fishwizzard

I tried to use a long leader for a while but I was having an issue where the line would snag on the knot as it was coming off the reel, fouling the cast. Admittedly I was doing this with my UL spinning rod (for reasons you mentioned, I wanted to get my tiny spinners to sink faster and stay down on the retrieve) and I was joining 6lb braid to 6lb floro. I was using an Alberto knot that I bushed crazy glue onto and trimmed the floro tag almost flush. About every third cast or so the line would snag and the lure would whip to a stop and drop straight down. I fussed around with it for a few trips before I gave it up. I guess maybe a heavier lure would help the line flow past the knot, but I have not given it another try.

I have/had a 6' 2-piece L spinning rod made by a company named "Tsunami". They are pretty common around here as inexpensive saltwater/surf rods. It wasn't the most sensitive thing ever but it worked well when I was getting into fishing and was rugged enough to survive a few accidental smacks into tree limbs and such while I was learning to cast. The tip did break on me, but I was dumb and tried to lift a ~2lb smallie about 15' out of a canal lock. I fished it with a new tip for months until it had a run in with the rear door of my car. Now, as a 5'7" rod, it is too stiff for most light lures but I keep it around as a loner rod for perch fishing as it still throws and works 1/8oz spinners well enough. They seem to be available online at around your price range and it will definably be a step up from an Ugly stick.

I have a pack or two and have caught some smallies on them when I fished them last. My plan is to use them in the fall/winter when wading small rivers. The small sized Zman Batwings work well as trailers for them and give a nice slow fall rate. My main concern is how well they will work through rocks, I would like to be able to slowly crawl them along the bottom and would rather not lose too many of them.

The Menace grub has been my top producer this year. After trying A bunch of different rigging methods I found one that works incredibly well. I'm at work but I'll add a picture when I get home. In short, I rig them on a straight shank 3/0 Owner cutting point hook with the tip just below the top surface. I fish them weightless most of the time, but if I need a weight I use a 1/8 steel sinker. I want the greater size sinker to act as sort of a guard for the front of the grub. The straight shank hook, while giving almost 100% hook up ratio, really kills the durability of the grub. The larger weight protects the nose of the grub if you have to work it through weeds or other cover. I fish it with a bunch of different actions, from burning it just subsurface to a slow lift and drag. In my opinion the menace has the almost perfect balance of weight, action, and durability. I use either a M/XF spinning rod or a L/MF casting rod and get almost perfect hookups with both. The Menace has a bunch of other uses as the other guys have already stated, even when the nose gets too torn up to t-rig anymore, you could just nip a quarter inch off and use it as a trailer. I started the spring with a firm plan to fish senkos until I became proficient with them, but outing after outing the weightless Menace Frub out preformed them by a shocking margin to the point where it's become my go to plastic bait. EDIT: Here is a picture of how I have it rigged: EWG hooks were much harder to set the hook on. The Owner screwlock lightwires were better, but the Stright Shank is almost 100%. My only wish is if they had a more robust keeper, I might try to add a bit of heat shrink tubing at some point or something like that. I tried parasite clips but they never seem to sit correctly and both mess up the action and grab a ton of weeds/muck.

I got one in bone, caught a dink on my first cast. Caught an other dink on my third cast. I got a little cocky and snagged and lost it on my fifth or sixth cast. I just picked up an other one, this time in Loon, but have yet to fish it. I very much prefer them to buzzbaits, being able to pause and retrieve it slowly seem huge and the WP felt a lot easier to steer around snags.

All my used senkos are in the car currently, so here is an old hawg, but the idea is the same. For nose damage, I split the nose inline with the direction of the tare. For damage in the middle of the bait, I will make a clean diagonal cut to let the glue work on a greater surface area. You need to find some way to support the cut while the glue sets for the long cuts. The worm will not be as strong as new but seems to last for a few dozen casts or a fish or two. I keep my used and repaired senkos in a small pencil case tucked in my tackle bag. They get used for skipping or throwing into snaggy looking cover.

I generally cut the worm at the point of the rip. I find that to repair a torn middle a maybe 3/4" diagonal cut gives a good bond and to repair a torn nose, a cut maybe 1/16" past the tear works well. I also have a plastic bait tray from a pack of Keitech stick baits that I use as a splint/cradle to hold the senkos while the glue does it's thing.

I don't mind if they wear fast if I am catching on them, but it drives me nuts to have to retire one that wore out just being cast and retrieved. I do save broken ones to repair with Mendit, I found that turning a rip into a clean cut with a razor really helps the stuff make a good bond. I also save badly damaged ones that are >4' to nose hook and throw them when fishing in small rivers.

I have never caught a single fish that I can remember with a "Worm and weight" t-rig. Caught a ton with other t-rigged plastics, weighted and weightless, but never caught a fish on a 6" worm. Some day I am going to start leaving everything else at home until I get one on a worm. I have had good results with starting people on a small weedless inline spinner, something like this: I think the tactile feedback from the thump of the blade is helpful in understanding how retrieval speed relates to lure speed and the lures are easy to cast, steer, and retrieve from trees. They also, if you make up some tiny ones, will catch the heck out of panfish and small bass. I then introduce a weightless fluke, which also provides some tactile feedback and is a good intro in "working" a retrieve. It also helps that flukes are effective over a wide range of retrieve styles and speeds, so hopefully a good amount of hooksetting practice will happen as well.

Did it again this evening, lost about half of my spool. Same dumb mistake, didn't look behind me. I was at a local pond, standing on the same rock I always do to cast under a dock. Usually I have a 6' spinning rod with me and can cast from any angle without hitting the large thorn bush right behind my rock. Today I had a 6'8" casting rod. I guess I know now that the clearance from the tip of my spinning rod to the bushes is less then 8". New plan is to use only my 9' surf rod for bass till winter. By spring the casting rod will seem so short and manageable!

I will admit to tearing my junk drawers apart looking for some rivets. I do wonder about the line wearing on the edges of the rivets, but we shall see. I have been having a lot of luck lately slow running plastics just above the dead SAV in many of the local ponds, this techqunice seems perfect for that as well.

I forgot to open the bail on my surf rod once when I had a 2oz Kastmaster tied on. I believe it landed somewhere between Lisbon and Gibraltar, but I have yet to get anyone helpful on the phone when I try to call over there.

The reel I am messing with is a PX68. Using 10lb braid lets me get a good amount of line on the spool while keeping it's ability to work small/light baits well. I have 20lb braid on my M spinning combo and there is a noticeable difference working light lures compared to my ML combo which is spooled with 10lb braid. Ideally I want to use 8lb YZH on this reel but I need to get better with it first, as that stuff is thick enough that a single bad backlash or breakoff will leave me very short on line.

I have a 9' surf rod and have been thinking of buying an inexpensive swimbait and trying it out. I am not sure if I could cast such a beast from my kayak though, so I would need to find a good shore spot for it.

I got a BFS combo the other week and have been fishing it like crazy. If I am wading in the middle of a river, I get a small easily fixable backlash every 10-20 casts, depending on wind. If I am on the bank, it is far far worse. I am still learning and trying to work around cover and branches results in a small backlash every 5-10 casts and I am up to two "tangled to the reel" backlashes so far. I may need to invest in a 600y spool of 10lb braid at some point soon if I don't quickly improve.

I use a Trilene knot for all hook and lure connections, except when I have to use a loop knot. I tried the Palomar for a while but I hate how much leader it eats up and I can't tie it well without leaving a long dead end that needs to be cut off.

I fish a ned barbless most of the time I wade for smallies and have fallen into a kinda weird hookset pattern. I have found that if I set the hook, either via sweep or overhead, as soon as the bass has the lure, I will pull it out of it's mouth a lot of the time. What I have worked out is to reel down quickly to remove all slack, then let the bass run for maybe 5-6', then, if I still have good tension on the line, give a hard sweep set. I use a 6' ML rod loaded with braid/floro leader. I have no idea why this works, but I rarely fail to make a hookset this way. Keeping the fish on is another story, but I like the added challenge barbless fishing give, especially on river smallies. An other advantage is that if the fish drops the lure during the first little run, it is still in the strike zone and many times it will get hit again on the same cast.

Finally got some bass out of the large pond at Governors Bridge. This brings my total to 5, out of like a hundred trips. Caught this weird bass on the South River the other day:

The only "good spots" I have found are places with a mile or three hike in and I never have an issue sharing them. I figure most guys are not willing to walk four miles round trip to catch a bass and those that do just give the ticks a target other then me.

They are my favorite small spinnerbaits. They are decently sharp, run very true, and are inexpensive enough that I can fearlessly throw them into brush and under docks.

Fished the Potomac and the canal a a few different spots today and yesterday. Tough fishing all over, was lucky to grind out a single fish at most spots. Had a monster LMB slurp up my jig at Dickerson, but I freaked out and set the hook too soon. Lat spot I hit today was Hapers Ferry. The water was low so rockhopping was super easy. Started catching right away, maybe one to two tiny smallies at each decent pool. Then, right as a tubing group was passing by, I hooked into this fella: I was using my new bfs combo and it was a great fight, I wasn't sure I could get him in at first, I think I need to look at the drag, I had to lock it all the way down to keep any progress on him. Easily the biggest smallie I have caught to date and a nice end to the trip.

I cannot compete on pure size, but mine was caught in the mouth.

So I found the picture of what I believe is the same fish, caught this spring: I know the fish from today looks smaller, but it was flopping around a good bit.

The park the pond is located in has a mandatory fisherman log and if it is to be trusted (and I do, there are always rangers coming and going from the parking area and they have wandered down to poke at me when dusk was approaching a few times) then the pond gets little pressure at all. Often I am the only sign-in within a few days of my visit. They also do not mow all the way to the bank, so it is highly unpleasant to fish there most of the year. In any case, today I did do one thing different. I hit this pond first instead of last. There are three other ponds on the property that look better then this one. I usually hit them fist and only hit the small pond at the end of the day. It is usually around 2-4pm and I am tired from fishing all day and never really fish it with much care. But I was going through some old pics the other day and noticed that all my catch pictures from this park were from the little pond. So I decided to hit it first, and began the day there at 9am. The park closes until January in 19 days, so I have a bit of time to try and again. Next time I will have a proper rod for my bfs reel and hope to arrive right at dawn and cover every inch of water.

This morning I went out to a small local pond to try out a used Dawia PX68 I picked up the other day. I don't have a proper rod for it yet so I threw in on an old Abu medium action I had laying around. I didn't have high hopes for throwing anything really light with it, so I brought an assortment of plastics, hooks and jigs, figuring I would need at least an 1/8-1/4oz weight to make any decent casts. Much to my surprise the combo was able to cast a weightless Rage Menace a very respectable distance with good accuracy. The Menace has become a real favorite of mine over this past season. I have messed with a half dozen ways to rig it, but I have settled on this: The hook is an Owner 2/0 cutting point. It really tears the plastics up quickly but I rarely miss a hookup now and the plastic is about the perfect size and weight for the kind of fishing I like to do. In anycase, this pond is small, way less then an acre and sits on a waterfowl refuge which is about to close for the season. All summer I have had limited luck here, most trips only managing a small fish or two. Today was overcast and wet, last night was our first rain in a week or two. Having never used this reel before, I made my first cast at an open lane in the shallow pads that cover one bank. Surprised at how well it cast, I aimed my next one at the weed line on the far shore. I managed about half a turn of the handle and the rod jumped and at first I thought I had a turtle. The bass imminently jumped and I knew I had something good on. In general at this pond gives up a handful of dinks and keepers per trip, but I have only ever caught a single decent fish out of it. Today I think I caught him again. I was running 8lb YZH and had to run up the bank a bit to get the fish into the open lane, as I was not confident I could pull him through even the sparse pads. I do almost all of my fishing with a spinning combo and without the clicking it took me a bit to realize the fish was pulling drag. Once I had that squared away I manged to land him. He was hooked right in the upper lip and the plastic had slid up the line. I swear I caught this same fish in the spring and the pond is so tiny and shallow I don't see how there can be many of this size in there. Once I got him back in the water I proceeded to catch about a dozen of his smaller friends and maybe another dozen dinks, all on the same lure. Or rather the same type, they were only lasting about 3-4 fish per and sometimes less. I have some Parasite clips from a LD sale but I have not yet messed around with them. Overall I am pleased as hell with both my new reel and this particular presentation and am excited to pick up my new rod this weekend and head back here to see if I can meet the king a third time.