fishwizzard

I am 99% not a gambler, but I have a single coworker whom I constantly make $1 bets with about all manner of nonsense over the work day. I think our “record” is maybe twenty bucks changing hands in a single day. Generally though, if I show up for a gig with twenty singles in my wallet, that’s enough for a week’s wagers.

I am bad about fishing what I want to fish that day, not what I necessarily think would be best for the conditions.

I want a lighter, shorter rod when walking or popping frogs, enough power to fish some cover, but not enough power to fish 30 yards into cover. I want a more powerful, longer rod when fishing a toad or paddle-tail frog and want to cover water with long bomb casts. I don't care if the tip is too still to and the handle too long to walk a frog, I want power to confidently make those bomb casts and reliably land fish that hit at the end of them. Somedays I bring one rod or the other, but sometimes I bring both.

I will very much "agree to disagree" with you in the most pure intention of that saying. There are people right now who are pushing the limits of what one can do with casting tackle and while a lot of it seems like "Art for art's sake", there is still a lot that can be very useful in terms of offering useful options for fishing traditionally-spinning presentations. The tech is getting better all the time as well, most of my collection is older tuned/moded reels and it took a lot for me to admit that the BFS/UL casting reels that have come out in the last few years are a noticeable improvement over my old classics. I would love nothing more and my sea-legs aren't the best so I will be easily be rid of if my questions become too tiresome.

I am not talking about hand-pulling line, my point was, that with the gear I have (Alphas SV, DIY Spool, 10lb Sniper), I cannot detect any difference in fall/action when the line has no pressure on it (hand-pulling the line) vs just letting the spool do it's thing. Eyes off the reel, hands ready to crank the handle to engage the spool. The Senko isn't falling in a vacuum, at some point the "pull-back" from the spool revolving isn't going to matter much at all due to the other forces acting on the Senko as it falls. It also matters how deep you are fishing, most of the time I am throwing a weightless Senko I am in like 5-6' of water max. By raising the rod tip on splashdown and then lowering the tip as the lure sinks I can get a totally free fall and keep the spool engaged and ready to react to a hit.

Have you actually tried it with a modern finesse spooled reel set w/o any spool tension? I have and I can't notice any difference in fall rate or action letting a 5" Senko sink by stripping line manually vs letting the spool roll, so long as you put a little slack in the line at splashdown.

Make sure the worm is well secured to the hook and check it every skip. I don't think any mortal man has the thumb speed to save the spool if that worm flies off mid-skip.

My hill is "A Club Sandwich is one exact thing!", but I gotta say, a t-rigged Senko fished on 10lb Sniper with a M-ish/F-ish casting rod has been working pretty well over the years fishing weedlines and sparse pads.

I fish "finesse" a lot and I don't think there is anything where I "have" to use a spinning rod for. I strongly prefer the ergonomics of a casting combo and with the right gear I don't see how any common bass presentation would require a spinning combo. A light weight spool set with no side play offers basically no resistance to line being pulled, so other then wind issues, it's all casting for me. The only exception is tiny hair jigs or thing like that were you have both a light weight and an unaerodynamic lure. I am sure one could find casting gear to throw a 1/16oz ball of feathers/hair, but for me that goes beyond the realms of reason.

There is no 3" and under plastic that I wouldn't stick on a tiny jighead. But, if I am doing the "Cha Cha" retrieve I most always use a stickbait as that seems to produce the best and last the longest.

I use a bead almost evert time I t-rig a plastic. I do it a little bit to protect the knot, a little bit to maybe give some added noise when it hits the weight, but mostly I do it to protect the plastic/hook joint when fishing through cover. I was shown this method a few years ago by @CaptMikeStarrett to get more life out of toads, but I have found it to be universally useful for cover fishing with most any plastic.

@Junger The colors on that sunny are amazing. I hit up my top-secret "never skunk" pond last weekend. Sadly it seems to be dying, the beaver that used to keep the outflow nice an plugged seems to have left and the water was lower then I have ever seen it, so low that I worry that it will freeze solid if we have a bad winter. But, it still came through for me, two nice chunks and a half dozen dinks:

My pick is an old Loomis SJR6400S IMX. It's a 5'4" UL/XF rod rated 1/64-1/8oz, though imho it's massively underrated, I use it up to around 3/16oz with excellent results. I use 6lb Supernatural and generally either have a Sliderhead or a brass-n-glass t-rig on it at any given time.

I picked up this Daiwa Black Label shorty frog rod a few years ago and it's amazing. It's a dream to cast and walk/pop a frog with and has a good amount of power. It is not a rod for the heaviest of heavy cover, but I have gotten a lot of bass and snakehead out of some pretty dense spadderdock with it over the last few years. You just need to be willing to look at the cover and your retrival path and make a good decision about how far you will try to cast. A yak makes this way easier as you can just paddle over if you get a fish wrapped around something. It's pretty sensitive too, I use it a maybe 50% of the time in the summer as my "all purpose marsh pond" combo and I am completely happy to use it dragging a t-rigged creature around the same cover I would use a frog over top of. Here is a little snake I caught on it last summer:

Hello my soulmate, I cannot understand how this become such a complicated issue for people. There is a vast spectrum of ultralight/light casting rods out there and Bait Finesse System rods are a niche inside the greater niche.

It’s not hype, it’s an accurate description of a rod’s general characteristics to distinguish it with from other rods in its power range. Nothing you’ve posted has refuted my argument, the term “BFS” refers to a fairly specific class of rods, very distinct from other casting rods in the general ultralight/light power range.

The stock spool on the Steez A is pretty deep and the breaking profile very much favors stuff half ounce and up. Otherwise, I’ve never noticed any real performance difference between the two as long as they have the same spool in them.

I completely disagree with that, if you look at the Japanese rods that actually have BFS or Biat Finesse in the name/code, they’re all generally of a similar type, a light tip progressing to a fairly substantial backbone. I’ve never seen a L/UL saltwater rod or trout rod with that verbage anywhere in the description or name.

I always get a cut in the exact same spot, the side of the first joint of the pointer finger on my right hand. I throw flukes and poppers a ton during the warmer months which always ends up causing a lot of loose line on the spool so I am always tugging at it to tighten it. My solution, when I remember, is to do a single wrap of first aid tape around that joint before I start for the day.

I know how you feel, I’m a plastics junkie in general but I have a special fondness for worms. I limit myself by only allowing myself a single plastic shoebox to store all my “extras” in. I mean sure, there are also some worms in both the Ned box and the drop-shot box and some in the non-pictured stickbait box and a general “Finesse plastics” box. but other than all those worms, I really try to keep it tight on how many packs of worms I keep on hand at a given time.

That's going to be a tough one, the combo of slim, non-tapered body with a cut/speed tail isn't something you see a lot. If you care more about a soft, floppy worm, then the Producto Jiggle Tails might be worth a look. I wanna say there is/was a JDM worm that looked a little like it, but a quick search isn't bringing much up.

I worked as a stagehand for the first part of my career and musicals were a mixed bag. On one hand, they are large, complex productions, so you can get a ton of hours off of one. On the other though, you spend most of that money on drink to help you drive those songs out of your head. I did four months touring with CATS! and that was all I could take, no idea how people can stand to do the same show for years and years.

I would agree with this, my PB snake is like ~8lbs and it's mouth was just big enough to maybe fit a average bass frog into it.

That's funny. I have been using nose-grease on my telescoping travel rod for years now to good effect, but I have to assume that one's grease quality varies from person to person. DM me for a free sample, after that it's 2k per ounce.

I was taught to use the grease from the side of my nose, gross, but always available.