PhishLI

Got in some roadside pond action with my brother.

Then I'll stick with my recommendation. An Alberto knot for the leader of your choice is easy and very fast to tie out in nature.

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Describe where you're fishing. Is it choked out? Topped out with weeds? Clear to the bottom? Tell us. The easy answer is 30lb braid, then tie on your mono/copoly/fluoro leader depending on where you're fishing and what you're fishing for at the moment. Sometimes straight braid will be the answer.

I can't tell you how many times where the clock ticked 1:00 am, our energy was flagging, but I would push us through until 2:00, and just like that the bite came alive. So many times, my wading buddy quits, and on the way out he always says, "send me pics". More often than not he'll get one or a few sent to his phone before he gets back to his driveway. The hot bite can turn on at night just like that and is often triggered by baits slapping down into the water. Find the right zone, which might only be 100 feet left or right, and that seems to call in groups who are competitive. Then it's one after the other.

Then I'd recommend finding a spot without dinosaurs in it. For a number of reasons, night fishing provides a completely different rush. Between the darkness and relative silence, I'm just tuned in on a different frequency. Heart pounding and the shakes are ramped up during the hit, fight, and landing. It's electrifying really, and the closest feeling I've ever had to cracking my bike's throttle wide open at night on a deserted highway when I was young and insane. Alas, I'm much older now, and far less tempted to dare God with my life, but I can get that same buzz on the cheap by fishing in the dark.

Last night was odd for a few reasons. At this particular spot, and at this particular time of year, I usually start on the northeastern shoreline because that's where the pads come up first. The entrance to this lake is on the southwestern side and I'll fly right through it. However, every spot I briefly lit up with my headlamp on the way over was loaded with bluegill, so I had to stop. Strangely, the bluegill were mixed in size, from very large to very small. I've never seen this here. They're always found in like-sized groups. Got a smack and missed on my very first cast throwing a Savage Gear pulse tail bluegill, but then I couldn't buy a sniff, and I threw the kitchen sink at them while slowly working my way north. Spent the next 2 ½ hours blanking, it was getting late, and I was really starting to feel it in my back as I'm not quite in wading shape just yet. Nothing gets me in wading shape other than wading. I finally booked over to where I should have started in the first place, on the eastern side, touched my toes a few times to try to loosen up, chucked the 6" 6th Sense Trace floater, and finally found a willing eater on my third cast. Go figure. By then it was 12:30 am, and I need my beauty sleep more than ever, so I called it a win and boogied.

The wind's been cranking lately, and it was cold this morning, but a man's gotta do... Got in about an hour before my waders sprung a leak. Big fun walking about a mile with 45 degree lake water sloshing around in my boot and soaking up my pant leg. A few pads are up, finally, and that's where I got my bites. Lost a solid one banging it back through the stalks but got a few afterward which made up for the pain. For once I wasn't tortured by Pickeral, so that's a win in itself.

Nice!👊 That girl will be a 6+ in a month. P.S. I know that laydown😉

Adjust the knob for zero play/zero tension then adjust the external dial higher for no overrun. Ignore the numbers. They're only a reference. Adjust it to where needs to be. If that doesn't work for you, then adjust your casting stroke. The A2s Mag Z isn't as forgiving as your Steez SV. Even so, your casting stroke doesn't need to be hard or snappy with Daiwa's MagZ brake. Less is often more. This isn't to say you shouldn't power cast, because you can, and I certainly do. The trick is, that power is applied slightly differently on the pull forward and release point compared to reels using friction brakes. Also, heavily greased spool bearings out of the box has been a thing lately with Daiwa. This messes with the casting in the short term. The grease will break down over time, but you can cut it by adding light oil to each spool bearing. You will absolutely realize a difference once the grease has been expelled, namely, your brake setting can be lowered with less consequence.

My wife felt it at home, but I was driving down a bumpy road at the time and felt nothing. Where I live all the house's foundations are built on piles driven deeply through the sand into solid ground or rock. This entire shoreline development was put up on back filled salt marshes. We only have 8" of topsoil over loose sand as far a one can dig. Only a few miles away north of us, my sister-in-law felt barely anything, but her house is built with a conventional footing foundation on solid ground. I'm guessing the piles transmitted the tremors into our short beam-wall concrete foundation and the whole house oscillated because it's essentially like sitting on treetops in the wind during a moment like this. The collective rumble of the structures really did sound like a jumbo jet flying way too low or about to crash. Our neighborhood was out in the street to discuss it. Thankfully it wasn't an aftershock of something gone wrong in NYC, which crossed my mind immediately. After 2001, nothing would surprise me.

Ds are deep spools. CXHs are shallow spools, but they still hold plenty of line, especially braid.

For a few seconds I thought our washing machine went out of balance badly, but then it sounded like a jet was coming down overhead. Everything shook. That made sense for a moment because we're only 20 minutes from Kennedy Airport. 4.7 quake with the epicenter located in Lebanon, NJ.

Is popping on a reel cover "extreme" care? I walk around lakes with 5-8 rods slung over my shoulder like a stack of 2X4s. None of my reels have paint damage, with some being around 7 years old. Alot of those are Daiwas. They still look new. I suppose one could say a fishing reel is a tool, but it's actually a machine with a paint job, not a chrome plated wrench. I don't give a shyte if a wrench slips out of my hand onto the concrete, but I'd puke if I dropped a reel onto the same though. No company's paint can deal with much abuse. I sold a bunch of reels to one particular guy. A Tranx 300, a Curado 300, and a few Tats. Every one of those was mint when I sold them, but now they look like they rolled down a mountain. He just chucks them into his truck bed without a bed liner or has them clattering against each other in the bottom of his yak. Disgracefully chewed up, all because he's too lazy to put on a 4$ reel cover in about 5 seconds. Whatever.

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Perhaps you should check the setting. It might be too tight. Set it for zero play/zero tension. You won't burst into flames if you touch the tension knob. You should have no problem chucking that bait 130'-140' on a 7'3" rod. Whatever the limitations of standard SV, they are competitive using aerodynamic baits like a lipless which is amongst the best cast-like-a-bullet baits. Again, check your settings. I can spit 20 feet. SV boost isn't SV. Different animal.

What are you doing with your SV reel? Cranking down the spool tension? Juicing the brakes to 20?

Dig-in isn't a factor with ultra shallow BFS spools. You'll find out that you won't often be ripping casts as you would with standard MH rods and common bass baits. BFS really doesn't work well that way unless you're throwing transfer weighted hard plastic minnows. Use whichever line you prefer. However, you do not need to fill the spool. 120' of mainline plus a leader should cover most bases, IMO. Most of your casts will often be quite a bit less than that with lighter soft plastic baits, especially if you choose a reel with a 28-30 mm spool.

Your cell phone's camera is your friend. Take pics at every stage of disassembly then reference them during reassembly and you can't go wrong. If you don't work on reels often enough to where everything is second nature, this is the way to go.

You can see this happen in most tournaments. Someone who seems unbeatable one week misses the cut or finishes quite low the next time out. Nothing happens if the fish you found in practice are gone or have been stung multiple times, or if you can't get on your spots because locals or other pros got there first. He retired at the top of his game for greener pastures. Not quite a has been.

For baits this light where distance is your priority, ditch the plastic line and go light braid mainline to leader, or no leader, and fill your spool. Your distance will increase by quite a bit either way. Line twist related problems will practically disappear.

You'll need a tungsten nail weight with a diameter no larger than 1/8"(0.125") or (3mm) for this to work, but it works just fine. Great for rattles too.

Word

I'm glad I asked him if there were any gators around as I walked out of the garage with my gear. He said "not lately" but casually mentioned to listen for rattlesnakes! No biggie, right? No mention of having any anti-venom on hand either. "Have fun. See you soon, maybe." 🤣

An impromptu trip to South Carolina had me packed lightly and with no fishing gear, but that was barely the point of going down there. My mom had to have open heart surgery, so fishing wasn't on my mind. That said, the ICU kicked us out each night, and with so many HOA ponds scattered within the Dell Webb development it was hard to say no, and many of which were much larger than I'd imagined. My father further encouraged me by pointing out this spot and that spot, so I decided to do a few 1 hour trips out at dusk to see what's what. He has a few spinning rods in the garage, but they were all sketchy. My brother-in-law and his sons are all ham-fisted, so every rod was busted one way or another from their previous expeditions. I settled on a Black Max spinning rig with about 7" of its tip guillotined off, and a 2000 sized reel spooled with 20lb mono. Guitar string on a spinning reel. Uhg. Ran to Wally's for a bag of black/gold flake 5" Big Bite worms and some screw lock hooks. These ponds all have one particular feature; Steep banks lined with tall grass. Pops has been unable to fish them for several years because it's too tough on his knees, so I went to different spots than he recommended that looked good to me with the caveat of staying out of the tall grass due to rattle snakes. I did just that. Sheesh. I started off throwing a wacky rig for a bit, but no play. Went to a standard weedless rigging and did the slow drag thing and started getting bit. Then I started converting, but it was weird with a rig that lacked much feel at all. Good thing having that 20lb mono on after all though as I needed to shore flip every fish 5' up then 5 feet over the grass. Had about 6 shake off into the grass, but luckily, they flopped back in. Good for them that they did, because no way I was going in to save them. I imagine me getting killed by a poisonous snake during her recovery might've pushed mama over the edge. Got some bites, and they all fought like crazy. It was a nice way to end at least a few days of stress and monotony sitting in a hospital room from dawn til dark. Mom's home today and doing well, and I'm finally on the board again.