fishwizzard

D Ring has a concave groove around the OD with some soft rubbery liner in it. You wrap the line around it a few times and it lets you bring all your strength/weight to bare on the line, letting you break even heavy braid with relative ease. For fluoro, even lighter stuff, it seems to prevent any (viable/tactile at least) damage to the wrapped line, unline when I used to use a wooden dowel for the same job. I suspect it's a function of the larger diameter vs the dowl, or maybe the rubber insert helps? No idea but it seems to work, I fish a good bit of 7lb Sniper and I get so much longer life out of it now. The insert on my older one has gotten a bit chewed up, but it seems to function just as well. The only downside is that it lets you bring all your strength/weight to bare on the line, so if the hook bends before the line breaks, that jig is coming back at you at very high speeds, so taking cover is a good idea.

I have had some bags stick together very quickly and some that have lived in my car for years with no issue, I have never managed to figure out what the difference is.

They are all over ebay and other jdm sites. There are still plenty of overseas shipping options from Japan at the moment, but the biggest one is closed so a lot of places are just not shipping at all. I think both of mine came from ebay.

The Nail Bombs also have more length between the weight and the bend, which can dramatically improve the life for some plastics. I think the ones pictured are 1/0 hooks, but they might be the #1 ones, I can't remember when I switched.

It's a great little tool and has paid for it's self a few times over at this point in fluoro that it has saved from wear/breakage. It's also great for tightening line/leader knots with thin braid, it really lets you get them nice and snug w/o slicing into your hand.

Your line likely got wrapped around the long so that you could not bring force to bare on the knot. The next weakest spot in the line was on the spool, so it broke there. If you were pulling super hard the line likely dug in to it's self which is why you didn't find the end. Pulling line with the reel is bad news, it can easily result in a broken rod if you don't keep the line 100% straight to the snag. I used to carry a small 4" section of 3/8" dowel with tape wrapped around the center for braking line, now I use this fancy little tool. It's really great, it protects even thin fluoro from getting too stressed and I have used it to break up to 65lb braid with no issues.

Youtube has changed "the Ned" to basically an open hook shakeyhead with a short fat worm. It has made talking about Ned/MWF very annoying, like trying to order food at a restaurant where everything on the menu is called a club sandwich but they are all different meals.

For a lmb, if my fist would fit in it’s mouth without touching the sides, that’s a nice bass anywhere. Otherwise it’s entirely dependent upon where I am fishing. There’s a pond by my house that I fish all the time that I never been able to a 4lb bass out of. I’ve gone within an ounce or two quite a few times but I’ve never broken 4lb and it’s starting to drive me insane. If it ever happens I’m going to make an absolute fool of myself in front of all the joggers and little kids.

I used to wear a boilersuit at work, I spent a ton of each day hanging in a harness, so a “waist-less” outfit was the way to go for comfort. Going commando in one was also the way to wear the least amount of clothing and still abide by the “long pants and a shirt with sleeves” rule.

No, but I was at Triadelphia on Tuesday and it’s filled to the brim. Spoke with some guys who were fishing there and they said that Rocky Gorge was very low, so I think getting Tridelphia filled up was the priority.

I will agree with everyone who says that as long as you are using a shallow spool and pay attention to it, thinner braid isn’t an issue at all on a casting reel. That all being said, I was playing around with one of my combos in the yard today and managed to break off a 1/4oz Super Fluke on 8lb braid because I was not paying attention to dig-in. I only lost about 50 feet of line, but it’s definitely a thing that will happen if you’re not paying attention.

That pond has bass in it, but the access is awful, thorns and ticks are the in force. Sadly the canal is a shadow of its former self. For the last year or two NPS has kept it more or less drained to repair some of the locks and as far as I can tell, it has yet to recover. The run between Swain's and Riely's was where I cut my teeth bass fishing and once I discovered that bass relate to cover, I could walk the canal and slam 1-2lb bass all day in most any conditions. I think I have been there maybe half a dozen times in the past 9 months and never caught more than a 1-2 bass total. If you live close by, then by all means give it a try, focusing on fishing right up on the banks. Otherwise, if you are willing to wade, Seneca Creek has a lot of sunfish and smaller bass in it all the way from the river up to Clopper Lake.

I wish I could bring more than a single rod along, but even one rod is a pain to hike around with some times. Most of the non-park ponds that I fish are either eroded rivers or marshes, so having a hand free when moving from spot to spot is essential. What does one pay a golfing caddy for 4-6 hours of work? Having a kid follow me around with a bag full of rods and tackle would be amazing.

I am going to run a little test about color and topwater lures. Specifically, I love topwaters in funky JDM colorways, but wonder if I am missing fish by picking colors this way. So over the winter I had a guy paint me up six knockoff PopMax bodies in three colors, all black w/ white stripe on top, all white w/ red stripe, and yellow w/ green stripe. The stripes are to add contrast so I can see the lure more easily. The plan is to start with one and change out after every fish or every few dozen casts if they are not biting. I don't plan on keeping super detailed records, but I am interested to see what happens.

A lot of the time jig is what I start with and what I end with. I start with one because I like to quickly target high-probability cover first to see if I can get some easy fish and a jig can be fished more or less anywhere. I end with one as if I am not catching anything, then at least dragging a jig across the bottom counting rocks is kinda fun in it's own way.

I packed that bad mofo like a bearing, filled it until it oozed out. I assume that was not the intent. It still seems silly to try and add more without opening it up to clean the old residue out.

I almost bought that exact combo a few times over the winter but never did. Really wish I had now. What are you going to throw on it?

One of my first casting reels was some Lews SW model. It came with what I assumed was a grease-port on the bottom of the gearbox. So one day I filled it with white lithium grease. It was very smooth to crank, but the casting performance was not so great for some reason. I believe the port was really designed to drain water maybe? I still use white lithium to on reels, but a few orders of magnitude less.

I use two different bags, depending on what I am doing/where I am going: For trips where I am less than 1 mile from my car A small fly fishing sling that holds a single 3600 box, a few loose hardbaits, and some really basic spare TT/firstaid/comfort items, a 16oz bottle of water A small clip on tool pouch for pliers/nippers/my phone A climbing chalk bag to hold wet lures/used plastics For trips where I am hiking further A 22l Osprey hiking pack that holds 2@3600 boxes, 1@small clamshell plano for misc hardbaits, a greater selection of spare TT/firstaid/comfort items, two 26oz bottles of water, and a scale/fish grips. The same chalkbag for wet lures/used plastics. I used to use a 11l pack for longer trips but I wanted to start carrying more water so I went up in size to handle the weight better.

7g or 1/4oz is as low as most baitcasters work well at, so it's worth a try if you want to, but either a spinning reel or a BFS reel would likely be better. Spoons, like inline spinners, will catch most any fish that eats other fish.

That looks a little tighter than the ones I use I think. My stuff is out in the car in preparation for a trip tomorrow, I’ll grab a picture then. The tubing I use is soft but still takes a little bit of force to cut through with scissors, I don’t think I could cast hard enough to rip it.

I have more or less given up on inline spinners and replaced them with small spoons. 1000x more durable and seemingly just as effective. There are a ton of great little Trout spoons from Japan, if you have a local tackle shop I would start there.

I have settled on three frogs: -Jackal Galvacho - general walking/popping -Sprinkler - open muddy water, sparse pads -the big River2Sea one - duckweed, thicker pads

Like 1-5ish. It mostly depends on how I hook it and how the fish grabs it. If I use a narrow slice of tubing with the hook set parallel to the worm so it can slide up the hook, they tend to last longer. With a thicker band and the hook pierced through it they don’t last as long if you get into small bas that head-shake with the worm outside of their mouth. I fish a wacky senko on casting gear, so the main job of the tube is to prevent the worm from flying off the hook midcast.

I have the short frog rod from the jdm BLX line and really like it. It’s a LG rod but it still feels plenty sensitive the few times I used it for bottom contact. The power/taper balance is great as is the build quality.