galyonj

Those of y'all that fish ultralight, do you have favorite places online to buy your rods? I don't trust Amazon to ship me a rod of any length and that rod arrive in the same number of pieces in which it was packed, so I'm looking for other options.

I've started to take some perverse joy in fishing public parks and other "highly pressured" bits of water. The fish I caught yesterday (posted in the latest catch pics thread) was the third or fourth I've pulled out of the water at that park in front of people that were whining about being skunked. One dude came off the trail there as I was getting the hook out and said "Really?! I've never seen anyone catch a fish here before." I will never get tired of hearing that.

I would have had a hard time not having a conversation with them over that. I don't fish to be a sadist; I love animals and believe that all living things have a right to be treated with dignity. Anyone that is cruel simply for the sake of being cruel gives up any right to be treated with dignity and deserves…some things that I'm not going to go into detail on because I like it here and want to stick around. Of course. Because trash begets trash.

Had a few minutes to stop and make a few casts on the way home from the office yesterday evening. Resulting in the weirdest hookset I've ever had. I hadn't planned on doing any punching, and I was too lazy to swap out the swim jig I had tied on, but it did the job anyway. Poor little guy was at the tail end of 15 lb abraz-x tied to 50lb braid, and he came shooting up out of his brushpile like an ICBM when I set the hook. Did some very careful surgery to get the hook out and saved the eye. Patient swam off none the worse for wear.

For sure. I can't get a good sense of when crappie spawn hereabouts, but I figure it's pretty soon if it hasn't already happened. Wasn't any kind of fight to bring it in, of course, but it sure did thump that squarebill.

I'm lucky to get out of the house with socks that match and all the stuff I wanted to bring. Implying that I'd think far enough ahead to pack food is giving me entirely too much credit. Often as not I'll just run into a gas station and grab a drink and some gummy bears or something to tide me over.

That was the first video I ever saw from him and I was – pardon the pun – hooked from then on. Love his videos.

On reflection I don't know why I was surprised. Fish keep proving that they'll try to eat whatever's handy, whether it's something they'd normally like to eat or not.

My first plastic worm fish as an adult (I have to break this up because I took about 20 years off from fishing) came by way of a drum, at night, hitting an Ol' Monster in green pumpkin magic. I think my first ever was probably a dink largemouth on some kind of ribbontail when I was a kid. No idea as to brand or anything like that.

I'm just about always gunning for bass, of course. But my enthusiasm far outstrips my ability as far as fishing goes, so I'm just happy to catch anything. Anyway, I was throwing a squarebill along the bank the other morning, and I felt the familiar sponginess of a dink. It looked…funny as it came in. "Huh," I thought to myself as I reeled in this fish that seemed very much resigned to its fate, "what are you?" Long story short, apparently crappie will choke a 2.75" crankbait in shallow water if they're hungry enough. I'd never caught a crappie before – never even seen a crappie in person before, and forgot everything I know about taking a decent picture in my bewilderment Came in at 1lb 7oz, and a hair over 15" long. I'm told that's a pretty good size, but I gotta take the dude's word for it. Only fish I caught that morning, but it more than made the trip worth it. After pictures and a session with my cheap scale, it was released safely back to, hopefully, make a bunch more little slablets soon.

Yeah. Just like anything else mechanical, you gotta maintain and lube your reels.

Your chances of catching the big girls go up commensurate with how frustrating it is to get to and fish in a given spot.

I wanna go!

I keep a few plastic Kroger bags in my gear and will usually take a break and try to fill one up when I'm out at the water. Keeping my hands busy by cleaning the place up a little bit kinda beats pouting over getting skunked again.

I honestly couldn't tell you how many times I may have seen you or somebody else mention it since I joined and it just never registered with me. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Glad it finally stuck, though.

This was a real gamechanger for me regardless of what I've got tied on. I think the first time I noticed and paid attention to this being a thing was in a post that @WRB made a while back that I'm sure was just incidental, and I can't even remember the post or thread now. Anyway, that helped me realize that you're only ever able to feel so much through even the most sensitive rods. Keeping a fingertip on the line itself has helped me notice the gentle bumps from sneaky or unsure fish that I don't think I would have been aware of before.

It's almost as if fish are predators with tiny brains.

Caught some catfish bait by accident. Treble hook dug into its back, and dragging it through the water back to me I thought I'd hooked another of the innumerable pieces of trash under the water where I was fishing. Anyway, I'm sure it was as surprised to see me as I was to see it.

Not necessarily. Provided the wrench doesn't have any insulated padding on the handle, it'll be very useful for making sure the wiring on the hot side of the switch is live.

In addition to the suggestions above for weightless rigging and the like, one thing I like to do that I don't see mentioned super often is rigging them on a shakyhead. That's about as finesse as I can go and stay awake at all.

Totally. Just stand closer.

Eh. I don't mean that it's irrelevant, just that it's not necessarily gonna make or break the presentation with all else being equal. Is 10lb gonna get you to advertised depth compared to, say, 15lb? Totally. Is .22mm 10lb gonna outfish .27mm 10lb with the same presentation? That's probably pretty iffy. Here's the thing, though: If you truly believe that a given line is gonna outfish another one, you're more likely to use it in situations in that have a high success rate for the presentation, and you will catch more fish with that line using that presentation than you would if you had spooled up with the other one. Because every time you pick up the stick with the line you weren't sure about or didn't really like, you spent the whole cast second-guessing yourself and not working the presentation. Nobody ever works better with tools they don't trust.

I think you're overthinking the impact that the potential hundredths of a millimeter difference between brands of line (at the same test weight) will have on the depth and action of a given lure, and, consequently, on that lure's fish-catching ability. If there's a mono that you trust, go with it and don't worry unless and until it gives you a reason to worry.

I just use Yo-Zuri for cranking. It's cheap. Works for me. I feel like the stretch works with my rod tip and gives me a little bit of springiness that helps me keep the fish pinned on those little hooks if they get rowdy.