fishwizzard

That's a hell of a nice bass for the Monocacy, I have not found anything like that there in the last two years. I wish I didn't have to deal with 459/95 to get there though!

Would love to see a pic of that thing. I fish a lot of 3/8oz total weight jigs/t-rigs have always wanted to try a SC ml/xf.

My “1/2oz jigs” end up weighing about 1oz with a trailer most of the time. The rod will likely fish it but not super well. MB rods tend to have a larger weight range, you kinda use it and the power rating to figure out where the sweet spot will be. The DS is a 4.5, so not likely to be an ideal 1/2oz jig rod.

I would agree, I fish a ton of 1/4oz jigs and the 783/723 Loomis rods are perfect for them. Enough power to set the hook with a lot of line out, but a light enough tip to load well for short cast and long pitches. My current 1/4oz jig/light t-rig rod is a Poison Adrena 611M+. The tip is a little softer then my 783glx and it has a little more backbone. I also find it a lot more comfortable then the current glx rods, but that's obv very subjective.

The hands are the worst. I am about to break down and order a face net, but I don’t know what to do about my hands.

How are the mosquitoes out that way? All of my southern Maryland spots have been completely overrun this past week or so. I started going out when it’s actively raining because that seems to be the only time I don’t get swarmed.

Wet wading isn't just for nice clear rivers: Over the last year or two I have gotten a lot bolder about wading into the gravel pit ponds/marshes that make up most of my SMD spots.

That is my entire maryland fishing strategy. Most of the spring/summer/fall my legs look like a legion of cats have been using me as a scratching post.

I’ve heard the stories as well and I think we’ve missed the boat on them. I’ve only been seriously bass fishing for five or six years now and my last few trips up around Harpers ferry have been extremely disappointing. I’ve had some decent days there in the past, but between the limited parking and difficult conditions, I never made a trip up there in the spring. The Patapsco river has a lot of smaller smallies in it along with a lot of aggressive red breast sunfish. Between the two of them I have had one recorded 100 fish day and a few others that mush have been close. The issue with the Patapsco is parking and crowds. It’s one of the only rivers in Central Maryland that isn’t a muddy eroded mess so it is very popular for swimming/waiting. When the weather is nice it’s very very crowded pretty much every weekend and even weekdays now with kids being out of school. It’s oddly never very full of people fishing, at least the spots I go to, but this year the amount of people in the water make it difficult to have a nice relaxing day fishing. I am excitedly waiting for the temperature to cool down a little bit so let me and my chest waders can be alone on the river again.

I’ve never fished for them in Rock Creek proper, but I caught my first decent sized smallie in the C&O canal about 30-40 yards upstream where the canal meets up with RC right before they both dump in to the Washington channel.

I have the XXX Black Themis and really like it. It’s a great little finesse rod and is the perfect ml/xf spinning rod substitute. I’ve looked at a couple other XXX rods but I’ve never pulled the trigger on one, although I would have no hesitation doing so based on my experience with the BT.

YZH for sure. It's the best jack of all trades line I have used. I could get by with just fluoro pretty easily as it's what I use the most of, but I would rather frog with heavy weight YZH then heavy weight fluoro.

I use a mix of weighted hooks and separate hook/weight rigs. Mostly it comes down to application, if I was going to peg the weight anyway I tend to pick a Slider head, jika rig, slead head, or weighted swimbait hook first, using each for different stuff. I almost never peg a separate weight, about the only time I do is to make a "weedless jig" out of a weight, skirt hub, rattle, and t-rigged plastic. This combo seems to come through the pads/hydrilla that fill up most of my local ponds better than a normal jig. Otherwise I think one of the various weighted hook/jighead options is a better pick.

For crushing barbs, a pair of tapered round-jaw pliers are about perfect. They let you apply force directly to even the smallest barb and will generally crush them right back into the hook body. I believe they are sold for jewelry making use.

Only time I really like short handles is for reels I’m going to travel or hike with, otherwise I prefer 90-100mm ones.

The new Tatula reels are a fair bit more compact then the older ones.

I believe the Wawa located by them is the last one you will find going south, every time I head down that way I have to stop to fortify myself for the terrible-coffee wasteland I’m about to enter. But yeah, I would go to Green Top if you had to pick, the prices are fairly terrible but they have a lot of interesting stuff as opposed to the more generic selection at the bass pro.

It shares a flaw with most tackle packs, putting the heaviest stuff, the trays, at the very bottom of the pack. You want to keep the heavy stuff higher up and closer to your back. It also lacks a waist belt, which helps a lot in taking pressure off your shoulders and back when casting with it on. Design matters a lot less if you put it down to fish, but wearing any pack while casting is harder/less comfortable than without, so imho it really pays to put comfort over convenience if you are going to fish that way.

I love the 3/16 ones, they weigh about 3/8oz overall so I can use them on a wide range of tackle and they seem to be the perfect goldilocks size to attract both big and smaller bass. They are somewhat fragile and a big bass or pickerel will put the hurting on them.

I have tried a few different fishing backpacks and they all failed at "being a comfortable backpack". The fishing specific features were nice but they were all awful for wearing all day, especially if I was doing any real hiking. I started using my hiking packs and the difference was incredible in terms of comfort. I use my first aid kit and raincoat/jacket to fill the bottom of the pack so my heavy tackle trays are pushed up higher so the weight is balanced better. If you take the pack off to fish I don't think it matters as much but if you are leaving it on then I would very much suggest sticking with a good quality hiking pack. The only fishing-specific packs I have had any luck with have been fly fishing slings, but they require you to pack very very light as they become uncomfortable in a hurry when you load them heavy.

I have had a lot lot lot of time on my hands over the last few months and spent some of it casting in the field behind my house. Using a surveyor's wheel and some stakes I marked out some distances and came to the realization that I am almost never casting more than 30-40y. The really interesting thing is that I can get that distance range from most every combo I have, other then the finesse ones. The 7'5" rods do casts further more easily than the 6' ones, but are both still in that same max range. What I really want to know is how distance affects hook-setting power, but I don't have access to a dynamometer that goes low enough to test that.

It doesn't make any sense, but I have an easier time getting them to stay on a Gopher then the wire-keeper MWF mold ones. It's more of a pain upfront, but they stay on so much better w/o glue. My dream Ned head would be a Gopher-style 1/16oz-#4 with the power coat going all the way up to the hook bend to give a little corrosion protection.

That is more or less where I am at. The Steez TWSV/A is the best all around platform I have found for the various 1016 spools, so I will keep buying them.

Governor's Bridge is one of the most infuriating places I fish regularly. I get mad at it and avoid it for months but always come back as it's so close and rarely crowded. I break it down into two spots, I almost never fish the river there. The "lower ponds". These are the little ponds/marshes by the parking lot. They are all connected via metal pipes and all have bass. I have never managed to catch anything big out of them but they hold a lot of small bass and warm up quickly in the winter if we get a few sunny days in a row. I only have luck fishing them from the more inaccessible spots, unless your feet are in the water or you had to use pruning shears to open up a casting hole, it's never very productive most of the year. There is a sweet spot in the spring and fall when the entire lower pond area is really good, but once all the SAV comes in it's really hard to fish non-topwater. The upper pond. This one is why I get mad at the place. I catch a single 3lb-class bass out of it every year but that's about it. I can go there a dozen times and never even get a bite. I know there are good bass in there, but the terrain makes it impossible to access the best looking water and obey the "no wading" signs. The pond is an old gravel pit so the underwater topography isn't normal and apparently there is a way to wade out almost to the middle and stay knee-deep, but I have never been bold enough to try it. Due to 'rona I had a lot more time then normal this spring and had a few good days there where I could get catch a few bass each time, but it took hours of pitching a t-rigged jig all around the many many pad fields to do it. It's maddening as there are some really good spots you can fish but I have tried almost every lure/presentation in the book and never had much luck. This fall I am going to give it a another good try with glidebaits and other big stuff. It is a really nice place to walk around though and that keeps me comming back.

I have bought two reels that cost about $500, Steez TWSV and a Ryoga 1520, and have maybe a dozen or so in the $300-350 range, a mix of other Daiwas. Overall, while they are both great reels, I will not pay that much again, the difference isn’t great enough compared to cheaper reels with about the same feature set. I would absolutely buy another Steez TWSV, but only used and only if I could find one in the $300 range.