fishwizzard

I also see the wisdom of swapping rods and reels around. I already do so for my L and UL gear, as I have different lengths and speed rods for different lures or locations. For bass, I am trying to hold myself to two spinning combos and four casting combos. My house is small so a double sided 12 spot rack is all I can fit and my panfish/perch/cat/surf combos take up one side, leaving only 6 for bass stuff. Reels are easy to store, but I would rather spend money on more spools, which I can keep in the car. I also have a pile of unloved rods but I am not quite ready to get rid of them all.

Hi, I am looking for a 6' M/F or XF casting rod. I want to use it for 5" senkos and flukes as a primary use with smaller cranks and spinner baits as a secondary use. I am looking for a sub $150 rod as I am not sure if going that short is going to work how I hope it will. I prefer split grips but am not super picky. Short casting rods are hard to find, other then pistol grip ones, which is a whole other project The Daiwa Procyons have caught my eye as they are available for well under $100 but I cant find much info about them. It looks like Daiwa has a few different lines of cheaper rods but again, info is thin. Thanks

I fish for white perch a lot and have the most luck with small spinnerbaits or inline spinners. Chartruse seems to be the magic color around here.

Unfortunately you are about at the limit of my knowledge relating to tiny fishing. I would say that unless anyone else can chime in, just read the amazon reviews and spend what you are comfortable "wasting" if the rod is pure garbage. In any case, amazon has a great return policy, so if the rod is truly faulty, you can eventually get your money back. For line, I would get a 200ish yard spool of the smallest line you can tie comfortably. My lower limit is about 4lb mono and 6lb braid. If you are looking for a rugged inexpensive reel, the Okuma Avenger line is good for the money and my little 500 sized one has survived some awful abuse and still keeps catching. It is a very small spool, so I am not sure how mono would work on it, I use 6lb braid on mine with a leader.

I also used them almost exclusively before I found the Owner Twistlocks and Cutting Point straight shanks worm hooks. I still like the Skip gaps because I some times like to swap a senko between t-rig and wacky while walking the bank and the twistlocks are not great as wacky hooks and tear up the worm more if you remove and reattach it a few times. The skip gap you can just roll the worm 45d and get a good grab 2-3 times.

I have started using steel weights when I want a light weight but a larger size, usually to protect the nose of a t-rigged plastic and prolong it's life. However, I have yet to find a quality steel weight and the cheap ones fray my line. I use two bobber stops to insure it don't move but it still happens. I wonder if brass would be better? At the very least brass will be easier to buff and smooth then steel.

This is the one I have: https://www.amazon.com/Retractable-Sections-Telescopic-Blue-Fishing/dp/B005TF1OW4/ref=sr_1_24?s=hunting-fishing&ie=UTF8&qid=1476028163&sr=1-24&keywords=tenkara There are many others in that range if you click around for a bit. Remember that this is a sub $10 rod and it fishes like it, it's main advantage over a length of bamboo is portability, if I was fishing at home I think I might rather use the bamboo as it might have better action. But as a dip pole it works well enough and I can make some crude casts with it. I think I use 10 or 12 sized hooks, I literally just bought the smallest one that looked like I could hold comfortably with my fat little fingers. With dexterity and patience (which I both lack) smaller hooks would work. I find that the long shank/short bend hooks are best for the fish as you can rarely not get one out. I also pinch the barbs for the same reason. For bait I either use trout/crappy bites or any of the 1" Gulp baits. I also started trying little flys on the same hooks, using bits of flash and feathers I had from a perch jig project. If you look around the net there is a lot of diy mico-fishing stuff out there and if you can walk to your spot then almost anything is worth trying, minnows don't seem too picky. Google "paracord fly fishing lure" and you will find a ton of ideas,

To keep myself sane, I try to limit myself to four colors per lure type. I do a light and a dark, (so like a black/junebug and white) and a "natural" and "annoying". The latter two depend on what the lure is trying to mimic. I tend to start natural/dark, then move to light/annoying if I am not getting hits. There is obviously some overlap depending on the lure, but it seems to be working ok so far, and I only end up with four bags of each plastic. The only way I have managed to "test" color is with schooling white perch. I can catch fish after fish on a chartreuse spinner, but if I tie on a brown one the bite dies off, but then changing back to chartreuse it will pick back up.

I believe the "goal" for the serious mico guys is to catch a fish that fits on a 1 yen coin, which is like 1/2"-3/4", so a very tiny fish, which requires the super tiny hooks. I have caught good old USA creek minnows on little hooks from Walmart. I have a tenkara pole I got from Amazon for like $9 and tie on 3lb mono from a bulk spool. It is really tough to cast without pinching on a little split shot, but it works well enough to fool around with.

I hate messing with leader but I feel far more confident with one. I suspect that this is because I started using a leader right around when bass fishing began to "click" for me and I started catching regularly. A goal for next year (the list is getting long) is to begin to experiment where I, when on a good bite, will remove the leader and fish straight braid to see if I keep catching.

The only time I have had a large hook bend on me was when a snapping turtle grabbed it.

Yea, I have not ordered anything yet, but I am going too. It looks fun as hell and the rods are so small and light that I can just toss them in the water bottle pocket of my hiking pack and be ready for some minnow action at a moments notice. I have a poster from the parks department from the country I fish in a lot listing all the species that live in their parks. Only a handful are game fish, most are small minnows and assorted baitfish. I think next spring I will challenge myself to catch one of every species on the poster, like my on little "wanted" list.

If you are going for tiny fish, get a hook with a very long shank relative to the hook gap. This will keep the fish from swallowing it. As for size, look for an assortment pack, Eagle Claw is an inexpensive brand that should offer them. For small fish you don't need super hooks, but maybe get a small stone to touch them up. If you really get into tiny fish, then check this out: http://microfishing.com/ http://www.tenkarabum.com/micro-fishing.html The Japanese have made a whole sport of it, some of the hooks need a jewelers loop to see the hook points.

When wading for smallies, I will occasionally, when my plastic needs replacing, flip rocks on shore until I find a nice fat worm, then I stick it on my jig and toss it into the the deepest undercut I can find. It always catches something, usually a large sunfish or small cat. Oddly, never a smallie, I think they might be more cautious then the others.

Surely I need red as well? And maybe brown? I started fishing with no one to teach me and I wasted a ton of money buying every lure under the sun, mostly plastics that I didn't really understand how to use. I have just recently got them all organized and anything I don't catch a fish on in the next year is getting sold/traded/given away.

Huh, I have never caught bigger then a ~2lb fish on one, but they tend to just run up the line on the strike, which seems to ruin the nose first. I tried the parasite clips but have never got them rigged to my satisfaction. I am going to look at screw-in nosecones, but even as is, they are only $5 per pack and I am happy with how many fish I get out of them, I just like to travel light and dont want to carry a ton at one time. One of the strengths of them is how versatile they are which helps with with that. A single lure I can fish half a dozen different ways on the same rod is just great.

They do tear up quickly, especially if you use straight shank hooks. I just save the torn ones to trim 1|2" off of and use as trailers.

I am using 6lb 832 currently with a 6lb leader, shortening the leader to 4' solved my issues. I might move to a shorter, thicker leader due to active pickerel in the same waters, lost a very nice one (and a brand new spinner) right at boatside as well last month. Knot stregnth-wise, what do you guys think the thickest diameter leader I could get away with, joining to 6lb 832? Lure action I can work out through trial and error, but I would like to start as thick as possible and work thinner

Yeah, I suspect lighter line would be better, but this is my perch rod and a lot of the year there is the chance of striped bass as bycatch, so I don't want to go too light in line. Got a 16" one last month on my 5' UL, it was a hell of a fight.

What weight lures were you using? I was trying to throw inline spinners between 1/24-1/16oz and felt that the line wasn't coming off the spool with much force.

You win the award for "Funniest Mushroom Joke Made on a Fishing Forum". My landlord forages for mushrooms and is very generous with them. He is a smart guy and I trust him 100% but everything I learned in BoyScouts cries out for me to not eat them. I ignore that little jerk and always accept, sauted mushroom quesadillas are the best thing.

I have access to brackish rivers, so I can fish for pickerel right up until everything freezes up. Even then, last year I got so sick of waiting I went out to a local pond when it was about 35-37 out one day, just hoping for some open water. I got there and it was frozen solid. I threw a jig across the ice a few times and then walked back to my car. On the way I saw a large rock. I picked it up and chucked it as far out into the pond as I could. To my surprise it flew about 20' out and broke a hole. I cast until I got my jig into the hole, then propped my rod against a tree, lit a cigar, and hung out until it was finished. I shook the rod a few times during, then reeled my lure in and went home. It still counted as fishing in my book.

I am confused by what people mean by "grass". It is a catch-all term for any and all SAV, or is it referring to a specific type of SAV? I read here that chatterbaits were good "in grass" and I then spent a day or so throwing them into big fields of hydrilla, which just resulted in me removing dozens of pounds of hydrila from the lake. At least now I know my knots hold well. Around where I live, I never really see anything that looks like an actual grass growing in the water, but watching fishing vids online clearly some parts of the country have the stuff.

Thanks for posting this, I am right around there and this looks like a really cool event. I have not gotten into fly fishing yet, but just received a book about simple fly tying. I am going to get into it this winter and look to pick up a rod in the spring. My wife has expressed an interest in taking a fly fishing class or guided trip, so it could be a fun way to get her hooked on fishing.

I got into fishing in my mid 30's and didn't know a single other person who fished when I started out. I bought a lot of random equipment and lures and just tried every type of fishing one can do where I live, which is a pretty good variety. I gravitated towards bass fishing and began reading everything I could on the subject. I actually began to catch regularly when I started paying attention to figuring out where the fish were likely to be holding rather then just trying to throw my lures as far out into the water as I could.