Garry2Rs

You do not need to tape braid to the the spool arbour. Tie your knot and leave a two or three incn long tag end. Wind the first layer of line carefully so that the tag end lays flat on the arbour. The succeeding layers of line will hold everything securely. It is important to wind the line on under tension, I run the line through the pages of the telephone book. Try to get in the habit of closing the bail by hand and directing the line onto the roller. Braid is not as slippery as mono and you don't want it wrapped around the front of the spool because it didn't slide all the way onto the roller bearing.

These days a white tube is mandatory in unknown waters!

100% correct again! It amazes me how you always know exactly what people mean, even though that's not what they said...this is truly an amazing gift! Your analysis of the drag issue with bait cast reels is spot on too! Unlike the your Spincasters and Spinning reels they don't operate in the frictionless vacuum, between your ears.

I suspect that most of the anti-SS comments are from armchair experts who "Read it some where." This whole gear thing is a myth in my opinion because if you hit something hard enough to damage the drive gears you were going to need major repairs no matter what prop you were using. I have been using SS for 7 or 8 years in the Kawarthas and points north where as the locals say "They don't call it Stoney Lake as a joke!" In this area I could ruin a fresh prop any time I launched the boat, so I got tired of always needing prop repairs and I switched to steel. I was more concerned about damage from an out of balance prop than any gear case troubles. No, I have never had gear problems with my 50, 120 or 150 motors, and sadly I dinged their SS props many times. However they are steel and will take a licking and keep on ticking. If after a couple of years they start to get too ratty, SS props can be repaired easily but not cheaply...grin.

There's nothing wrong with Drum on the table. The problem is that it is very easy to over cook them. Drum have almost no oil in the flesh and the fillets are thin. If over cooked, they dry out and are like cardboard. Properly prepared they have beautiful white meat with a delicate flavour.

Have no fear! The Stanley Cup will be decided on Friday and summer like weather will arrive on Saturday. There is a little know Ontario law...forbidding warm weather before the Cup is awarded. Or maybe it's just until the Leafs win the Cup again, it's been so long I forget....grin.

Swing by my place. The nine year old next door can fix you up with a Zebco 33...someone said they can cast farther than your Caiman anyway, and since the line never twists or tangles you can just sit back and watch your bobber while you work on clearing that nasty old birds nest. There's a little secret about those reels that I will share with you tomorrow when I feel up to typing it out.

Sounds like a dirty joke to me... I will be tossing Senko type worms, but I plan to wash off as many crankbaits as possible, just for fun. My lakes don't have many weeds so treble hooks are no problem.

What a hilarious bunch of posts! Thanks for a lot of great laughs! Hey Chris, I once owned a Tica Caiman. I bought it in 2001, mine was a 200 size and it was gold... Nice smooth reel, with something like 11 ball bearings... I think it even had bearings in the crank handle paddles! There is just something I love about retched excess...HAHAHA. JohnF... I have a small silver Calcutta, that would be great for stream fishing. I could sell it to you cheap, but you would have to give up you wicked ways and learn to wind right handed!

Mike; The truth is you probably don't need a Flippin stick. (Named for Flippin Arkansas) Any MH rod will do. Back in the day, rod lockers on Bass boats were made to handle 5' to 6'6" rods. When the short range underhand jig casting techniques were first shown, the rods were 7'2 through about 7'6" and had to be telescopic to go small enough to fit into the rod lockers of the day...thus was born the mighty Flippin Stick. Tossing a bait under handed can be done with any rod you have that will handle the weight. Denny Brauer and the boys use some huge jigs and trailers, so the rods they use are almost like Musky rods with soft tips. Chances are you will use jigs of 3/8 and 1/2 ounce a lot more than 1 1/2 ounce jigs. Long rods give you more range when flippin, since you don't usually cast any line off the reel, but today most guys already own rods of 7 ft or more that will do the job just fine.

If you don't have line twist problems, you need to get out more! The design of spinning and spincasting reels puts twist into the line. If your doubt my word, buy a paper streamer at the dollar store and pull the ribbon off the end of the spool the way the line comes off of all spinning reels. Spincaster's work by pinching the line between the spool and the close-face housing when you push the button, this is not a light weight line friendly design...On the cast the line flows off the spool, up over the spool lip and then must immediately funnel down to go through the small opening in the housing...That's at approaches four 45 degree turns in about one inch...The word is friction and it steals distance from your cast. Dear spinning friends and line twist devotees: I have no intention of getting into a bidding war with Bassaholic, but I will match his offer of $5.50 a piece for all of your birds nest building, curse causing, hackle raising, hair tearing, ire invoking, mentally challenging, nerve fraying, out-dated, over-rated, poorly produced, questionable-quality, rage-raising, stomach knotting, spool-jamming, temper twisting, ulcer causing, vomit launching, wrist wrecking, wretched and exasperating baitcasting reels. Thank You 2R's

You spinning guys have it 100% right... I will buy all your nasty old casting reels for five dollars each, so you can buy some new line to replace the twisted stuff you used last week.

Thanks for the plug Albert... Yes, my school is always open...and we get to go fishing too. PM me.

I have a box or two full of similar baits that I use down south in the winter. They work down there and should work great up here too. Let's give small cranks a work out on a couple of my lakes this summer!

Top left looks like a Pop "R" they are a great top water bait. The Rapala Skitter pop is very good too. The Jitter Bug is a strange old and very successful bait that I have caught Musky on. I know some guys swear by Hula Poppers, but I never had any luck with them. However, the ones I used might have been imitations. Crazy Crawler...I don't know about, I never owned one. The Torpedo is a good bait. The last couple aren't old enough...hahaha...I have no experience with them.

HAHAHA!

There might be some weight savings to a split grip, but there is also a world wide shortage of high grade cork.

A friend suggested that I try steaming instead of frying the fillets. It was delirious. I don't think I will fry Crappie anymore.

Hi John; I'm not sure that I understand the question... You have a nice selection/collection of surface and shallow baits. You indicated that you aren't looking for soft plastics, I suspect that means worms...or in-line spinners. Spinnerbaits are much more snag proof than in-line spinners, you could also try BoB Izumi's little Rocket Shad. It casts like a bullet, and works very well in rivers, but is a little less snag resistent than any spinnerbait because it uses a double (aka. frog) hook. Beyond that there is this whole new world of "Swimbaits." The ones that might interest you are soft plastic minnows, with "boot" type tails, that are fished on a weighted hook. You are probably acquainted with the older style that have hooks mounted on them and those that have lead jigs cast in. The new flavour are hollow bodies or have a slit belly like a Fluke. They are the new hot set-up on the Pro Bass Tour whenever the boys are fishing "Clear water." The Yankee definition of clear water seem to be 2 feet of visibility...In other words you have to stake the tomato plants...HAHAHA.

Round reels generally have lower gear ratios IE 5.3 to 1. They are better for big, or deep diving baits. Low profile reels normally have higher speed gears IE 6.3 to 1, to bulge spinnerbaits and pick up line faster etc.

You may be too late Jerry. In my area they seem to have moved to there Summer haunts.

Albert; Bring it with you on Friday and we will get Mike to look at it. Garry

I was on Lower Buckhorn with two clients. The surface temp was 63 degrees. When we launched it was a Blue Bird day, which was fine because neither client knew how to baitcast. After a quick lesson we were off down the Lake. There were several OOS Bass caught during the morning. The most notable was at Redrock Island were one guy landed and quickly released about a 4 pound SMBass on one of my Musky size spinnerbaits. There were about six boats on the Three Sisters, so we passed them up and worked our way to the end of the lake, then back in around the islands. On a rocky flat we found a Musky... As we worked our way back into a very stiff wind I was glad that I replaced the trolling motor batteries this year! I needed 100% way to much of the time for tired batteries. Looking for places that might not have already been pounded we stopped in a favourite area of mine and hooked another nice fish on this skirt... ...Which became this Bucktail ... ...And caught this fish! The clients were tired and happy when we headed home, and so was I...HAHAHA!

Check Cabela's Canada. Within the last three months they had your blue reel for $99.00. They may be discontinued, but you're getting a super reel at a disposable reel price.

Five inch plastic worms, if we are naming brands, I'll take a Senko but a Yum-dinger would do. For Panfish it can be cut into pieces, to drop shot use a half or whole worm. Use full worms or whittle them down to make grubs. Plastic worms can be used with a split shot to swim at any depth or to drag on the bottom. There are weighted Texas, Carolina or weightless Texposed and Wacky rigs. It can fish the rocks and docks or the weeds without snagging. Plastic worms will fish on the surface, shallow or deep, with weight or without, with a float in current or in still water. They will catch any fish that eats minnows, worms, grubs, snakes or crayfish. They might not be perfect for bottom feeders, but with patience I think they can catch any fish that's not a total vegetarian.