fishwizzard

Raw weigh I don't care about at all but balance is very important to me.

I fish the flick-shake presentation more often then a weightless wacky, esp when I am in the yak. I use a mix of Senkos and Trickworms I do use actual Flick-Shake worms as well, but only the smaller sizes, I think the 3.8/4.8 size. I bought a lot of them off of ebay years ago and am still working through them. With a 1/16oz head I get a presentation that fishes "light", but weighs enough to work in a wind that would play havoc with other finesse presentations.

I use a 6’2” M/XF Avid casting rod for flukes and love it. I fish flukes pretty fast and it’s got the perfect tip for fast jerks with a quick recovery time. The rod’s got enough power to to fish in spare pad fields and to get a bass out of a weedline. For line I use 30lb braid to 16lb fluoro leader. I use the braid because the way I fish them puts a lot of slack in the reel and it becomes unmanageable quickly when I try straight fluoro . I use the leader due to Pike/Snakehead and because I think having a section of stiff line helps the fluke stop more quickly post twitch.

I don’t hate mowing but it does anger-up my allergies a lot of the time. Fortunately my wife, who grew up in a city, loves the riding mower, so I just end up doing the firewood work in the winter and let her do the warm weather yard chores.

Excited for next week when they will let us know that water is wet and beer makes you fat. I’m a big proponent of changing out fluorocarbon fairly often and I’m always trying to see how little I can get away with spooling up for a given combo. Generally the lighter the line the less I want on the reel so that I’m wasting less when I replace it. I generally shoot for a good long cast plus maybe 10 to 20 yards.

That’s a shockingly fast turn aroudn for a FedEx claim. Might want to pick up a lottery ticket along with the replacement rod.

I have a small pile of older Alphases but for various reasons I’ve never picked up any of the newer ones, this might finally be the one though. I’m generally don’t make long casts and Like to change out thinner lines fairly frequently, so shallow spools are extremely attractive.

Really surprising, I feel like the last rod I got from Asian portal was packed in PVC pipe. I wonder if they use different packing materials for different price point rods?

A standard Sharpie body works perfectly for a 4” Senko or a Trickworm and takes up a lot less space in a Plano box then most purpose made tools. It will work for a 5” Senko but you will have to roll the o-rig a bit to center it.

Man, I’m not even that overweight but as soon as my sun hoodie goes on it looks like I’m carrying twins. Maybe next time I’ll see if I can find one with vertical stripes.

More fishing pressure doesn’t bother me, but more parking spot pressure absolutely does. The proliferation of yak fishing and more importantly yak trailering is making things a little rough at some spots with more “casual” parking.

I fan most jigs except for swimjigs that i am fishing through soft cover as fanning makes them pick up too much gunk.

I just gave away 4 quarts of frozen processed Hatch green chillies to some friends of my wife for jerky making. This is their first try and I am hoping they get it right as I am looking forward to our cut.

It's challenge to find the right combo of head/hook/keeper, using a mushroom head lets me care less about the keeper as they make it easy to glue the worm to the head because of the flat back. The Gophers were great as their keepers worked really well for Z-man plastics despite just being lead barbs. I also think that for the specific niche I use the Ned for, wade fishing small rivers, fishing up-down, the mushroom heads seem to snag a lot less often the a ball head of the same weight. I have a small stash of Gophers left, I think I must have gotten one of the last orders shipped before they went under. I spent a while looking for a replacement at around the same price but never did find one. There are some great options but all are much more expensive. I mostly use the River Rock ones, but I make sure to stock up when they have a 20% off sale.

Keep buying different reels until you find one that you can live with?

I have been using glass beads a lot lately, not just for noise/flash either. I was shown a trick by @Junger where in you use a stacked round bead and tri-bead in front of a toad to help it come through cover more easily and to protect the plastic/screw lock connection from abuse. I have been using this trick on most all of my plastics-in-cover and it really seems to help, especially with larger/heavier plastics.

I have a Daiwa BBB 666TMLRB and really like it but for one glaring flaw: It doesn't have alignment marks on the sections. It's an insane oversight and every non-paint/sealer thing I have tried to use has come off the blank in a few uses. But otherwise it's a great rod and I am on the cusp of buying a dedicated reel for it and switching to using it for more of my "Hiking but some fishing" trips. I am very much over either having to alter my path due to having a 6' fragile stick in my hand or missing out on fishing due to not bringing a rod along.

I have a pair of rods like yours, a Loomis SJR 6400 (Mag-UL/XF) and a SRJ 720 (Mag-Light/XF). They both have that "light tip, strong backbone" thing going on and I love them both. I have also looked around a little bit and have never found other spinning rods like them in the US. I have found various JDM spinning rods that sound like they are built to the same basic design, but have never pulled the trigger on one.

I have had to do this once, an old model Zillion SV TW that arrived from Japan with a bad pinion gear. By the time I figured it out it was long past a reasonable return window. I got it fixed in the US for like $50-80. Overall I am still hundreds of dollars in the black from buying reels from Japan. Especially right now, the yen is quite weak to the USD so it's a great time to buy.

Most everyone is working off of poorly translated materials, so it's hard to pin anything down. I am in the "BFS refers only to a specific style of rods aimed at bass fishing" camp just based on how the various Japanese companies use the term in their nomenclature/marketing. I have never seen a rod labeled "Bait Finesse" or "BFS" that wasn't clearly part of a bass fishing line.

My Avatar picture is my previous PB bullfrog. I’ve since caught one bigger but didn’t get a reasonable picture of the guy. A Presentation I use a lot is to pitch a weightless plastic onto a lily pad and twitch it a few times. Then I slowly drag it into the water. I catch a lot of bass that way but I also catch quite a few bullfrogs.

I go the other direction, uplifting is for hiking, chill is for fishing.

Some kind of head covering, polarized glasses, pliers, and a knife are the only absolutes.

I work doing live events/tradeshows, my working-day schedule is all over the map. Sometimes it’s a couple months of a regular 9-to-5 thing, sometimes it’s a week of overnights, sometimes it’s just straight up 75 hour hell week. This bleeds over into my days off, most nights if I am doing anything remotely mentally stimulating, I have to actively decide to go to bed. As a rule I generally try to go to bed between midnight and 1 AM and get up between 7:30 and 8:30 AM but it’s always a very moving target.

I started fishing in my mid 30s having never really done it as a kid. My work involves a lot of travel and I end up with an awful lot of free weekdays. I needed something to do to keep myself out of trouble.