fishwizzard

https://www.simmsfishing.com/shop/gear/gloves/guide-wildbloc-half-mitt-f18 They are stupid expensive but they really are amazing gloves. Insanely warm and still allow a reasonable full range of motion. For warmer "cool" weather I use whatever mil surplus glove liners I can find for cheap on ebay. They never last long but the good wool/poly blend ones are only like $7-10 a pair. It's about 50/50 on whether or not you can cut the finger tips off without them unraveling, but the ones that do can generally be fixed with a lighter. If you don't need finger cutouts gloves like this are great: https://www.uline.com/BL_891/Uline-CoolFlex-Micro-Foam-Nitrile-Coated-Gloves I keep them stashed around my car and work bags, they come in handy all the time and are cheap enough to give away if you are feeling kind.

I hoard them in my house so my wife and I have something to fight about. I am waiting for the moment that having a pile of them some how saves the day so I can be really smug about keeping them all. I keep meaning to get rid of most of them but there is always some excuse not to. If anyone in central MD wants some tubes let me know!

I fish a lot of pickerel waters and while I have caught them on most every presentations, bottom contact stuff seems to get the least attention. Picks seem to key in on baitfish-imitation presentations the most so I think going for more craw type stuff would be a good place to start. Pick also seem to only rarely hit topwater, so that's an option as well.

For a 100% wacky rig senko (or equivalent) I would go ML or M at the most. The total lure weight is not going to be much more then 3/8oz, the hook will be small and thin wire, and I want as much feel as possible as most hits will happen on slack line.

Hah, we are like separated at birth fishing twins. I also have a beloved round reel on a EMTF that never got used. In my case it's a Ringa SSS. It even has 6.x gears in it, but that reel yearns to bomb cast-n-crank lures and the gen 1 was way less versatile for moving baits than I thought it would be. I have had that reel on a half dozen rods and have tried 3-4 spools in it trying to find the perfect fit. I love the reel to death though so the search goes on.

Will do, so long as you promise to do the same with that Mars, they would make a cute couple and should be together. I honestly don't use the SRD to anywhere near it's full potential, I mostly use it for 2-3oz topwaters and throwing 6" weedless paddletails in heavy cover. I actually got the SRD as I wanted something beefier then the Hyuga 72H but without the crazy long handle that most swimbait sticks have.

Nice. I passed up the chance to buy a Mars a few years ago for a great price, there was a poorly labeled one on ebay for a minute. Then I ended up getting a too-good-to-miss deal on a Super Red Demon and now I'm kicking myself for not jumping on the Mars. The 19 Ryoga looks great on it but the Mars would have been perfect.

Is the Mars on a JDM XX?

The iRod "Fred's Magic Stick" is a great frog/cover rod that fishes far above it's price. However, it's right at the end of your max length and I do find the rod handle a bit long for perfect yak use. But it's a killer rod at a great price. If you are willing to look at jdm rods, the Megabass F6-611K Mat Bucker Type L Orochi XXX could be a good pick. I spent a lot of last year looking for a shorter frog rod and it was one of the top contenders. If you buy through Tackle Trap or any MB authorized dealer you still get a warranty despite being a JDM only line.

For really bad slime I usually fish a t-rigged paddle tail with a small pegged weight. The RI Skinnydippers are great for this as they are very streamlined and don't let the slime grab on, the Gambler EZs are good as well. With a small bullet weight in front you can usually just snap the slime off at the end of the retrieve. Pike do love them though, but it's the most slime-resistance presentation I have found.

Last year I got to solve a Fishcrime CSI case. Walking the bank and see a pickerel floating belly up next to the bank. I looked at it and there were no wounds. Walked about 10 more feet and found a 'gill dead with it's tail bit off. Went back to the pickerel and sure enough I saw the tip of the tail sticking out of it's gullet. I was going to take some pics and make a funny thread, but some people came up on me and I didnt want to explain what I was doing so I left.

In my ideal world manufactures would provide deflection charts for every rod they sell. This, combined with the lure/line rating and either a Force/Power number or the more standard M, MH, etc rating give you the most complete picture you can get without holding the rod in your hands.

Sure, but "zero contact" is better then "a little contact" if no purpose is served by the added friction. What benefit can exist from running the line under the pin?

Yes? Anything the line touches will add friction. Somethings add friction while doing something useful/necessary, but running the line under the pin adds friction for no benefit.

Checked a Steez A, Steez SVTW, and a new Tat SV. On each it 100% has to go over the cross pin. Going under would obviously add a ton of friction on the cast and retrieve.

Dude, it's 2020, nothing is secret anymore. Also, it's Maryland, if it's not in the middle of a marsh or takes a mile of hiking through thorns and ticks to get to, assume it's got a lot of pressure. With kids out of school, so many people out of work, and boating banned it's obvious why every accessible bank spot is crowded these days, no vast internet conspiracy needed to explain it.

Yep, I am also stuck in the house, nothing to better to do over coffee then argue about fishing!

I never use a leader for baitcasting reels and only grudgingly use it on spinning reels when I have to. The reason for this is that the sound of the knot passing through the guides annoys the hell out of me, any performance concerns usually take a back seat. Only time I will mess with a the leader is on one of my ML spinning combos with a 1000 sized reel or occasionally an UL casting combo.

If you’re targeting smaller fish with a bait caster then a Shakeyhead is a good presentation to try. A 3/16oz head with a 4” worm on it is still a compact presentation but will have enough weight to cast well.

Honestly now that everybody has a satellite map on their phone there’s no secret spots left, I’ve investigated pretty much every visible puddle within a half hour drive of my house over the last couple years. With the striper population crashed the bass fishing pressure is only going to get worse around here I fear so it’s just something to get used to. If I wanna fish without other people around I pretty much resolved myself to hiking a couple miles away from parking, most people still aren’t willing to do that it seems like.

Daiwa’s obsession with making their product line as confusingly named as possible will always frustrate the hell out of me.

As an aside, I’d love to hear more about this rod. I throw a ton of little 3/16 jigs that also end up weighing around 3/8oz total.

On my trout-casting set up I either use 6 pound J-braid or 4 pound mono. The braid cast better and is much more forgiving during the inevitable overruns, but it’s too frustrating to deal with any kind of wind both in terms of line management and tying knots. On windy days I switch out to the thin mono.

As far as I know, all tungsten weights are made in China and go through various middlemen from there. OM is is so cheap because a bunch of the middlemen are cut out of the loop.

I have a little scale and compulsively weigh pretty much all my lures and plastics. For the most part a jig with a reasonably sized trailer will end up weighing a little less then twice what the listed weight is. Swim jigs tend to weigh a little more as the trailers are generally larger.