fishwizzard

Yea, I too have really never fished the ika, despite owning a few packs of them. I used them a few times with no hits, then another time where I was getting bit, but my rod was not up to making the hooksets. They are on the list for next year.

It is all pretty flat here in the coastal areas. Mostly you have thorns and ticks, so so many ticks. It is too built up for to allow enough hunting to keep the deer populations under control so I go through like $25 worth of spray per month and still get hit bad once or twice a season. We also have bad erosions problems so a lot of the rivers have steep and muddy banks, so most people stick to the more easy to access spots. The first time I went to Colorado and walked right down to a river without dealing with thorns or a slick bank I thought I was on another planet.

Please report back when you use it some. The 14lb does cast very very well and is proving workable if frustrating on an UL spinning combo.

Central Maryland is very very built up with little sizable open space, but there are some hidden gems. I have a great one I found over the summer, it's a gorgeous pond that is a 4 mile round trip hike from any legal parking. The illegal option involves some advanced off-roading or a pretty awful rail crossing up a thorny bank. I am so excited for spring.

Have you used the G-soul before? I didn't read carefully and bought some of the 14lb, which is so thin I can barely hold it to tie a knot once my thumbs get roughed up. I want to try it for real, but I can't decide what size to get or what application to use it for.

Oh man I love running into someone else fishing when I am out in the boonies. It gives me hope that there might actually be fish there! Also then we can pick ticks off each other's heads.

The Stroker hooks are great, but once you get used to the Owner center pin screwlocks, nothing else satisfies. It's easy enough to swap them in, but I wish they were offered as an upgrade.

I bought a pack of the finesse size ones at the beginning of last year. I wanted to use them as sort of a tube substitute for smallmouth in a river I fish, so I stuck one on a 1/0 twistlock and cast it out. If I hadn't given up and reeled it in, I think it would still be drifting to the bottom to this very day. I stuck the rest of them on small 1/16oz jigheads and they perform about the same as any other small tube. Now that I know a little more, I might pick up a pack of the full-size ones to see how they do verse the ika.

Hey OP, if you do decide to get rid of it, I will buy/trade you for it. I have been wanting to try a bailwire-less reel for a while now and could use another small reel for my perch/pickerel arsenal.

That is why I spend all summer covered in ticks, mosquito bites, and cuts. If I just push through one more mile of our lovely Maryland wetlands then the next guy, I can find a spot that no one else goes too.

My plan is to look at all my TW orders from this year and buy a gift card for that amount. But I really don't want to know what I spent this year so I have yet to even look.

I had the day free and decided to hit up Anglers Express in Cockysville. I heard about it on here a few days ago and the idea of a bass-centric store in MD was too much to pass up. It's a little hard to find but is a great shop. While not large, their selection is very well curated, if that makes sense. Talked to the owner for a while and he gave me some spots to try up at Loch Raven, which is right up the road. I decided to splurge on a LC Pointer to see what all the fuss was about. First cast this little fellow decided he wanted a look as well: I caught another his size a few casts later, then nothing. Walked the bank for a while with no other luck. The wind really began to whip up and there were actually waves out on the water. On the way back to the car I made one more cast to where I caught the first pickerel and saw a huge one follow my lure back in. I killed it in about a foot of water about two feel from the bank. I slowly twitched it but he just sat there an watched. After about 45 seconds of stalemate he turned and ambled off. Of course all thoughts of the car were gone and i spent about 45 more minutes casting across the little cove I was in but nothing. The wind got worse and worse and after a wave came up high enough to soak my foot I called it a day.

Ha, my casting skill can not handle a handicap like that at this point. I like that a casting reel is easier to cast with cold hands compared with a spinning reel. What I don't like is my hand being below the spool full of wet line, which drips down on me. I talked to a coworker and wet hands came up. He said that for his winter fishing, he wears a pair of latex gloves under fleece gloves with the thumb cut back. He said that the latex latex layer keeps him dry so his hand heats up faster when it sticks it in his pocket with a heat pack. He uses gloves made for the auto repair industry, which are thicker than medical gloves and can be taken on and off more easily without ripping.

I have tried it with a bunch of different weights with a few different rods. I usually start in the middle of the rating and work up, only getting any really success when I get up around or over the max. The BB1 is on a MH rated from like 3/8-1oz and it will pitch acceptably with a 5' senko and very well with a 3/8oz jig with a trailer, so lets say 1/2 to 5/8oz total weight. For a while I had the LFS on an identical rod (picked up two of the Fenwick Smallmouth's when they were clearing them out) and it was not happing with the senko and the jig was getting maybe a third less distance and none of the smoothness. With the BB1 I could hit a paint can lid at 20-25' most every time, with the LFS it was all I could do to get it that far in a controllable manner. My Daiwa reels are on L and ML rods and I have run the range of weights with them, but only at the upper end or over can I really get any distance but never the smoothness. I bank fish a lot of really over grown ponds and have a lot of spots where my back is right up to the brush. I want this new combo to be able to throw say a 5' senko on the light end and an say 5/8oz total weight jig/punch rig at the high end. I was looking at the Loomis Classic series of rods as I am not going to be making long casts and a short rod is far far easier to fight through the brush. Most guys are not willing to fight the thorns and it is really clear that a lot of these ponds only see pressure from a few clear sections of bank. On my kayak I also find a short rod is easier to deal with and I have a few spots in mind where I can drift into a large pad field and pitch to holes or laydowns/stumps. I would love to find a reel that can help with throwing lighter baits so that I can size down when needed but still have enough rod to pull them out of the cover.

That is a good way to look at it. I learned to drive stick very late in life and the realizing "the clutch pedal is the trigger" was my breakthrough moment. While training my thumb is needed, I also have trouble starting the pitch in terms of getting the line to flow freely enough. I usually keep my breaks pretty heavy and have a hard time getting the bait to sail parallel to the water. I can only seem to get the mag reels to let the line flow well if I back the brakes and spool tension way way off, which kills me in any kind of wind. I do a fair bit of pitching when I fish my spinning combos and can consistently make pretty decent pitches with the occasional "so perfect I wish some was around to see" one mixed in.

Hah, well, show me all your tricks and I promise to fish right on top of you whenever you need a little more pressure.

Before fishing I was into mid range target shooting and with it there were things that mattered a lot at all levels, like a consistent trigger pull, and things that only mattered once you were very very skilled, like checking each bullet for roundness. I suspect fishing is the same way, but I don't yet have a sense of what category things fall into. While I do very much believe you that experience does trump all, but I really notice a huge difference between a Lews BB1 with a centrifugal brake and a Lews LFS with a magnetic. For a while I had them on the same rod with almost identical line and it was really night and day. Obviously one is a more expensive reel then the other, but even my nicer Daiwa reels I struggle to pitch with, even using a wide range of lure weights to try and find a sweet spot. While I know I do need to practice more, I would like to get a reel that makes it as easy to learn as possible. Also I am now seeing that "For enthusiasts, technique specific gear is fun to collect" thing that gets posted a lot happening to me. EDIT: I want to make sure that I am not coming off dismissive of your vastly greater experience, but I am only trying to put some information to the results I am seeing with different reels with similar rods, lines, and lures.

I have a Stormr Surf top and just picked up a pair of the stryker bibs on a BF sale. The Surf top is too intense for my needs and I regret not returning it the first time I tried it on. It is so hot that I have yet to see it get cold enough here to use it. We had very heavy snow here last winter and I was able to wear the top with just a thin synthetic t shirt under it in almost perfect comfort in like windy weather in the low 20's. When I started to shovel I overheated very quickly. This isnt a flaw in the garment, but I was silly to think that something designed for standing in cold water all day would be useful for more mundane use. The bibs I have only used once, and that was just walking around the yard in a storm. They did very well for the 20 or so mins I was out there. I had a pair of hiking pants on under them and was very comfortable. I bought them for hiking as I have never found rain pants that I really like at the sale price was low enough to roll the dice on them. As for gloves, I have never found a pair that will let me have enough dexterity to fish and keep warm.

Every time I get cranky about lead bans I think of my grandfather, who would carefully save all the used motor oil he could get his hands on. He would then use it to kill plants along his fence line. I am sure that he personally never saw any ill effects from this, but I am kinda glad that, through laws, this isnt a common practice anymore. But man would that old fart give you an earful if you suggested he move to a different means of weed control. In practice i come down in the middle. I support bans on lead shot for waterfowl hunting but not for sinkers and jigs. A single shotgun shell holdsmore lead than most of us would like to admit losing in a single day and one will sometimes (if you are lucky) shoot dozens of shells off in a single day bird hunting. It would take some really specific data to get me to believe that most of the bird mortality is coming from inkier and jigs rather than the decades of lead shot already on the bottoms. I think the market for fishing stuff will respond the same way ammo companies did and the amount of lead free tackle available will grow and the price will come down with competition. I will never buy tungsten weights from like SK or whomever because I know I can get it far far cheaper from places like Sebert Outdoors or other online places that buy and sell in bulk. At some point enough people are going to clue into this and the larger retail places will have to respond.

Hi, I want to put together a casting combo for lightweight pitching and other close-in casting. I have noticed that with some of my reels I can pitch with relative ease, but other it is a real struggle. The other night I was reading some stuff about it online and came across this article from Japan Tackle. http://japantackle.com/tackle_topics/brake_system.htm It is a basic overview of the different breaking styles but what caught my attention is their claim that centrifugal braking is better for pitching/short casts then magnetic systems. Thinking about it, the reels I already own that I pitch well with have centrifugal breaks and the ones I struggle with have magnetic brakes. Can anyone else comment on this? It never occurred to me what a large roll the braking system would play in casting, but it seems obvious once I read about it. I looked around online for more info but came up short. If I want a reel for short casts should I be looking at ones with centrifugal brakes?

Outlet Bait is the worst! I've got a lifetime supply of lures I will never use! Really though, I have finally forced myself to not buy stuff just because it is $0.99. All the actual deals I have gotten there were made far less good by all the random junk I bought, stored for a year or two, then gave away just to get it gone. Whoever sets their sales has a very good grasp of how a hoarder's brain works.

I have a drysuit but I almost never use it becuase my hands always get uncomfortablly cold way to fast to make the whole process worthwhile. I have some neoprene gloves with filip up thumbs and pointer finger tips, but as soon as water gets in I freeze.

Yea, I was inspired by your scale pictures to get one. Before I got too deep in the BFS madness I wanted to see what the actual weights of small baits were and was really surprised how far off even stuff like inliner spinners were. A half zlinker will really lose a lot of weight when the salt washes out, but then it becomes so saturated with water then it evens out after the first few casts I suspect.

Oh, you know what, that jig I weighed is a 1/20 one. I remembered that i buy the lightest ones, but forgot they do one at 1/20. I will try and dig up one of the 1/15oz ones to weigh, but I don't think it will be a huge difference. In any case, here are some more MWF plastic weights:

Looks like a little over 3/16oz. I will do a half zlinker in a bit. I have actually been meaning to make a thread for people to post the actual weights of common plastics and lures but have thus far been too lazy to write an OP. I bought a little scale when I was getting into BFS and it was surprising how many lures weighed more than I had thought they did.