Tag Archives: adventure

Japanese Anglers Who Have Been an Inspiration to Me…

I have studied Japanese fishing techniques for almost a decade now. Several Anglers have shared their knowledge publicly and I am grateful to them. Each of them are true masters of their craft and almost all of them are rod and lure designers as well as product testers.

Junichi Numata

Junichi Numata first came to my attention when I was shore fishing. He works with Palms Global and freely shares his vast knowledge. He is an all around great guy and it comes through in every video.

Ryuji Kanamaru

I kept running across Mr. Kanamaru while researching Ajing and Mebaru tackle. He works with APIA and Rudies. Ajing and Mebaru don’t stand a chance against him.

Angler Saito

When I was learning about BFS, Angler Saito was doing amazing stuff. His casting is par excellence! He works with Anglo & Company. I’ve never seen someone cast as accurately and effectively as he does.

Masahiko Motobayashi

Mr. Moto is a legend! He shares knowledge and techniques on YouTube and works with Zenaq (high end rod manufacturer.) Super cool dude!

Yusuke “Red” Nakamura

He is prominent on the seabass scene and is a fantastic angler with a great sense of humor. He works with APIA and PosiDriveGarage.

Katsumi Ikabe

A wise gentleman who freely shares his knowledge on YouTube and various publications. He works with Thirty34Four Fishing and is an Ajing Master.

A veteran Area Trout Master Angler and designer of Daiwa Presso rods. I’m sure he’s forgotten more than I’ll ever know. He opened my eyes to a whole new level of fishing for trout in ponds. Simply incredible.

I’m pretty sure most readers are not interested in stuff like this. But these guys are my people! I would love to fish with each and every one of them and share the experience and chance to learn from them in person.

Japan is where a lot of innovations come from. Presently, on the US Bass scene, the Coike Urchin bait is all the rage…little do most of them know that it’s a 20 year old bait! I’ll leave that right there…see ya soon.

Florida Trip 19MAY2025…

Both of us needed a change of pace. So we booked flights on Allegiant, reserved a rental car and a hotel and packed the necessary gear. Certain times of the year, Allegiant flies round trip from Tulsa to St. Petersburg, and the flights are inexpensive ( $185-ish ).

True to form, this was a Spartan affair, with no frills or major luxuries…at least we weren’t in a tent this time! We packed our travel rods and reels in our Yeti backpacks and combined everything else into one duffel bag.

I used the Salt Strong app, Smart Fishing Spots and the Salt Strong Community for all of my research on what to bring and where to go. We decided that we would target Redfish, Snook and Speckled Trout, but in reality, we’d accept catching anything.

We primarily fished this bay for 2 days

The weather was great and the fishing was better than expected. Doing our research and due diligence really paid off.

We carried everything we would need for the day.

Since we weren’t catching much on the Gulf side, we opted to fish the bay off behind the main beach. Both of us love to wade fish, so this was what we came to do.

My First Snook
It’s mandatory to tie on a new leader after every Snook.
If you struggle to tie the FG knot…buy a DaiichiSeiko Knot Assist 2.0. Thank me later!
A well earned smile!

We had a great trip and all of our chosen gear worked perfectly. We mainly used Shimano Zodias 5-pc rods in Medium Light and Medium with Shimano Twin Power C3000 or Shimano Exsence C3000 reels. We were spooled up with 10 pound braid and 20 lb monofilament leaders. We threw 7gr-10gr jigheads with various plastic baits to great effect. We did bring TFO Traveler 3-pc rods as backups, but they seemed ridiculously heavy and unwieldy compared to the Zodias rods. They ended up being more of a nuisance than anything. But they gave us peace of mind in the event we broke a rod. I think that if we do another trip like this, we will each pack two Zodias travel rods, since they fit inside the Yeti Pangas.

Would we move to Florida just for the multitude of fishing opportunities? Hell no! Way too much traffic and way too many people. But the funny thing for us was that there were probably 20,000 people on the ocean side of the beach and we fished the back bay for two days and only saw one other person back there.

We will deem this a successful trip and we learned a lot. I definitely see us doing another trip like this.