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February 16, 2012

Check out this item from Kevin Nash, apparently one of the leading minds of carpdom across the pond in the UK. This makes clear that on a global level Andre Moore has not cornered the market on fish-oriented double entendres. Andre’s “Penetration” and “Spanish Fly” evoke torrents of laughter from all of us who’ve never outgrown the 7th grade, but the “Butt Cracker” may be in a league of its own. It’s some sort of strike indicator but that’s all I can discern from this image. Can anyone edumacate me on exactly how one is used – or do I not want to know?

February 15, 2012

Air travel with fishing rods is a gut-wrenching experience. If you’re anything like me, you’ll do everything within your powers to avoid it – it’s that bad – but sometimes it’s absolutely unavoidable, so you take whatever precautions you can to avoid or at least minimize the hurt. Over twenty-plus years of flying with a rod tube, I’ve learned a few tricks of the trade: First, I tape the rod tube securely with excessive amounts of duct tape to make sure that it will not retract on the rods. Then I take an old bed sheet and wrap each rod once with it, in an alternating tip-to-butt pattern. Then finally I secure the whole deal with a TSA-approved lock.

Those measures came about because out of the first fifteen or so times I flew with rods, I had a nail-biter and a disaster. The near-miss occurred when I arrived in Florida and found the opening to the tube left unlatched and flapping. Fortunately, nothing was damaged. The next time I wasn’t so lucky. The baggage gorillas may not be able to compromise a Samsonite, but they can beat the piss out of a rod tube. The opening remained latched, but much to my dismay the rod case had been split in half. Not sure if their tool of choice was a hacksaw, a machete or a bellyflopping herd of lemmings, but all of my one piece rods became two piecers. The airline made it clear they’d cover the damage, but if I’d been someplace where I couldn’t buy more rods it would’ve been a major league goat grab.

Even though I’ve developed a system, there remain two potential heart attacks every time I get off the plane. Ideally they bring the tube out through the oversized baggage door, but you can’t count on that so I wait at the baggage carousel to see if the tube comes off on the belt. When this happens, even if the tube is otherwise in good condition, it’s a disaster waiting to happen because a 7-foot tube doesn’t do well with the twists and turns of the belt. Most often, if you’re not there to catch it it’ll fall right off an edge. And that assumes that they bring it off altogether – it always seems to be the last piece of luggage removed and I envision some airline employee having a grand old time with my flipping stick until the tube actually arrives. Assuming you avert that crisis safely, you’re not out of the woods yet – you still have to open the tube and make sure that all of the rattling, throwing and banging that took place between home and Anylake USA hasn’t severed your rods.

And don’t even get me started on the dudes in line at the ticket counter who invariably ask “Haven’t you heard of two-piece rods?” They’re about one step up the evolutionary ladder from the jackwagons who ask “You bringing a bazooka with you?” Pre-9/11, it wasn’t funny. Now it’s just one more potential coronary that I don’t need to deal with.

When we went to Brazil in November, the redheaded wife and I elected to borrow rods, but when we go back this fall we’re going to bring our own. That’s why I was intrigued when my friend Dennis Shew brought an SKB rod tube to the Amazon last year. He’d borrowed it from some friends who use them on tuna trips. I’d never heard of the brand before but looking at their website (www.skbcases.com) it appears that they know what they’re doing – they offer an unconditional “million mile warranty” and will cover up to $1,500 for damaged contents. Dennis said you can run over it with your truck and it won’t break. I’m not going to go that far, but anything I can do to protect my sticks is worth it. A hundred bucks seems a small price to pay for a little extra peace of mind and I mentioned that to the wife, who took note of my materialistic needs and presented me with the tube for Valentine’s Day.

February 13, 2012

At one point, perhaps a decade ago, I had a dozen or so original green Curados. Now I’m down to three. Some have been sold at flea markets, others traded away, and a few scrapped for parts. I have braced myself for the day when I will be down to one, then none.

Has there ever been a product so universally respected? I won’t say “loved,” because allegiances to Daiwa or Quantum or other brands keep some anglers away from Shimano, but the green Curado was an unparalleled workhorse. Weekend guys loved them because they were smooth as silk. Pros loved them because they were affordable and stood up to abuse. The only ones who didn’t love them were the reel repair guys, because except for the occasional cleaning they could make it for years without the need for a meaningful overhaul. A Chronarch or Core or Calais is nice, but when you need to have 10 or 12 reels ready to go at all times, for most of us it becomes a bit financially prohibitive to invest that kind of green money, so we turned to green reels.

I’m not going to accuse any manufacturer of building eventual obsolescence into any of their products. I don’t think they consciously create reels that will fail after three or four or five years. Nevertheless, as they strive to make things lighter and sleeker, something has to give. I have reels that are lighter than my three greenies along with reels that are smoother than them, but I don’t have the same sort of faith that any of them will hold up to the rigors of fishing as long as the three battle-scarred reels that still get a regular ride in the boat. When they’re gone, they’re gone, and I won’t get sentimental about a machine, but if I could have that kind of faith in everything I buy I’d be a much happier consumer and probably catch more fish, too.

February 8, 2012

I've started my offseason tackle organization substantially later than normal this year. Being a confirmed procrastinator, I will further delay the process of figuring out what needs to be trashed, repaired or replaced by blogging about little oddities that I find along the way.

Among the dozens of thin-bodied and flat-sided cranks that fill my Plano boxes, most have modern finishes and high-tech bodies. There’s an outlier, though, and it’s the Bomber Speed Shad.

If you haven’t heard of the Speed Shad, it’s probably because they’re not in wide distribution. They’re available from the Lurenet website for a mere $6.99, but not from Basspro.com or Cabelas.com or TackleWarehouse.com, all of which carry plenty of other Bomber goodies. Here in Virginia, where there are little pockets of Speed Shad disciples, it is rumored that to obtain the formerly discontinued bait, tackle shops had to order many dozens at one time. Shops like Green Top in Glen Allen and Bobcat’s in Clarksville always seem to have them on their shelves.

I’m convinced that part of the reason the Speed Shad never gained wider acclaim is because many of them never run properly out of the package and it’s a bear to get them tuned right. On top of that, even though it’s not lightweight, its shape make it about as easy to throw as a potato chip. As a result, there are probably hundreds of them scattered in tackle boxes, garages and boxes of junk, that haven’t seen the light of day in years. I have to admit that I don’t think I’ve throw one in at least five or six years, maybe more. But if I get the right conditions this year, probably on Buggs Island or Lake Gaston, I might just have to tie one on.

February 7, 2012

I've started my offseason tackle organization substantially later than normal this year. Being a confirmed procrastinator, I will further delay the process of figuring out what needs to be trashed, repaired or replaced by blogging about little oddities that I find along the way.

Last year's New Year's resolution was to fish a jig more but my follow-through sucked. I caught some fish on the old leadhead, mostly pitching and flipping the little Lintner jig from Omega Custom Tackle and once again in the fall swimming a little Brovarney version from Cheeseland. Then in Brazil we caught most of our peacocks, including our two biggest, on beefed-up hair jigs fished like jerkbaits. Nevertheless, I have to admit that the jig still hasn't attained "go-to" status for me.

There were plenty of situations over the past 12 months when I might have been able to improve my catch by switching to a jig but elected to stick to a creature bait or a Senko instead. Accordingly, the jig boxes remain only a semi-comfortable zone for me. Ideally that will change in 2012. Accordingly I'm taking a mulligan on my 2011 vows and will try again. That has forced me to go through my jig collection to try and really get a sense of when and how I'm going to fish them, which in turn has necessitated getting rid of the ones that aren't top-of-the-heap quality. At the same time, I also plan to add some, including the Zero Gravity Jigs pictured here, from North Carolina's Custom Lures Unlimited.

So much of the jig trade over the past few years has involved an effort to pack more punch into a smaller package, primarily through the use of tungsten, but CLU owner Kelly Barefoot has gone in the opposite direction, making a jighead that is less dense so that the bait will fall more slowly. In the shallow water I prefer that could be deadly, especially when the fish will not respond to a fast fall. Kelly's hand-built cranks are deadly and his attention to detail on his custom paint jobs is tremendous, so I have no doubt that his jigs will be every bit as good.

February 6, 2012

I've started my offseason tackle organization substantially later than normal this year. Being a confirmed procrastinator, I will further delay the process of figuring out what needs to be trashed, repaired or replaced by blogging about little oddities that I find along the way.

I’m an absolute sucker for Japanese fishing tackle, the rarer the better so long as it still appears to be functional. 

As the addiction has festered, I’ve realized that there are at least four tiers of Japanese tackle:

The last group is, of course, the most fun to ferret out. If nothing else it gives you bragging rights over your tournament partner when you start to whack the green fish on a bait that he not only doesn’t have, but probably can’t get in a reasonable timeframe. One tackle manufacturer that falls into the group is Imakatsu. I became acquainted with their products when I travelled to Japan in 2007. I became further intrigued when several Japanese anglers who fish the Bassmaster and FLW Tours told me that company president Katsutaka Imae is one of the most revered anglers in all of Japan, perhaps the best of all of them. As a result, I’m substantially poorer, having gone to the eBay well for Imakatsu products more than once since then.

The latest purchase is the “Jaka Jack” pictured here. It’s neither a flat-sided nor a round-bodied crank. Instead, it has curved sides that supposedly move more water than either of those categories. To be brutally honest, I have way more crankbaits than I’ll ever use, but this one sang to me. It’s downright sexy and I pressed the “add to cart” button without hesitation.

February 3, 2012

Here’s one from the “small world” file….

On Tuesday I posted a little piece on a bright orange spinnerbait that had rekindled some nearly decade-old memories. A few hours later, I got an email from my friend Dan O’Sullivan (the mastermind behind the AdvancedAngler.com website), which brought it back full circle. His email, reprinted with his permission, read as follows:

My wife and I made that "Tangerine" spinnerbait you have in the picture, as well as the "Flamingo" ones you have.

Christina and I owned and operated Lim-it Lures of California from 2002 to 2006 when we sold it to Paul "Stretch" Cunningham; my tournament partner who passed away in November.

That color  was in our catalog all along, and had sold something like 50 copies in the previous years.  In 2003, we sold over 600 of them to the stores around the Delta in less than one month.  The Delta received a bunch of rain that year and was muddy in the early pre-spawn.  The "Tangerine" color made the Delta bass absolutely ignite in the dirty water and guys were catching bass by the dozens on it.

Since Paul's passing, I've asked Talon Lures to keep the color going, and they added it to their catalog - called it "Orange Crush"

I love it when all of the pieces fit together nicely.

If you’d like one of your own, they’re available at http://talonlures.com/shibuispinnerbaitorangecrush-limitededition.aspx

February 2, 2012

I've started my offseason tackle organization substantially later than normal this year. Being a confirmed procrastinator, I will further delay the process of figuring out what needs to be trashed, repaired or replaced by blogging about little oddities that I find along the way.

I thought my spinnerbait addiction was bad, but I'm pretty sure topwateritis will ultimately lead to my demise. I just can't resist a sexy surface bait. The real beneficiaries of this disease are the manufacturers of clear tackle boxes -- I used to carry just a single one with all varieties of topwaters but now I carry at least three at most times, one for popping and chugging baits, one for walking baits and a third for lures with propellers.

I'm not loyal to any one particular walking bait. In the box pictured here there are models from Megabass, Ima, Lucky Craft and a few others that I'm not at liberty to disclose. They all have their time and place, as does the original Zara Spook, like the one featured in this pic. Even though I started fishing at the club level in late 1995, I had never thrown a Spook prior to 1998. I had a few of them, but didn't know how well they could work. Late that fall I was practicing for a tournament when I ran into a friend who asked if I could take a picture of an eight-pound class fish he'd caught. I obliged and after snapping a few pics noticed that he had only one rod on the deck, with a full-sized Spook attached. [He was a good stick, but not very smart or cagey].

After parting ways, I quickly dug into my storage box and pulled out the lure pictured here. Within five minutes I'd caught my first Spook bass. Within an hour I'd landed a 6-12, at that point the largest bass I'd caught on that lake.

The model seen here was part of a signature series of baits that XCalibur produced. Not surprisingly, this one was endorsed by topwater guru Zell Rowland, who claimed that it incorporated several of the tweaks that he added to his own Spooks -- a third hook, a changed line-tie placement, split rings on the hook hangers and paint jobs that mimicked his own preferences. Unfortunately, PRADCO discontinued this lure a few years after its introduction. Some but not all of the mods can be seen in the Super Spook series that came out later.

I must not be the only one who realized how well this particular Spook works. If and when you find any on eBay they tend to sell for amounts of money normally reserved for hand-carved baits or super-rare Japanese products. I have a couple in my tackle box and a few more still in the package on the garage wall pegboard. They are not available at any price.

February 1, 2012

I've started my offseason tackle organization substantially later than normal this year. Being a confirmed procrastinator, I will further delay the process of figuring out what needs to be trashed, repaired or replaced by blogging about little oddities that I find along the way.

The spinnerbait inventory is progressing at a glacial pace. That's what happens when you have way too many of them and each one has a story.

In April of 2003, I fished a Bassmaster Tour event on the California Delta. The "Tour" was one of the forerunners of the Elite Series, along with the Top 100 and Top 150. The tournament was won by Robert Lee, as was just about every other BASS event out there back in those days. I practiced with the late David Wharton for two days and with OT Fears for one. On the first day of the tournament I drew Tim Loper, who died this past year, and on the second day I drew former Federation champ Dalton Bobo. None of the five anglers I just mentioned still fish at the tour level -- draw your own conclusions.

Anyway, getting back to the spinnerbait, I don't think Loper was around the right quality of fish to win, as evidenced by the fact that he finished 82nd, but he had the peckerhead-quality green trout nailed down pretty well. That first morning we headed to a nearby slough and he pinned the boat to some riprap and proceeded to catch a limit in 37 minutes, all on an orange spinnerbait like the one pictured here. I was left picking at the scraps, throwing a Senko and a worm at the occasional target that presented itself to me. I think I ended the day with two little bass in my side of the livewell.

That night I went to the Outdoor Sportsman tackle shop in Stockton and bought a couple of the spinnerbaits, one in 3/8 ounce, the other in the 1/2 ounce size. I also bought a couple in the all bubblegum pattern. Of course, on the second day of competition my partner was on a crankbait bite in a totally different part of the Delta and I caught nothing on the spinnerbaits. My lone swimmer fell to a Delta standard, a Speed Trap in a red craw pattern. I ended up a pitiful and disappointing 68th.

All of the spinnerbaits (made by Lim-it Lures of California) are still in my possession. While I've caught some bass on the bubblegum models, I'm pretty sure the all-orange baits are still virgins. I've thrown 'em on the Potomac and Guntersville in the spring, and they made a return trip to the Delta in 2007, but they remain untouched. Still, they're too pretty to throw out or donate to someone else. I may have to force feed them to an unwitting fish at some point.

As a side note, while my tournament sucked, I had a great trip to Calfornia in 2007. Caught a 7 pounder with Wharton in Little Frank's Tract and learned a couple of tactics that still occasionally pay off today. The highlight may have been the day after the tournament ended, when I went crappie fishing with OT and Kenyon Hill in Discovery Bay. We absolutely wore out the sac au lait, along with a few decent-sized bass.

January 31, 2012

I've started my offseason tackle organization substantially later than normal this year. Being a confirmed procrastinator, I will further delay the process of figuring out what needs to be trashed, repaired or replaced by blogging about little oddities that I find along the way.

I'm a certifiable spinnerbait junkie (I have the "did not complete" certificates from 12 different rehab programs), but I'm also pretty picky about what brands and styles I continue to use. There are a lot of spinnerbugs that look pretty in the tackle store but never run right again after the first 13-inch largemouth attacks. Others, like War Eagles and Hawg Callers, continue to run straight even after they've been smashed into riprap, snagged on 27 stumps and impaled in the mouths of dozens of green and brown fish.

Of the approximately 8,000 spinnerbaits in my garage, the vast majority are in the range between 1/4 and 3/4 ounce. There are some midget eighth-ouncers and some up to an ounce and a half, but those extremes are a substantial minority. The big'uns are a chore to throw and since I usually don't fish deeper than 5 feet on the Potomac, I don't get much opportunity to fish 'em. Besides, by the time you throw a few of them in the boat you lose a couple of miles per hour at top end. Still, every odd-numbered year we go up to New Hampshire in June to absolutely annihilate the smallies of Lake Winnipesaukee. You can bed fish until your arms are sore, and it's a blast, but my favorite presentation is to absolutely burn a big gaudy spinnerbait. The strikes will rattle your fillings loose.

Danny Correia made this presentation nationally promiment a couple of decades ago throwing the "Winnipesaukee Special," an all-chartreuse beast, but my favorite bait for this tactic is the Hawg Caller version pictured here, a three-bladed behemoth that benefits from the fastest reel in your rod locker. I guess it's time for me to order a few more -- the one on the left has clearly been put through the ringer. The one on the right still has most of its paint on the head, but I have a feeling that if I bend the wire back once more it'll break.