fishwizzard

A few years ago I was in Pittsburgh for work and got caught in some hellish traffic on my way to the airport. My cabby was a native Minnesotan and had an incredible example of the accent. He and I spent about a 90 minute standstill arguing bass vs walleye. He was very passionate about it and I have never spent a nicer time in traffic.

It's amazing what small changes can produce. Look at this little cove: I could see bass moving in the shallows, mostly dinks but the occasional 1-2lb fish. It was hot and sunny out and I spent about 45min casting a Senko all over it. A few of the tiniest of dinks would grab it and run, but nothing big enough to even hook. I walked away for 20min to try another spot. then came back. I tied on a 3.5" Fat Impact rigged with just a hook and some nail-weights. Immediately caught a 1lb bass, killing my paddletail. While I was re-rigging some clouds blew in and from then it was game-on. In the next 20 min I got five (FIVE!) more bass from dink to maybe 1.5lb and then got this nice little 2.5: I soon ran out of FI's and the same rig with a Rage Swimmer produced nothing. Sure, 7 bass out of a spot the size of a backyard pool might be all there was to catch, but I quickly walked to the other parts of the pond with similar conditions and still nothing.

I have some of the 50lb of roughly the same age, its faded a ton but it's hanging in there.

I have a Magic Stick and I would call the taper ModFast. It’s a great rod, very powerful and quite versatile.

Ebay is a blessing and a curse. Three I Slide 185 glidebaits for $100. One one of them looks like it has seen the water.

It was a fun day but very very little sign of fish activity. Most of my fishing is soft plastics of some sort so the Mattawoman trips are my "topwater vacation", but I think we did try to force it for longer then we should have. We did get in a little skipping practice and explored one of the creek channels beyond the point of reason, which is a favorite slow-day kayak activity of mine. It's a lot nicer to be able to motor back out once you hit the end of navigable waters though. This is the better of the two bass I got: And this is what I had to deal with this morning due to the skipping practice. PP Super Slick v2 is, in fact, quite slick and trying to pick it out with wet hands was not happening. It took a blunt needle and three cups of coffee this morning to get it out.

I invented a new one yesterday as well! It’s the wacky-rigged glidebait. You simply wrap your line around both trebles on the cast. It really mimics a very very distressed baitfish pretty well.

Pitching a jig is a lot of fun and I always feel very smart because I just *knew* there would be a bass in that exact hole/piling/branch/whatever, ignoring the other 10 times I got it wrong.

Nope. I mean to fish the Pax more often in the future, I live right by it south of Annapolis but it is always so muddy and the bottom so silty that I had written it off for fishing.

I have been out a good bit, but nothing amazing to show for it. A friend and I have a tradition of taking long hikes on really bad weather days and last Saturday seemed perfect. Did about 10 miles, drank 3l of water, peed maybe twice. Ended up catching a pile of small bass out of a marsh on a frog: I also managed another surprise striper way up the Pax River by Laurel. I had been throwing a D-Shad into shaded pools and catching fallfish and small LMBs when I decided to make a bomb cast downriver and burn it back in to get the line tight on my spool. The striper hit the fluke on top.

I have been doing amazing on the 4" Easy Shiner as well, but I rig them on a 1/8oz sled head. They have a great wiggle at most every swimming speed, the position of the weight both protects the nose/screwlock connection and gives it a great looking "nose down/tail up" position if you drag it on the bottom.

Have you ever fished the Phenix Recon Elite rods? I used to have one of the L/F Recon 2 rods and really like it. It was on the mod side of fast and was a great and very forgiving caster. I sold it this past winter but kinda miss it and wonder if the Recon Elite rods have the same power/taper.

I am buying them. So far I have just bought Boss Heads as I could get them in the same shipment as the skirt materials.

It took along time to accept it. It’s a shame too as they are such great creek/pond lures. Some day I will love a spinning rod again, but today is not that day.

I use a red glass bead when I am fishing an unpegged weight, I feel like it protects the knot a little and I figure the occasional clacking noise can't hurt. I have a big bag of glass beads and I think they look cool. If I didn't have them with me I would shrug and move on. However, one time I always want a bead is when I am fishing 4" worms on what I call a T/C-rig. The rigging goes "hook -> largish red glass bead -> bobber stop -> 1/16-1/8oz tungsten weight -> bobber stop". Rigged this way I can switch between a T-rig and a C-rig in seconds. It's really useful in some of the creeks and small ponds that I fish both of which have a lot of empty mud/silt bottoms. I use it t-rigged when targeting cover/structure and C-rigged when I am dragging the empty bottom looking for cover/structure or just in desperation. When in C-rig mode the bead usually stays stuck on the knot and I 100% believe there is something about the weight of the bead and the bit of flash that make it a ton more effective then without it.

I have been tilting at the "Casting a JO7 on a baitcaster" windmill for a few years now and it's not worked out well for me. The only rods I have found that will do it well are very soft and light trout BFS rods. They work great for sunfish and creek bass, but even a little pickerel is hard to manage. The JO9 is heavier and that helps a lot but the issue with casting these baits is wind resistance, not weight. I can get the JO9s to cast well on a few different L powers casting rods and even acceptably on a Avid M/XF, but none of these rods are anything I would want to mess with any of the Esox family on.

Check out the Megabass XXX Black Themis. It's a bit stiff for small Ned Rigs, but it will be great for everything else on your list. I have one and use it for dropshot, 1/8oz Shakeyheads, and 1/8oz bass jigs. It's about as sensitive to me as the Loomis IMX rods and is a lot of fun to fish with. It's an true XF action, which is good for hoosets but it's not going to be the best caster at the lower end of it's range.

https://www.rei.com/c/mens-base-layer-bottoms Anything like this. I have a few different ones, I buy them when they are on sale in the spring and just look for the thinnest but still opaque ones I can find. The tighter they are the faster they dry but I have not like the actual compression ones I tried.

How much money do you want to spend and do you really want to be able to throw an actual 1/16oz total weight lure?

I cannot stand long pants when outside so when I need the sun protection in my yak I resort to tights/leggings under my shorts. The lightweight ones are amazingly cool despite being black, which seems to be the only color men's baselayer tights come in. One advantage of the dark color is that they dry in the sun incredibly quickly, if I wade into to my knees to launch the tops of my legs will be dry in like 30m and the undersides in maybe 60m.

Hah, never even though to look for tubing, I have just been taking straws home in my pocket every time I encounter a good looking size.

I hope they keep the Hamburg PA store open, I do a little weekend trip up there to fish once or twice a year and I like to wander around the store a bit.

The saving grace for SK is that they don’t seem to have a MMAP policy, so it’s usually easy to find them on sale somewhere. It would take a hell of a price hike to get me to give up the Menace and Rage Craws, but the rest of their lineup isn’t irreplaceable for me.

I just started tying jigs this year was shocked at how easy it is. I use a senko-sized o-ring to hold the skirt in place, it’s loose enough to make fluffing/adjusting the strands easy but tight enough to hold them in place while I twist the wire. What I really want to find is a straw that is the perfect size to slide over the weedguard. I use painters tape now to wrap it but a straw would be so much faster.

Daiwa has a few short frog rods in their JDM Black Label lineup but I have never found much info on them. Megabass has a new rod in the JDM Destroyer line called the “Lillypad Survivor”, it’s a 6’7” P5, so it might not be meant for heavy cover, but could be worth a look. I have also been on the hunt for a super short frog rod but have not had a lot of luck.