fishwizzard

Wow, it's a great store, if only it wasn't three hours away.

I was using Suffix 832 in 50lb. I genesis of my problems with it when I was trying to see if I could skip a jig with centrifugal brakes. The answer is a firm "nope", but the resulting backlash is what prompted this thread. I have never had any luck with braid on casting reels, from the heavy stuff to trying to use 10lb on a BFS reel. While I do like that braid doesn't kink and weaken, I have had zero luck picking out even a small backlash, without using a dull needle as a marlin spike. I think I will respool with the rest of my braid and just get a second spool for the other lures. Fortunately spools for this reel are very inexpensive. I got this combo for bank fishing where I only carry a single rod, so I need to make it versatile enough to cover a few different presentations so if I end up miles from my car I am not locked into a single lure style. Even just running braid I should be fine with just frogging and punching, I will just have to be conservative with my casting when trying to get close to cover with the latter.

I am not following how moving to thinner braid will help with digging in or backlash-picking. I would be easier to break off I suppose. I am not really going to be fishing super heavy weeds, but I do worry a little bit about pad stalks. I do have a reel or two already spooled with 12lb YZH, which is about the diameter of 20lb mono, I might give them a try and see how it goes.

Hi, Picked up a new combo (*** *** A on a Fred's Magic Stick) to use for frogging this season. I also want to use it for 5-6" paddle tails and swimbaits, large topwaters, and some light pitching/punching. My plan was to fill the stock spool with 50lb braid on it for Frogs and pitching, and buy a second spool to fill with floro/mono for the topwaters and swimbaits. However, after a day or three of fishing with it, I am growing to hate the heavy braid. I don't like how it holds knots, don't like not being able to break off a snag, and really don't like how annoying it is to pull out loose coils or even think of picking out a backlash. Can I get away with using something else for frogging? I never fish really heavy slop, mostly pads and duckweed. Thanks

Hah, well, looks like I am going to be safe behind a wall of snow for a while. But don't worry, I am doing like 16h days all next week, so the weather should be fine! I am going to hit the local ponds today while the sun is out. I saw a bunch of larger than expected bass in one of them a week or so ago so I am gonna drag a jig across the entire pond until I catch one of them.

For real it is driving me crazy. Every one of the last few warm weeks I have either been gone or slammed with work, then when I have a few days off, the temp drops and the wind picks up. I have all next week off and oh lets see what it looks like; I guess I am driving north to chase some trout. The only place I have really fished for them is Daniel's Dam, I would love any suggestion for other nice spots. I have waders so I am primarily looking for places I can wade in bring the fight to the fish. I have the stocking schedule, but it is rather vague about exactly where the fish are dropped so it is hard to zero in on wadeable spots.

Agree on the first part, but my second choice would be a 1/16oz Keitech shaky head jig with a 3.8" Sexy Impact. It seems to catch as well as the Ned, but works far better when you want a weedless presentation. However, it completely disregards the "frugality" aspect of the MWF system.

I am up two combos (and assorted lures/TT for them) this winter already. My dog might have to get used to a lesser grade of rawhide for a while.

I fought the Monkey off. I really want a BFS rod that can handle lures down to 1/8 of an ounce. The combo will be used for wading small streams and rivers and for some of the smaller ponds I frequent, and at both of those spots I will throw weightless 4" finesse worm type lures pretty often.

Hey guys just want to let you know that I am offering a new service aimed at my fellow Maryland fisherman. I seem to have a magic power where when when I travel out of town for work, the weather at home is lovely. But, when I return home and have a week off, it suddenly decides to be 30° and windy again. So for a low daily fee, I will arrange to be out of town whenever anyone would like to schedule themselves a glorious few days of fishing. i'm thinking of expanding into ensuring that weddings have nice weather, but I think I'm going to jack my rate up for that.

This is good to hear as I skip almost all of my weightless plastics whenever it is practical. Mostly just for the practice but I do think sometimes it seems to trigger an immediate strike once the lure comes to rest. I don't skip senkos as it seems to kill their already awful durability, but do also almost always skip my Ned rigs as well. If I am wading and find a longish run with a lot of overhanging trees it is almost a sure thing to get a bite if I can get my Ned far back under them.

Man, that sale seems to cover a ton of stuff. Currently have a tab open with a CR721 (for $191.25!) sitting in my cart. It's low end is a little heavy for all the finesse stuff I want to do, but it is going to be a struggle to go to bed without hitting "Checkout".

Well, I have only been fishing for like three years, so I shouldn't be tired of anything at this point! I am already into my second wave of rods and reels, having almost finished replacing all the random stuff I bought before I had even the slightest idea what I was doing or what I wanted.

I use floro/CP leaders mainly because I fish a lot of weightless or lightly weighted plastics and having a bit of sinking leader seems to help me work the lure and keep it at the depth I want. I find, for example, a weightless Super Fluke will stay at a nice 2-3' depth with even a short 2' 8lb YZH leader tied on where with straight braid it wants to rise with most every rod twitch. I fish for a white perch and pickerel a lot with UL spinners and this spring I am going to try to use a very heavy and short floro leader, maybe like 6-12" of 15lb, in front of my tiny inline spinners. I hope that it will one, provide me a bit of pickerel protection, and two, help get those light lures to stay down when I reel them in fast, which is often how the perch want them.

Man I am really starting to want to grab a sv103 while they are still around but I have no real use for one at the moment. I think I could justify a second sv105 to go with a Daiwa BBB telescoping rod I just picked up, but to be honest there is no issue just moving the one from my jerkbait rod to the BBB when I need it for a hike or trip. I have next week off and am going to post my entire arsenal, I am sure you guys can find a hole somewhere a sv103 could fill.

I bought one (and a few other lures) to hang on our xmas tree as my wife was complaining that I wasn't excited enough about doing xmas stuff with her. She thought it was funny so I guess I did the right thing. As for fishing it, I have a local pond where the pattern is as follows; Little kids show up to feed the ducks, which makes them swarm the banks All the sunfish run right up to the banks to get the food the ducks miss The bass cruise just past all the duck-commotion to pick off the sunnies on the edges of the school I cast a baitfish imitator out there and catch bass So i think I can make the duck lure work here by casting it on the edge of the duck swarm and working it like a gosling that is straying away from the group.

I fish the 1/8 Sebile lipless cranks pretty often. I bank fish with a single rod most of the time and when I have one of my finesse rods with me they are great when I want a little more casting distance to fish something further than I can cast my usual weightless plastics. I also fish them a lot when I am out hiking with non-fishermen as they cover water very fast, catch a wide range of species, and hang up less than an inline spinner. This lets me get some fishing in while not making my friends stand there while I slowly work a plastic or small jig. I either crimp all the barbs down on the OEM trebles or switch out to single hooks. The single hooks rarely snag even when bumping them around wood. Last fall I had an insane day with a bright orange craw colored one catching stocked Rainbow trout. I was catching them all over the lake and they would race out of cover dozens of feet away to hit it.

I have been slowly switching out all my trebles to single hooks. There is an English company called "Cox and *something*" that makes single hooks, barbed and barbless, in most every size. I have a small scale and try to match the weights as close as I can. Inline spinners all seem to work just as well, as do small lipless cranks and the smaller Rapala floating minnows. I don't fish "normal" cranks so have no info on that. I do change out the hooks on my cheaper jerkbaits that don't suspend well with OEM hooks, but so far have not messed with my few nicer jerks that actually suspend.

I have a pack or two. They do skip well, but I don't have a lot of experience to compare them with. Have never caught a fish on one so I cant comment on the hookups. But they do feel like they would work well, the keeper is a bit of stiff wire and takes very little finger pressure to make the hook pop out.

I hit up a small pond yesterday and had a single hit, a nice one shot out from an undercut and smashed my jig. But in my usual fashion I blew the hookset. It seems like every time I see a bass hit my lure I never manage to land it. On the bright side I the water was more clear then I have ever seen it and I found a bunch of deep holes I never suspected were there. Also saw about a dozen very nice bass cruising around. I had written this spot off before but clearly they are in there and from the litter/tree lure distribution, it doesn't seem like many people fish the more productive but less accessible parts of the bank.

I picked up a Fred's Magic Stick this week to be my frog/heavy topwater rod. I spent about two hours with it yesterday and am really impressed. My most used rods are all around 6' so I expected some issues when going to a 7'5" rod, but they were all pretty minor. It can bomb a frog very far but still do close and accurate, but not as easily as my usual 6' rods. I was able to walk the frog pretty well, but the long butt would snag in my jacket at times. I next tried a Whopper Plopper 130 and my first cast took off all 50y of braid and a few feet of backing before I thumbed it to a stop. It was a bomb cast but still way further then I have been able to cast before. Making more normal side arm casts still got the Plopper really far out there and a few times I had to cut the cast short before all my braid came off the spool. The only other technique I wanted this rod for is heavier jigs/punching for when the frogs arnt working. I hope to get some time to try that out this weekend. Overall I am realy happy with the rod so far.

Yea, I am not usually sentimental, but his operation hits all my buttons. I love the small, light wire hooks, but I wish he would offer a version of them with a wire-hook plastic keeper, I have never found the groove in getting the zman plastics to get on the dual barb keeper without a ton of fighting. Once they are on and glued they hold great, but it is not at all an on the water task for me.

I bought a ton of assorted outdoor gear from them and never had an issue. However I'm done buying sunglasses online, as I have never lucked out out and found a pair that doesn't pinch my head.

Iirc Gohper is a one man operation these days. I know my last order took a while to appear on my CC. They may not run the card until they are ready to ship.

I tried the Finesse Floro in 8.4 on my finesse spinning reel. I like it a lot, it handled and cast very well, and stayed limp and manageable even at below freezing temps. However, I did have an issue when I had to break off some snags on a later trip. To get a Triline knot to break I had to pull pretty hard and most of the time the lie would break many feet from the knot, often in the dozens. In addition, several feet of line would twisted at the break and need to be cut off. I like the line line enough to keep using it, but am going to fill my spool ~50-75% full of braid, then fill the floro on top. This way I can keep the spool topped off with less waste and will leave me with enough braid to fish it with a leader to finish out a day.