' is the ideal. I am circling the drain over buying a P5 Pop-X rod, I have been holding off but now it seems like there are a few positive reviews out there.

It's a fun little rod, though I wish the guides were a little less chunky. If it had a springier tip it would be ideal for small poppers.

They used to kinda have one, the CR721c. It's not amazing below ~3/16oz, but it's a great little rod for poppers and smaller plastics in open-ish water.

I have bought a dozen or so reels with only one issue, a Zillion SV with a chipped main gear out of the box. Cost me like a hundred bucks to fix, but overall I am still many many hundreds in the black from the cost savings over all the reels.

Thinking about them more, has anyone tried them as a weightless river presentation? Cast up-stream and slowly lift-n-twitch them back with the current, letting it sink into the deeper holes?

I have a card full of them but have never really fished them much. I picked them up for a coworker who was talking about using them as a kid and while we did have a fun afternoon slaying pond dinks with them, I have never really gone back to them. Most of my ponds are full of SAV and have muck bottoms, so they snag and/or catch debris like crazy.

If you are willing to reinforce the skirt-band with wire and touch up the hook, the SK Bitys bugs are hard to beat for the price. Otherwise, I really like the Molix Nano jigs are great as are the Siebert 1/8oz Dredge jigs.

I got bit by the BFS bug early on in my fishing career, I more or less taught myself to cast with a BFS reel. Don't do this by the way, it's pretty pricy in terms of backlashed line and lost lures. My current line up is something like this: MB P5 Bait Finesse/Hien Alphas 800s 10lb Sniper Used for "3/8oz total weight jig/worm stuff" and those little War Eagle spinnerbaits. MB P3 Criffhanger Airy Red Pixzilla 7lb Sniper Used for "1/4oz total package weight jig/worm stuff" MC Volkey VKC-65UL/BFS Pixzilla 6lb Supernatural Mono Used for Ned rigs and little paddletails, mostly a wading combo MB XXX Black Themis Alphas PX68 7lb Sniper Used for dropshots Loomis CR 721c Aldebaran 50 11lb defier armilo mono Used for small poppers and open water flukes Dobyns 7'4" Ul/Kyung Teaton UL Alphas Air PE Special 6lb J-braid Used for spoons/spinners for trout/perch. I don't really like either rod and am looking for something else. I have had maybe a half dozen or so other BFS rods over the years and have a few more BFS/Finesse reels waiting for a rod. I really prefer the egros of casting combos over spinning ones, thus the collection.

I'm a huge fan of tiny jigs and the ring claw is an excellent trailer. I also really like using chunk trailers on small jigs. I thread them through the body like you would with a normal plastic, the flat bottom makes them skip easily and helps slow the fall even more.

I think my memory of it was maybe a decade before that. I distinctly remember switching over to bourbon from scotch because I felt scotch was too expensive for what you get. I also remember buying a bottle of Pappy van Winkle simply because of the ridiculous name and not being terribly impressed by it compared to other stuff I could get my hands on in that price range back then.

Back in the day I loved Booker's, but it was $50 a bottle then.

I start wet waiting the second I can get waist deep in the water without emitting a high pitched shriek and running back to the car.

Oh baby.

Obviously, this is the correct way. However, there is an exemption you can file for if you have a cat who will not stop messing with it when hung that way.

It's one of my favorite Internet arguments, right up with beans in chili and how to hang toilet paper.

Never more then a single rod and just enough tackle to fish the top/mid/bottom.

After like two years of talking about it, I have finally upgraded my rack/yak carrying system. I feel like my passenger side mirror is 100% safer now with the lift assit and I can get the boat up there in literally half the time. If anyone wants to get up to some yak shenanigans this spring/summer, let me know There are a lot of spots I'd love to hit, but are unsafe/unreasonable/unfun to try to launch and recover from by yourself.

I have the IMX version of your rod and love it. IIRC Loomis doesn't make anything close to it anymore, so if you love the blank, you might want to look at having the reel seat replaced.

I find it to fish a lot like Fluoro in terms of feeling "solid" and having a connected feel to the lure as it's falling through the water column, but it's noticeably easier handling in terms of memory and knotting. I use the 11lb for poppers it's supple enough for them but still works well for fishing a fluke on the same combo. Right now Sniper Fluoro is my "default" line, but I think DA equals or beats it, but the lack of bulk spools kills me.

It's really really good line. I am a fluoro junky but if Defier Armilo came on bulk spools and/or came thinner then 11lb, it's the only line I would use other then the odd bit of braid.

An old GLX 782c MBR. I had the chunky factory guides replaced with much smaller Recoils and it's made a great rod even better.

The ponds of PG/AA are warming up, I managed 6 bass in one afternoon and only three of them were super-dinks! They all came on more or less the same presentation, a paddletail swam along "deep water" transition lines. Last year was a bust for me fishing wise, took too much work in the spring and fall. This year I am trying to block off most all of May and hope to have a rod in hand for most of it.