fishwizzard

Guys I caught a really weird bass: I'm in Miami for work but had some time today. Hit a canal and caught this guy and a pile of small LBMs. I hope there is still some action at home, I have the next two weeks off and want to do nothing but fish.

Nice! For some reason I have never fished any of the Columbia Lakes, other than maybe an hour or so at Centennial. Cleary I need to remedy that.

Yeah, with all the high-quality lines out there to choose from, the one that marks the halfway or even a quarter points would absolutely tip my purchases in it's direction.

These things are great as a general finesse plastic. I fish the 3.5" ones on 1/16oz shakyhead Jigs using the MWF retrieves and weightless on like 2/0 woke hook fished like a fluke. They are surprisingly durable for how soft they are.

The advice I was given here I was struggling to learn a baitcaster was to spooled up with 8 pound YoZori Hybrid. It casts easily, is pretty strong, and is cheap enough that the backlashes hurt a lot less.

I use Megastrike when I'm fishing jigs or using elaztech plastics that will hold the sent. I would use it a lot more if they offered it in a fliptop tube, like toothpaste.

The sv105 or the JDM version are pretty easy find for around $200 online right now.

I would love to take you up on that, I will shoot you a PM when I am back in town.

Got our for a bit today, got two. One little guy; and this guy at just over 2lbs; Got them both on a baby bass fluke. Had a few other hits, all on the fluke or a Menace grub. Headed out of town tomorrow for work, enjoy the weather guys.

I can tell. I am all about performance upgrades/tweaks, but one might as well buy pretty parts if one can. Speaking of that, I have a pair of sv105hs reels and I would like to replace the break dial with something easier to grip and a bit less wobbly feeling. I also want it to match the existing factory red highlights. Do you know which, if any, of the aftermarket ones will match the factory color? There might be some handle knobs on the way already. If there were, it was only because they were cheap and I was already paying shipping for a longer handle, which imho is clearly a performance upgrade, not a cosmetic one.

I fished one for a bit today. ML/RF GoEmotion rod, sv105hs, 11lb Defiler mono. All in all I am not super impressed. It was very hard to get the Prank to pop as compared to the Pop-R I was switching it up with. Now, with my lack of experience with poppers I was also having trouble getting the Pop-R to pop, I would not take my lack of success with the Prank as gospel. But, it was much more difficult to get it to pop on the surface and most rod movements sent it diving. As a diving lure, I liked it a lot more. It has a much more aggressive action than a J-7 Rapala when run at the same speeds, but the Prank is far easier to burn just subsurface, which I really did like. If I can work with it and get more consistent popping, then I think the lure will have a place in my box, if not then it is just an expensive J-7, which is less appealing to me.

I keep telling myself that in no way shape or form am I going to start trying to color match my rods and reels. I keep telling myself I don't care about that stuff, I keep telling myself that my car is a POS and looks like a homeless person lives in there, that doesn't bother me, why would I care what my fishing gear looks like? I got a umbookmark this thread or something, it's not a good influence on me.

I think I would attach the crank bait behind the popper, but I'm just spitballing ideas here. If ever stops raining I'll try the Pranks I bought out tomorrow and try to report back. I suspect the water everywhere will be the consistency of chocolate milk, so I don't think I'm going to have much luck with them.

Sure, but the guy who first combined a nail-driver with a nail-puller into one tool was a smart guy!

Over the winter I decided to give jigs a try and have been slowly building up a collection. I have gotten about a dozen or two from Seibert Outdoors and the quality, as I am sure you all know, is amazing. Price is pretty great too. I have had some luck with the RT Swimmers in KVD Magic and wanted to get some swimjig to match. Not seeing anything on the site, I shot Mike an email and he offered to make me up some to match. Pretty nice job I think. I am currently looking for some waterproof googlie-eyes to glue into the eye holes.

It's less "other side of the river" then "other side of a specific logjam"

I would argue that, if the line diameters are close, the Alberto is fail safe even if poorly tied. In my informal testing, it has never failed, the leader always breaks at the lure or in the middle, never at the knot. I was testing it to see if the sometimes sloppy ones I tye on the water will hold. While I always try and try it perfect, I have great confidence it will hold even if I mess it up a little.

I love the sv105 and have a second on the way. One will be paired with a cr721 IMX and the other is on a Majorcraft Go Emotion ml/mf rod. The first is going to be for soft plastics, the second for jerkbaits and small cranks.

Hah, well, I have a "spot" on the Little Pax too, but I see guys there all the time. Fortunately, they are mostly on the wrong side of the river and never seem to want to wade to get to the good spot. The just stocked Governor's Bridge, that Hudd cannot come fast enough. I am heading there tomorrow at some point to fuss with my BFS trout combo, I think my line is too heavy, but I need one more day of struggling with it to make myself pull it all off and go lighter.

Yea, I have a few of those and the hook is really soft feeling. I only really use them with something super thin like a trick worm. Likely will not buy more once they are gone. Slider heads though, never had an issue with them.

Hah, I don't mind giving out intel, seeing other people catch good fish in "my" spots just lets me know it is worth coming back. I also usually only talk about the ones that take some hiking to get to, that keeps the crowds thin. I keep the smaller spots to myself as well. When I had just started out I got a ton of advice from folks online, up to and including "paddle to the downed pine next to the old boat house, cast to the left of it" level of detail, so I try to help others out.

I have Thurs-Saturday off, and I am going to try to fish every day. Going to hit a bunch of ponds and see if anything is awake. I usually hit the PG and Charles ponds as well. If you see a bearded white guy with a short rod cussing about backlashes, come over and say hi. I also got mad at work today and ordered two Hudds, a 68 Special in Rainbow and a Weedless Gill. I finally have a rod that can throw bigger baits, so I wanna see how they work. I got the weedless versions of both, but it is going to take some time before I am happy about throwing $25 into a weedline.

Man, that is cool. The Keitech 2.8s are an amazing small water/finesse lure, but they are so fragile that panfish just wreck the tail instantly. I am really interested in seeing if these RT ones have the same action weightless at slow speeds. So far I like the RT swimmers in the larger sizes. They have a more aggressive action then the FIs, but they are so much more durable. I have had some issues with them t-rigged as the plastic is thick and firm enough that it takes a much more force to get a good hook set then with the FIs. I think I am going to switch to the RT swimmers for trailers and open hook presentations and keep using the FIs for weedless presentation or when I am using lighter tackle.

I wouldn like everyone who has posted some variation of "hook sets are free" to please send me five dollars to help replace one of the half dozen or so jigs I lost over this winter trying to teach myself how to fish them. But, at the same time, I caught a few nice bass, much bigger than the ones I usually get, setting my hook into what I was pretty sure it was just another log. So I guess I can't complain too much about some of those five dollar hooksets. Learning to just set the dang hook was one of the hardest parts of fishing for me to learn. I wasted so much time first year or two being overly cautious and being obsessed with only fishing weedless presentations that I struggled to catch much of anything. Then I got into wade fishing in shallow streams, so I could just walk over and unsnag myself. So I started setting the hook every time I even suspected a fish might be there and my catch-rate and conference went up dramatically.

There is a rod builder in Redding called Smallie Stix. I have gotten a pair of spinning rods from him and love them both. They were each about $150 on a MHX blank, but he will build you whatever you want. I also like/want shorter rods and don't think I will ever buy a factory spinning rod again.