fishwizzard

@KP Duty, man, that door in the top pic makes me nervous. I see the gap you left for the knob, but still. I think I would get some of those neon colored fiberglass driveway marking poles and stick them in the danger-zone slots

If you hunt around you can find single hooks that are designed to be treble replacements and come with larger hook eyes and are available with the eyes both inline and perpendicular to the hook point. I use Owner/Cultiva hooks, but there are others out there. If you have a lure where the treble is attached directly to the hook hanger, then adding a split ring or trying to open up the hook eye are really your only choices.

I was shocked how well Frasier held up when I rewatched it a year or so ago. I don't know what happened to bring attention back to it, but it seems like a lot of people are watching it again, the r/Frasier subreddit has like 40k members a like a dozen posts a day. I also think Magnum PI holds up very very well. It's a lot darker (Magnum kills a dude in cold blood) and more serious (the underplayed and respectful way they deal with PTSD) then I remember it being.

Oh man I way way prefer a proper DS sinker, if just for the imbedded swivel. Also, I try to use the lightest DS weight I can get away with so being able to swap them out as needed is nice. The overhand knot keeps the weight just fine on the cast and still lets me pop the weight off and save my hook and plastic. Surprising no one, most of the time the line breaks right above the knot, I wonder if anyone has even done a strength test on the overhand?

If you tie an overhand knot in the line it will keep the clip on weights from flying off on the cast but will still usually let you pull the weight off when snagged. I DS with a casting combo and that weight coming of on the cast is usually a complete show stopper.

That's a bummer, but it looks like you could still end up with a smaller presentation with that frame and the blade end cut down. I really like hidden-weight spinners, I rarely use a trailer and think they run better with some of the weight further back. What's the weight on that head?

My closest spots are a 15min drive, there are four of them but they are all tiny and various levels of too-pressured. I live in central MD and while it's a very very developed area, there is a lot of water with bass in it. The issue is that while some of them are "good", none are "great" and most are "meh". But, within about an hours drive I have dozens and dozens of spots ranging from tidal marshes full of bass and snakeheads to deep rocky river valleys where I can wade for (small) smallies. I have an every evolving list of about a dozen spots I focus on every year, so there is enough variety to keep it interesting but not so many that I can't learn them reasonably well.

Very nice. Can you get smaller titanium frames? I really like smaller "palmable" sized War Eagle Finesse spinnerbaits but the pickerel wreck them in a single hit most of the time, I can never seem to get the wire bent back well enough for them to run right afterwards.

I run straight fluoro on some of my spinning reels with mixed levels of fuss. I have 7lb Sniper on a Shimano 2500 with no complaints other then the line twist from ds fishing. I run the same line on a smaller 1000 sized Shimano and it's noticeably harder to handle. I use KVD L&L and will walk out and re-load my line every 2-4 trips, which helps a ton. For anything lighter then the 7lb Sniper I just use mono, I have found that the thinner the line, the less the positive features of fluro (slackline sensitivity, helping small plastics sink/stay down) don't really seem as noticable and the bad features (handling, knot strength, resistance to kinking damage) seem to be amplified.

I have a measuring wheel and figured out that generally I am making 30-40y casts and fish pretty shallow, so I shoot for 60-70y of mainline on reels used on longer/heavier rods and 40-50y on for shorter/lighter rods. It's not an exact science though, I use Daiwa reels and for the most part they have a halfway mark on their spools, so I use that as a rough guide when adding backing. For casting reels, I back with either 20 or 30lb braid, depending on what reel the spool will be living in. I save old braid when I strip it off, so I rarely have to use new braid as backing. For spinning reels, I use plumber's tape as backing and tend to fill 1/2 to 3/4 of the spool with it before adding any line.

I never peg unless for a general dragging/hopping/swimming t-rig. If I want a fixed weight I will use a jig head of some sort. The only time I peg weights is some pitching to cover and when making a t-rigged jig presentation.

Was just about to post about the 72H. It proves that MB can make a very good rod with similar specs to the Tequila Baccarac, so it's a safe bet that it's not going to be a total dog.

I am constantly wearing plastics and other lures, plastics especially are generally heavier than you would guess.

I gave up trying to load it tightly on the first pass. What I do is to slightly overfill the reel while keeping the braid as tight as I can. Then I go outside, tie the line to a fencepost, walk all the line out, and then crank it back on under pressure. I have gotten to the point where I can eyeball the initial fill enough so that it usually right on the money once the line is on there tight. I repeat the walk it out and crank back under tension routine every 3-4 trips with my braid reels, more often if I spend a day pitching.

The shooters in english style driven hunts were/are called "guns", so it might be a riff on that.

Megabass has a few rods named the "Criffhanger", it's nice to see that people can still have a sense of humor about cultural/linguistic differences.

Are we selling spreadsheets here here now? Boys, I have some sweet ones, primo stuff, PM me for deets!

I fish frogs with a snap, specifically a Decoy Egg Snap, #3 size. I started doing it when fishing parts of the C&O canal in MD. There are parts of the canal where you will have 100' of thick duckweed, then 50' of open water full of stick-up wood, then 100' of duckweed, going on like that for a mile or so. I prefer a walking/popping frog on the open parts but a heavier dragging frog on the duckweed. It's not worth retying that often and carrying two rods is out of the question due to the traffic on the towpath. What I found is that the snap makes even a easy-waking frog (Jackall Gavacho) walk with the slightest rod twitch, and more importantly, at most any rod tip position. It also makes it super easy to get the Gavacho to walk in place with with minimal slackline. It also let makes it far far easier to walk most any frog with any rod, even rods with tips that are not conducive to easy walking. The snaps don't pick up any more grass/duckweed then tying direct and with a weight of 0.006oz, they don't effect the buoyancy of a frog at all. They are rated for 70lbs, which I don't think they hit, but in yard testing they survive more force then I would ever put on a rod and more then the 40lb braid I use for frogging. I get endless grief when I tell people about it, but I am never going back to tying direct if I can help it.

I used to have a gen1 Tour Versatile. It was a great general purpose heavy rod. I used it for frogs/toads, single hook reaction baits, and buzz baits.

Yep, I use 4" EZShiners on a 1/8oz Crawler head fished the same way. It's great presentation for all sorts of water. I want to use the 3" EZShiners as well but have yet to find the ideal jighead for them.

I have never held the Feather rods, but I used to have one of the Recon 2 BFS rods. I liked it a lot, a slightly-slower-than-Fast taper, a soft tip, and a good solid backbone. I sold it a year or three ago and instantly regretted it, I almost chased the guy across the parking lot.

A dark bottom and a light bottom are all I need. I do prefer the top of the lure to be as bright as possible, it makes it a lot easier to steer it around cover.

I wouldn't start with "big" swimbaits, but something like a S-Waver 168 is a good way to test the waters. They weight a little over 1.5oz, so you can (carefully) throw them on a lot of bass rods to see if you like them enough to get a dedicated rod. I have found that for the waters I fish, the smaller 4-6", 1-3oz glidbaits and wakebaits are the sweet spot in terms of getting me larger bass, but still being able to get a good landing ratio for the much more common 2-3lb bass.

Thanks. I know I tend to fish to the side more the to the front, but maybe I am overthinking it. This spring I will tape some dowels to the other side of my crate and see how it works out.

What kind of yak do you have and how are you storing eight rods? I have a relatively short yak (Slayer 10) and find that anything more than four/five rods stored vertically behind me in my off hand side really cuts down on the casting angles I can get.