galyonj

I keep forgetting to try that. I've got a grip of heat shrink in with my electrical tools, gotta see if I got a size I wanna use.

That's what I call it, too! I love that phrase!

If I didn't already have the tool (and enough of the o-rings that I don't need to worry about buying more for some time) I wouldn't have a bit of trouble using the hair ties. Sounds like a fine idea.

Looks like TW's only got the 3-5' version in hard knock and silent, not just the regular BB rattle. They got the BB rattle in versions that go to 3' and 10', respectively. The hard knocker's probably close enough for jazz.

Just as destructive are the woodpeckers that treat carpenter bee hives as all-you-can-eat buffets. Carpenter bees are fairly important pollinators, but I respect that people don't want them (and the birds that think they're delicious) boring holes their fences and whatnot.

Pro move right here.

I use 832 a bunch. It's good line. And if you were gonna break the rod, it'd break whether you're using braid or not. I've broken two rods ever. Both times I was being stupid or doing something I knew better than to do.

It really depends on what I'm doing. For swim jigs, 1/4oz seems to be my sweet spot. To the point that I don't even carry anything else in my go bag. Pitching, hopping, and dragging can be anything from 1/4 to 1/2 oz. I'm all over the place there. Wacky jigs are usually 1/16 to 3/32 oz. Little ballhead or mushroomhead jigs and whatnot can be anywhere from 1/32 up to 1/8 depending on how fast I want it to get where it's going.

Yeah, that's about what I was thinking. I have a TP1 black ML/F with a 2500-size NASCI on it that I absolutely love and don't want to put down once I pick it up. My most productive combo last year, everything else is a distant second. What I envisioned doing with this Revros was something like your Avocet/Procyon. I'll get around to it. It's ain't gonna go bad sitting on that shelf.

I have a 1000 size Revros LT sitting in the top of the closet waiting for me to figure out what I'm gonna pair it with. Stupid bait monkey.

I am 100% confident that the presentation works, but it's never worked for me. Last time I tried it the water was cold and bad muddy – maybe an inch or two of visibility. Fishing at a creek mouth and casting into a field of vegetation just off the drop into the main channel. Bright, high sun. I knew there were fish there. With shad being a big prey source – especially in this spot – I tied on a white/chartreuse chatterbait with a chartreuse swimbait trailer. Tried burning it, creeping it just fast enough to get the blade moving, ripping it out of the vegetation and off the bottom then letting it die, swimming it. Everything I knew to do, I tried. Finally I gave up. Tied on a swim jig and got bit on the third or fourth cast. Every time I fish a chatterbait, some other presentation gets the job done after it strikes out. I ain't got enough time to fish to waste it on lures that don't produce.

Swim jig, without question.

That is 100% the best summation of a philosophy class that I've ever read.

Roger had one buzz the tower earlier today and he ran back to me like his butt was on fire.

I mean...I reckon it can be. There are probably fifty different things one could fish that would be more effective than dragging a big swimbait, but...sure! Why not? Here's how I think I look at it, after putting entirely too much thought into it after I posted in this thread yesterday: If what the conditions and the fish are telling you to do requires you to change to a presentation that's slower/smaller/quieter than the presentation you'd normally like to be fishing in whatever part of the water column you're trying to fish, that's finesse for you. Is a swim jig a finesse presentation? Compared to a chatterbait, I'd say there's a good case to be made. By the same token, I'm sure there's someone out there that, when they need to finesse, they set down the swim jig and swim a ballhead jig and a grub (or a tube) instead. They're both reaction lures, but one's a little smaller package to which pressured and/or really spooky fish might be a little bit more likely to commit. Justice Stewart, of course, wasn't talking about finesse fishing when he wrote his concurrence for the majority opinion in Jacobellis v. Ohio (378 U.S. 184), but he may as well have been: "I shall not today attempt further to define the kinds of material I understand to be embraced within that shorthand description; and perhaps I could never succeed in intelligibly doing so. But I know it when I see it, and the motion picture involved in this case is not that."

As soon as I find a water color/clarity it doesn't work in, I'll let y'all know.

I don't disagree, and I think the difficulty is rooted in the fact that the term (in this context, anyway) means different things to different people. Add industry marketing jumping on the finesse train and the whole thing kind of loses whatever intrinsic meaning it may have had.

I get to show off my idea for a finesse punching rig again!

That's preposterous.

Yeah. I think you've probably got enough fishy-looking spots memorized that it's not a huge loss.

He was fussing about it being stuck in demo mode after we put in and motored up to our first spot. After watching a quick video about it I reckon he got it figured out. lol

I mostly end up with EVA or Winn because that's just what's on the rod I want. It really doesn't matter to me, though. Aside from the couple seconds it takes to make a cast, I choke up on the rod so far that I'm almost never in contact with the grip to feel it anyway.

A little embarrassment is a small price to pay for coming out of a misadventure on the water unharmed. Their angle on the ramp is real weird...what were they doing?

Dude it was such a hoot. You can see what the down imaging looked like in @TnRiver46's post above. We were joking that it looked like his demo mode was still running. I need to break something else on his boat, so that I can fix it, and parlay that into endless free rides.