fishwizzard

A mix of bank and kayak, this last year was way way more bank, which is a trend I plan on reversing this coming season. I really prefer wading to either bank or boat however, if I lived closer to wadeable water it's all I would do.

Hah, nice, the beer bottle mandrel is great, I have seen guys use them to form pvc pipe into rod holders. Truly a versatile tool!

I bought one of the Ducks last year to use as a xmas tree ornament, a role it is reprising this year. I have thrown it a few times, but it seems pretty close to a WP 130 but maybe a little less loud/agressive.

Yea, it is a great spot but I never bother to go on weekends due to the crowds. I need a kick in the rear to motivate me to drag a kayak down there. The rest of the canal from there up onto Seneca Creek can be a great fishery, the first few pics up there are from around Pennyfield Lock. But the canal can really suck if the water is way down or super muddy, I am always nervous as hell when I go fish there as the conditions can be so rotten and it's such an awful drive for me.

I have also been messing around with this idea. I have just been hooking the zonker on the hook but plan on tying some up over the winter.

Yea, they price is a little nuts, but the light weight won me over. I do wish the handle was a a bit longer so I could tuck it under my arm.

I have the smaller version of this net; http://fishpondusa.com/product/detail/nomad-hand-net/2055 The smaller one will handle any smallie I am likely to catch and I figured if I ever started caught ones too big for it, I would be happy to shell out for a bigger net! I really liked it more for trout/catfish by-catch, smallies and panfish were never as much grief to unhook as those two species. They are super light and float, so they are great for wading. I never really use mine anymore, I started crimping all my barbs down and can release most fish still in the water. I still use it in winter as it keeps my hand dryer.

I use braid for backing on most of my baitcasting reels. I use floro as main line but only want a cast and a half on there at one time. Braid keeps the spool weight down and also acts as "emergency" mainline. I use 30lb as backer so most reels have at least 30-50y on there and unlike mono, braid will still be fishable after sitting on a spool for a year or more.

I did a bunch of looking a day or two ago and they seem to be gone for good. It's nuts, last Saturday morning, I had them instock at like 3-4 places, then by Saturday night/Sunday Morning, they were all sold out.

Hah, it's Groundhog Day in here, I clicked your link to discover..... So I think we have had this conversation before. The question now is, "where on earth did they end up, if they even got delivered at all?"

What bobber stops are you guys using that give a good grip on thin (like 7-8lb floro) line? I can't even really find ones that hold super well on 12lb floro, nothing I have tried will work at all on thinner line.

Good to hear, I want to explore the non-towpath side a bit now that the ticks and thorns are less of an issue.

It's not over until freeze-up! It just gets slower and less exciting. Also, have you been to widewater lately? I have to head to that side of the world next week and was thinking about stopping by and dragging a jig for a while, but always wonder about the water level.

Finally got my swimbait combo going. Reel is a Ringa SSS with 6.8:1 gearing and a RCS1016 SV spool. Rod is a MB Hyuga 72H. The reel was a complete impulse buy, I had wanted a round reel for a while but was not ready to drop the money on a Lin or Monoblock. The ability to take 34mm spools pushed me over the top. I have discovered that it is sensitive to inductor length as the stock spool from a sv103 would rub ever so slightly, but the 1016 and 1012 spools both work great. I am really surprised at how comfortable the reel is to palm it is and I really feel like the spool sitting higher makes thumbing it a lot more precise. The rod I was waffling over for a while. I had bought an Irod Fred's MS in the spring to use for frogs and light swimbaits, but I ended up liking swimbaits more than frogs, and could never get used to both the long handle and overall length of the Irod. I came across the Hyuga and read some really good things about it, so I took the chance. After today I am in love with it. On the high end, it casts and works a BBz 50 Rat like a dream. It effortlessly lobs it out as far as I would ever need to cast it but I can still make short accurate casts with it as well. The rod tip just bends in a bit on a slow retrieve and if I crank it fast to work the rat 6-8" down the rod handles it great, the FMS felt like it was going to snap when I tried with it. On the low end, I fished a Little Creeper Sunfish on a 4/0 Beast hook and it will just launch that little guy. I felt like the sensitivity was pretty good, I could feel the riprap bottom and could feel it land when I made little hops. I have the reel spooled with 25lb mono, so I was not expecting much. At the end of the day I tied on a 1/2oz frog and the rod loaded and cast that well enough that I think I am going sell the FMS and try frogging with this combo. The only thing left to do is get a longer handle for the reel, I can't decide if I want to keep the stock corks or go nuts and get a ZIP handle and knob set, like this guy but in purple.

Yea, it is nuts, but the little kits really keep me organized and lets me just grab a combo and a few 3600 boxes on the way out the door. There are so many little ponds around here it's a rare week where I can't sneak in a little fishing three or four days. It also helped me cut down on lugging a ton of stuff around with me and focus on whatever presentation I want to work on. I also have pretty bad insomnia a lot of the time and fussing with tackle is way more relaxing than reading or watching tv.

Hah, thanks for the tip. Sorry if I blew up you spot, but it's hard to frame a shot at Allen's without making it obvious. Anyone with eyes (and polarized glasses) can tell there are fish in there, but I don't think most people know where to look.

Thanks! The sub-3500 planos have such crappy latches, but I love them for wading or when I want to beat the bank without a even the sling pack, just a little chest pack on my belt.

Well, if you would leave me the location in your will that would be great. There are so many quarry ponds around here that I would love to have access too. Sometimes I want to just drive around with a stack of $20s in my pocket and see if I can strike a deal will some quarry superintendent, but I suspect that insurance companies take a dim view of that sort of thing these days.

Semi-joking response, spend $400 and buy both an Orochi XX Dropshot and XX Stinger Shot rods while they are around and onsale, fish them both to see what "style" of DS rod you prefer, sell them for 75% of what you paid, then buy a high-end rod that is close to the one you liked best. I picked up the XX Drop Shot this fall and chose it over the Stinger as I was going to t-rig my plastics more often then nose-hooking them, but some days I wonder about that stinger tip.....

Not a purchase per say, but I was out at a little pond yesterday and found this guy floating on a leaf mat right up on the bank; I lost it about a month ago as I got cocky and threw it too close to cover on too light of line. I know it's the same one as the front hook has a single dull point that I was going to touch up after "one more cast", that being the one I lost it on.

My buddy is a wildlife biologist who has been doing electrofishing in MD for like a decade now, he is my goto for "what color is X around here?" questions. Last time I asked him about craws he said that in southern/central MD they are various reds/browns/oranges. I am trying to make a real go of jigs this winter as well and I picked blue/black and brown/orange as my two colors. Also, @reason, a pond with clear water in PG during the summer sounds like an impossible dream. I spend a lot of the winter walking the banks at my usual spots so I can see the bottom for a change. So many of the ponds around here are old gravel pits that it's almost impossible to predict the bottom contour from looking at the surrounding terrain.

The 990s are maybe the best shoe I have ever found for standing on hardsurface all day. I spend most of my time at work on hard floors and the comfort difference between the 990s and my usual hiking shoes was insane. For fishing I wear water shoes in my yak and hiking shoes/boots when beating the bank. The best trick I learned this year was for wading sandy/silty rivers. I still wear my water shoes, but instead of wearing them barefoot, I wear a thin (3mm) pair of neoprene socks with them. The socks are tight enough at the ankle that they keep sand and grit out and help pad any that makes it inbetween the sock and shoe. The abrasion does kill the socks in about a year, but I buy them onsale on amazon for around $15 and it really makes for a more comfortable day in the water.

I was out with my nephew a few months ago fishing a small lake at dusk. I was fishing a WP 130 and flying it way way out there. Something hit it right as it touched down and it felt like a cinderblock grabbed my lure and dived straight down. It was so odd, sometimes I would just be reeling into a very heavy weight, but then I would pause and the line would move off on it's own. It felt like a snagg that would sometimes fight back. I could not figure out what kind of fish would hit a topwater but be so strong and heavy. It took me almost 3 min to get it landed. Turned out to be a snapping turtle with, I kid you not, a shell about 20" across. I got my lure back but it was a little hairy for a moment or two.

I have a dozen or two 3600 boxes in assorted styles that I build into little "kits" based around a type of lure, a specific presentation, or sometimes a mixed-lure kit for a specific combo. The remainder of my plastics live in their factory bags, sorted roughtly by type and stored in plastic shoeboxes on a shelf. I lug the kits from house to car in a generic gym bag and once I get to my spot I will pull from the kits to pack a single 3600 case that I actually carry around with me in a tackle sling. When I am in my kayak I just grab a few kits to cover the conditions I think I will face and toss them in my crate. It's incredibly inefficient and I am forever re buying stuff that I already own, but have buried in a kit somewhere and forgotten about. But I get a little kick out of building the kits up and it gives me something to obsess over when I can't get to sleep at a reasonable hour. I keep wanting to find a better gym bag type thing to keep the kits more organized in my car, but am leery about buying anything online as it is hard to visualize how well I can load them up. I like to keep my 3600 boxes stored flat to keep plastics from deforming, so a lot of tackle-specific bags are out as then mostly seem to favor vertical box storage.

Here is a more boring question, what tackle sling and box are those? I have been using a flyfishing sling for bank beating for the last year and while I do like mine, a Fishpond Summit, there are some things I don't like about it and am always casually looking for something better. Some of the JDM tackle sites have interesting options, but they often only fit boxes smaller than a plano 3600, like the one you have there looks to be.