fishwizzard

I much prefer smaller hooks as well, #2 to #4 is what I prefer. A lot of the smaller makers offer them that small, River Rock sell them but they are pricy. Ebay is also a good place to look.

The Slider heads are amazing for rigging anything slimmer than a Senko, the 1/16oz Pro heads and a 7” Powerworm or 6” Zoom Lizard are a match made in heaven.

The picture I posted upthread is from that stretch, there is some good looking water there but it got a lot lot lot of pressure this past year. It also got stocked with trout on Tuesday, so plan to get there early for parking.

Start with the brand Major Craft, they have a bunch of different lines that are one of the more available JDM brands. I think Megabass had some 2/4 part rods as part of the jdm Levente line.

I stick pretty close to the traditional MFW system, if I want to fish on the bottom there are better presentations for the job that I can fish on the same combo. Most every impoundment that I fish is full of wood, has a soft muck bottom, or is a combo of the two, so a tiny t-rig or shakeyhead works a lot better.

Loomis should use this as ad copy. I am also really interested in the cr724, but it seems even more rare then the 784c.

I got really into bass fishing about the same time I rediscovered eBay, the results were predictable. About a year or so ago I went through all of my plastics and filled up bankers box full of stuff I thought I was never going to use or had bought too much of a gave it to my teenage nephew. Of course I’m constantly regretting it and I always feel like a huge chump when I go out and rebuy something that I gave away.

I see it has a very good “generic “bait fish color. It looks like nothing in particular but a little bit like everything that swims and can’t fight back. A KVD magic rage swimmer and a jig with a skirt tied to match is pretty much the only color I use for swim jigs anymore.

It’s an extremely chill time. I’m casting towards a woodline and I’m always waiting for the day that I end up knocking a deer in the head with the jig.

I spent a little while try to hunt one down to use as a jig rod for my kayak. They have a very very rarely seem to come up for sale, on forums or on eBay. So I don’t know if that’s a matter of them not having been very common or people just not wanting to ever get rid of them.

I don’t have one but I’m also incredibly intrigued by it. Reading the little blurb it seems like they’re selling you a pool cue with some fancy guides on it, but I know it has to be more than that.

What kind of life do you expect to see from those molds?

I would almost guarantee it’s something to do with the casting stroke. One of my new favorite evening activities is to stand in the field behind my house, drink a beer, watch the fireflies, and aimlessly cast into the night. I try to thumb the spool to a stop just before the lure hits the ground but I am doing it by sound/feel and miss a lot. Most every Daiwa reel I own, with the brakes set around 50%, will not produce more then a few loose coils when the lure lands. I slow and stop the lure when I am fishing so I can accurately place casts and train up my thumb for when a case goes off course and I need to save my lure, but if you are willing to adapt to a smooth easy stroke, they are generally very controlled.

Is it an inductor height issue?

This brings up kind of an interesting line of thought, people are always talking about the actual vs listed strength of line, but I never see any real talk or testing done about hook strength. I destructively test one or two hooks every time I try a new brand/type/size, but this only lets me compare them (roughly) to other hooks that I use, it doesn’t give me a real sense of the actual force involved. I’ve learned through experience how to roughly gauge the relative strength of line versus hooks for smaller lines/hooks because when I’m wading I would much rather bend/break a hook and have to replace a jighead then break off my leader and have to re-tie it while standing waist deep in water, so I try to err on the side of thicker lines and thinner hooks.

I hate using a leader for that reason, if I am snagged, I want the line to break at the terminal knot so that I am just leaving a lure in the water, not the lure plus 3-6' of line. So long as the lure is snagged so that I can pull directly against the terminal knot, I usually get all of my line back. I use Alberto/Trilene knots and unless I am running a much lighter leader, I end up breaking the Albertero leader knot most of the time. I will sometimes use a weaker loop knot for the terminal connection, but it's hard to remember to so until I lose a leader and remember.

I think that is normal for them, they are a smaller outfit and seem to make stuff in batches. They are wonderful lures, I I wish I could find something like them but smaller, like 3/4-1oz.

When did they stop making them? I have six of them but that isn't enough!

This is a spot I call the "Ambush Pool". The channel in the foreground is 4-5' deep and moves very swiftly. The large slackwater behind the rock is about 2-3" deep. Cast into the slack and retrieve into the channel almost always results in a bite and some days you can stand there and get a couple in a row. I am posting it as yesterday was the first time in months where I got there to not find it full of swimmers. I figured the temps had cooled off enough so yesterday I grabbed my waders and hit the Patapsco. It was gloriously empty. The water was chilly but still warm enough that wet hands didn't matter, which is my ideal wader weather. The river was not as productive as usual, I caught maybe 4lbs of smallies, but in 1/4lb chunks rather than the usual 1/2lb ones. The normally abundant redbreast sunnies were totally absent. It's still exciting that I can fish the river again, it this spring and summer all the "easy" spots were full of waders/swimmers from like 9am onward and even the hike-in spots were hard to access due to parking issues.

I use a SC Avid M/XF 6'3" casting rod for flukes and love it. It's got a very soft tip but a ton of backbone, so I can twitch a fluke as fast/slow as I want but still have enough power to fish them around and in light to medium cover. The only thing I don't like about it is the thicker cork on the handle, but I have smaller hands.

I did something like this for my car. I have an '17 Outback where the seats fold flat so I can run the rods from the back straight up into the front, but what I was worried about was other stuff shifting on the flattened seats and smashing into the rods. I made a U trough out of plywood with foam on the bottom. The rods can lay in it and my huge tub of kayak gear can't slid into them if I have to do a break check or evasive maneuver.

I have a Kuying Teton UL/M casting rod that I think is about ideal for inline spinners and spoons in the 1/8oz range. It loads very well on the cast for distance/accuracy and has enough power for good hooksets even when I switch to single hooks. They are amazing rods for the money in terms of components and build quality. I had one of the spinning rods for a minute and it seemed like it was the exact same blank as the casting models.

Very nice looking, especially the sledheads! Do you fish them much, the sleds? I keep finding things I love them for, esp for fishing weeds/pads.

I would agree with that and while it varies from line to line, I tend to feel that the P5 rods are close to 3 power Loomis rods and the P6 MB rods are close to the 4 Power Loomises.

I bankfish a lot and take reasonable care with my gear, I use rod/reel covers for storage and transport and always throw my hat on the ground when I need to set my combo down. Stuff still happens and the only damage I really hate is when it's due to me being an idiot/lazy. Slipped screwdrivers and me slipping and falling are the two biggest causes.