fishwizzard

The hook size chart that Keitech put out for the Fat Impacts calls for seemingly too small of a hook for most of the sizes. But I have had a lot of success when I use their recommeded sizes.

I use the 3.8 fats weightless all the time and if rigged perfectly straight on a twist lock, they will run true, but there is no margin for error. Even a very small split shot crimped onto the hook will improve things immensely however. I bought some tungsten puddy to try, but I can't get it to stick to anything other than itself and even then it always falls off after a cast or two.

Like everyone says, use the lightest head you can. I do run a weedless version on either an Owner Ultra Head or a Decoy Nailbomb head. Both work well but you do miss more hits then the exposed hook version. I do prefer them for faster water and for when I want to drag/deadstick the lure.

Swimming a jig w/Rage Swimmer trailer.

First fish of the year; First bass of the year; I have worked every day sense Xmas, this was my first outing. Caught the pic on a Siebert 1/4oz Chatterbait w/ Menace Grub trailer, the bass on a 1/4oz willow-bladed chartreuse/white spinnerbait w/ grub trailer. The bad part of the trip was I somehow managed to backlash all there rods I had with me. Two of the reels even have SV spools I can blame a numb thumb on one of them, but man I am moving to a cheaper line for a while.

Well, I sadly have little experience with larger smallies, but the smaller ones do kick up quite a fuss. The same river has a great population of very large redbreast sunfish and they will hit most finesse lures. They don't move as quickly as the bass, but they pull like a truck and seem to always run right at me and try to escape down river.

Even of only these too are true, it is worth it to me to switch over. There are plenty of fish in the sea, as the saying goes, I don't mind losing the occasional one. Another "feature" of barbless hooks that I like is that they can keep my hands warmer. When wading in cold rivers I will often fight the fish to my legs, then slack the line to let them pop off. I still "won" the fight, but my hands stay dry as I don't have to grab the fish.

I don't have cable, but ponied up the $10 or whatever to watch them online. I learn a lot from the show, but mostly when it comes to casting technique. It is amazing how fluid some of these guys are.

If I had the option to buy all barbless hooks I would and crimp them down whenever I think to. I like barbless a lot in general as I enjoy the challenge of keeping the fish on as it jumps and runs. I also fish alone and often quote far from my car and would rather not hike out five or six miles with a lure stuck to my face. I am less worried about single hook lures, but everything with a treble either gets the barbs pinched or replaced with a single hook.

I have a line spooler like that one and I really like it. I have found little difference when spooling up a spinning reel in keeping the fill spool fixed or letting it spin for braid, but with floro it seems to keep the line from wanting to jump off the spool as much. No idea what the mechanism of effect is, I might just be imagining it. In any case, it is a good tool and keeps me from bugging my wife whenever I want to respool.

Yea, when I got into fishing I wanted a short rod to go after catfish with, so a clerk thought about it for a while and handed me an inexpensive 5' boat rod. It is labeled "Medium" but the range is like 1/4-1.25oz. This caused a lot of confusion when I started looking at expanding my arsenal.

Hah, I was thinking about this the other day. I am teaching myself how to splice hollow core line and was wondering just how strong of a 1/8" line I could get if I started with weaving 50lb braid.

I have some of the 8.4 on my finesse spinning reel and in my limited experience so far, I like it a lot. But, the only thing I have to compare it to is 6lb YZH, so obviously it is going to feel and handle a ton better. I am excited to give it a try more when it warms up a bit.

Ned Rig all day every day. Until I get bored, then 3" senkos. small tubes, and J-5 Rapalas with the trebles switched out to single hooks. But really I think the Ned is my all time most productive small water lure

I also fish barbless a lot of the time when going after smallmouths. My most frequent spots are good for numbers, not size. So I use a lighter rod and pinch my barbs down. With how fast the run and change direction, and how high and often they jump, having to keep line pressure 100% of the time really makes landing all the 9-13" fish a lot more enjoyable.

I used the heck out if the 4" Bubbling shaker this spring. I mosly fished it weighless on a small twistloc hook. I will also rig them on a very light shaky-head and fish them with the MWF retrieves.

Ha, when I first got into fishing I bought a bunch of those things, I don't think one ever lasted more than three or four casts, I was constantly snaging and losing them. Now that I am, at least a little, more competent, I kind of want to try them again. I assume you can catch a ton of panfish on the smaller ones as well, right?

Yea, I also like the idea of being able to use cheap mono as the drop line. I keep wanting to try them but never really remember to hunt some down.

Does anyone use these hooks? I have yet to even try drop shotting (despite owning hooks, weights, and lures), and I really like the idea if being able to pretie a bunch of weights to different lengths of line so I can swap out depending where on the river I am. Even better, i can start using the hundreds of assorted nuts that follow me home in my pockets from work as weights, to both save money and not litter lead everywhere.

I agree that youtube is the simplest way to go if you don't want to learn how to mess with videos yourself. Also, I read the title as "Resizing flyes" for some reason and clicked expecting to see like a 5" long Wooly Bugger or something.

My wife fishes with me occasionally, and I give her a 4" z-man finesse worm on a Slider head. It is weedless and she can just cast and crank. I need to buy some actual slider worms at some point, but the Z-mans are great for standing up to the hoards of panfish that attack it and are so thin that little hookset is required.

I am going to have to unsubscribe to the ALF mailing list, it is too tempting. I have been looking at the 5'10" casting rod with the little cigar grip all morning and I do not at all need it, but man do I want it!

I have an SV105 and as advertised I can set the breaks to full and cast a senko straight up and let it fall and hit the water with only a few loose coils. I also just got Zillion SV and it will thow loose coils if I have the breaks maxed and just let the lure fall so idk whats up, but I have not had time to mess with it much.

How well do these work? I would love something like that, but we used to have a line counter at work for aircraft cable and never found one that worked well or for long and I guess I assumed a counter for smaller line has to be fussier.

Actually I think the rod question could be interesting assuming one could get an honest answer from them. These guys have a huge amount of experience and I assume most to none started out fishing the high end stuff.