JDM fishing tackle – Page 6

Goal Met…

Back in early January, I set an arbitrary goal of 35 fishing trips for 2022. Looking back through my notes I met and exceeded that goal on Friday with 36 outings for the year.

For me, that was quite an accomplishment with our busy schedules as well as the weather working against us. We had a very minimal spring ( 3 weeks maybe! ) which included floods. Then we went straight into high temperatures and drought coupled with a prolonged summer.

And Friday was a classic example of Oklahoma weather! 34F in the morning and climbing to 85F later in the day with increasing winds. Saturday and Sunday each exhibited high winds of 25-40mph which made our type of fishing almost impossible.

Year to date we have managed to catch and release approximately 525 fish. But that doesn’t mean much to me other than looking through my notes and trying to develop a pattern on when and where is the best time to go.

But with an ever-changing river and seasonal variations, it is still a “crap shoot” or “best guess” scenario. And that is what I love best about our type of fishing.

Soon, winter will be upon us and opportunities to fish will diminish. It is a time for planning the next season as well as restocking tackle and searching maps for new areas to explore. I can’t express enough that the sum of the parts makes up the whole.

And we both managed to catch some Personal Bests so there are zero complaints. We are definitely looking forward to the 2023 season.

River Outing 21 OCT 2022…

I have a few days of vacation that I need to use before the end of the year so I decided that today was as good as any other day. The morning started off colder than I expected with it being 34F when I stepped into the river at 0730. I was wearing my usual wet wading gear and opted to just suffer until the sun came up. The forecast called for temps to rise into the mid-80’sF by afternoon.

Autumn is upon us as the leaves are starting to change.

I decided to take 2 rods today, both TenRyu’s. A TenRyu Rayz Spectra RZS51LL and a TenRyu Rayz Integral RZI50L. The first one is a 2-piece “Light Light Action” and the second one is a 4-piece “Light Action. The Spectra was wearing a 2022 Shimano Stella C2000SHG and the Integral had a 2022 Daiwa Exist LT 2000S-H reel.

This was my first outing with the Stella and I had several line issues throughout the outing. It might be the type of line, I don’t know yet. The Exist performed flawlessly. They are both spooled with the same line, the Varivas Super Trout Advance Bush Trail VEP Nylon.

It was good to get out and go fishing, but it wasn’t the same since the wife and dog weren’t with me.

Soto Amicus stove boiling water for coffee.

Need to come up with a better way to carry a rod on the Yeti.

The water was crystal clear and lazily flowing its course. The temperature climbed rapidly and I happily fished along. I ended up catching 15 decent smallmouth. I figured with the recent cold snap we’ve had, the fishing would be more difficult and it was. It sure beats working!

A Much Needed Outing…

The alarm went off at 0345 and I wasn’t having any of it. I ended up hitting snooze twice. We were out the door by 0515 and stepped into the river at 0720. The starting temperature of the air was 48F while the stream temp was 72F. Needless to say, we both wore hoodies this morning.

First cast! I felt a butt-kicking coming on.

I thought her and the dog had a plan and were working together.

I damaged my leader while rigging up at the car and only had about 8 inches of fluorocarbon to work with. I ended up stopping and tying on a new 3ft section of fluorocarbon and immediately started connecting with fish.

Due to the flood we had last May, the river had completely changed. We had not fished this section of the river at all for 2022 so we were re-learning it as we moved upstream.

Was using a new jig head and a 2 inch B-Vibe.

I wanted to try a 3 inch B-vibe in green pumpkin since I was testing a new jig head. First cast into a deeper pool and it was instant hook-up. I ended up pulling 5 fish out of that small pool. I even managed to catch my Personal Best Velox (Neosho-strain Smallmouth Bass) and was really excited.

For a river that rarely produces a fish over 2 pounds…I was happy. Most people around here will tell you that a 3-pounder is a trophy.

2020 Shimano Vanford 1000 and a Daiwa Presso ML 62 rod got the job done.

Due to other commitments we had to bail at noon. I wanted to fish all day but that wasn’t in the cards. But still, I caught several good smallmouth and may stick with the 3-inch B-vibe from now on. Out of 17 fish that I caught…only 3 were under a pound. I’d call that a good day on this section of the river.

Spinning Reels…

It has been a hectic 2 weeks. The Mother-in-Law is back in the hospital so we are taking care of two households. Last weekend we completely revamped the wifes home office. Workloads have been steadily increasing for both of us as well. On a positive note, the weather has finally cooled off so I think summer is over. We desperately need some rain though and we are hoping we will get some soon.

Anyway, I got up early this morning and decided to clean and oil some of my spinning reels. I thought it would be a good opportunity to take some pictures when I was finished.

The only spinning reels that I have modified/upgraded were the Vanford and the Stradics. Upgrading the bearings to hybrid ceramics made a big difference. I also upgraded the handle knobs on a Twin Power and 2 of the Stradics. The Twin Power was super smooth out of the box so I didn’t feel the need to upgrade any bearings. The Vanfords and Stradics really benefited from upgraded bearings.

We are hoping to be able to fish the river tomorrow as we both need to get out and away for awhile. As usual, I will post a blog if we do! Thanks for reading.

19 September 2022- Return to the Elk River…

The wife has every Monday off for the rest of the year so I decided to take a day off too. We talked and decided that we should go back to the Chambers Spring Road Access to the Illinois River in Arkansas and the Elk River outside of Noel Missouri. Neither one of us had caught Smallmouth bass in Missouri so we made a day of it.

We stopped at Chambers Spring Road Access just to see if we could get access to the river and wade-fish here. Yes we can! At least if we head upstream. We ended up catching 5 fish here before we decided to head on up to the Elk River. Our goal was catch smallmouth in Missouri and we weren’t going to get it done by fishing in Arkansas.

It didn’t take us long to reach the Mount Shira Access on the Elk River.

The river was really low but that was to be expected.

It was a good trip and we had fun. We both caught Smallmouth bass in Missouri so that was great, which brings my total up to 4 states that I’ve caught Smallmouth in this year. The total catch of the day was 17 and 2 of them were decent. The sun was intense at 94F and we are both tired of summer. This access point gets a lot of traffic and we picked up 2 bags of trash on the way out. Even Zip spent an inordinate amount of time swimming in the river and he slept most of the way home.

I have a couple of gear review updates coming soon so stay tuned for those.

Great Day to be Fishing…

The weather forecast called for a low temp in the 40’sF so we decided to go fishing. We left the house at 0445 and arrived at the river at 0645. It was a little chilly to say the least. We donned our raincoats over the normal wet wading gear we use to add a small layer of warmth until the sun came up high enough to warm the river valley.

I surprised myself with how this picture turned out!

I opted to use the TenRyu Rayz Spectra RZS51LL spinning rod and a 2022 Daiwa Exist LT2000S-P spinning reel. Both worked flawlessly and were a pleasure to fish with.

We didn’t bother taking fish pictures as we weren’t catching anything of decent size. I think 12 went about a pound or a little more. Our total catch for the day was 86 so it’s obvious how many were dinks. They were fun to catch in current, but we would’ve liked some bigger fish. It was still great to get out and enjoy the day though.

As I sit here typing this blog post, Zip is curled up at my feet sound asleep. It takes days like this where we cover several miles of river before he’s completely worn out. We could tell that he was glad to get out too.

We’ll catch you on the next one…

Video of a Typical Portage…

I thought I would do something different and so I filmed a complete portage crossing from beginning to end.

This particular portage was 60 rods long. A rod is equal to 16 feet in length. This is one of the easier portages that we encountered.

Pardon my breathing, I was carrying two packs and this was my second trip across the portage that morning.

Portage Part 1

Portage Part 2

Portages are necessary to go around steep drops, waterfalls and/or lake to lake. Everything has to be carried over.

Blog Update…

My apologies for not posting anything to the blog for a couple of weeks. My work schedule has drastically increased to include longer hours and weekends as well. We are still experiencing temperatures in the upper-90’s to 100F+ so we haven’t been fishing at all. The good news as far as I can tell is that the temps will start slowly decreasing next week.

Yes, we could hit the rivers and fish but we haven’t had any measurable rainfall in over a month which will effect water levels. At times like that, it’s like “shooting fish in a barrel,” so I feel that it isn’t very sporting. I prefer to have a sustainable population of fish for the future as opposed to “getting mine now.”

Some people may disagree but I prefer to have an ethic when it comes to this sport. This isn’t a rant, nor am I pointing fingers. Rather, it’s just my ethos and I will not deviate.

I definitely have upcoming blog posts which I think readers may like. They are still a few weeks off but I promise they will be forthcoming. Stay tuned for those and I hope everyone is doing well.

Major Craft Finetail Stream Stage FSG-B462UL Rod…

I have been watching the development of this rod for awhile and finally was able to pre-order one. It arrived last week but due to the heatwave I haven’t fished with it yet. I like the action of the Anglo&Co. fiberglass rods such as the G411, but I wasn’t willing to pay $800+ for it. Then along came this FSG-B462UL and I jumped on it.

This is a full fiberglass rod and I really like the action on it for casting jerkbaits and light lures.

Paired with a 2017 Shimano Scorpion BFS reel.

Nice bending curve yet still has some backbone.

https://videopress.com/v/73USAusg?resizeToParent=true&cover=true&preloadContent=metadata&useAverageColor=true

Trying something different here. Adding a video of the action.

So the video snippet above wasn’t the greatest because we were preoccupied with a visitor.

Black Rat Snake. They have a huge diversity of coloration. And since I’m not a huge fan of snakes, this wasn’t easy for me to do. He did his best Rattlesnake imitation by shaking his tail rapidly against some leaves while assuming a defensive posture, but the round eye shape gave him away.

No worries! We see them as beneficial snakes that help keep the rodent population in check. I relocated him shortly after this pic was taken. Although we do have chickens, we have only found one in the coop so far. This particular snake has been relocated twice so far. Never a dull moment in the country.

As soon as the temperatures drop below 100F I plan on trying this rod out. We’ve already seen 111F here and we might have some relief coming next week. Today will reach 105F. As I’ve said in the past, Major Craft gives you a lot of rod for the money and I think this one will become one of my favorites since it has the characteristics I prefer.

P.S. THANK YOU Mr. Wilson for the hats. Love em.

TenRyu Rayz Spectra RZS51LL Spinning Rod…

This was the rod I was testing out yesterday. With the stream flow being quite low, this rod was ideal for the current conditions and excelled when throwing 3-5 gram lures.

This rod is 94% Carbon and 6% Glass Fiber

Fuji titanium guides and Torzite inserts.

I had a lot of fun casting this rod and catching fish. The tip action makes throwing light lures easy and the rod has enough backbone to handle fish in mild current. TenRyu makes really good rods and this one is a winner.

Fishing Trip 9 JULY 2022…

We had a cold front come through last night with the forecast calling for a high of 97F on Saturday. After a week of 100F+ temperatures we were happy and decided to go fishing. The alarm went off at 0345 and we were on the road by 0425.

We arrived just as the sun was coming up and the temp was 74F, but very humid. We couldn’t wait to get in the river and start wading, hoping it would cool us down.

Zip was constantly racing back and forth between the two of us.

Zip is really coming along and his confidence grows with each outing. He has started swimming on his own and crossing the river on his own as well. I think after the Cossatot River trip he figured out that swimming in the river was a good way to cool off.

We ended up catching 20 fish in the 4 hours that we were there. Only one was decent but we didn’t bother taking pictures of them. We each were wearing our old Simms Flats Sneakers to see how my glue job on the sole worked out. Short story: it didn’t work so these might get retired. It’s sad really, since the uppers are in great shape but the soles are SUB-PAR for sure.

I waded in to cool off and I guess Zip thought I was drowning so he came to “the rescue!”

And now for what is probably the dumbest decision I have made while fishing.

Apparently someone had a pop-up awning set up on the river bank. I noticed 4 mounds of rocks and dug into them to find dumbells that were used to anchor it down. As anyone who has read my blog knows…I can’t stand seeing trash in my rivers. So yes, I loaded them in my pack to haul them out. My wife took a 10 pounder while I took a 10 and a 20 pounder. For the math majors out there…4 corners and 3 dumbells= the fourth mound had a big rock as an anchor.

The Yeti Panga 28 hauled the load with no problems. Not ideal nor comfortable but we made the 3 mile hike back. I need the exercise and I could use some dumbells for the house. Unfortunately, my decision to haul them out pretty much ended the trip. Neither one of us felt like continuing downstream then hiking back up in the full sun and heat. Plus, we had a group behind us and I wanted the weights.

I did get to test a new rod on this trip and thoroughly enjoyed using it. I also tried out a Shimano Scorpion BFS reel and REALLY liked that one. I will probably do a post on both soon. We are still having internet issues. The technician was out 4 times last week and ran a bunch of new wire and all sorts of other stuff to no avail. Last we heard, they would be back out on Monday. We currently have 11Mbps available to us and it is difficult to get blog posts out. Hopefully we will have more posts soon…Take care.

Gomexus Reel Stands…

We have been using Gomexus reel stands for about 2 years now. It is a cheap and effective way to protect your spinning reels. Since we fish rivers and streams a lot, and there are rocks everywhere, these tend to keep the reels off of the rocks when we set our rods down.

We generally use the Gomexus R1 42mm fixed stand but when they released the Gomexus R6 48mm foldable stand, we wanted to try those.

Since we store our reels in padded cases or neoprene covers, the foldable design has been really nice.

R6 Foldable Stand screwed down and locked

At first I was hesitant about using any reel stand. I thought it was a gimmick and that they would be unwieldy of even unbalance the rod and reel. But the more I used them the more I liked them.

To me, it’s a cheap way to keep your reels from being scratched and beat up on rocks or gravel. The Gomexus R1 costs $10 USD. If I’m using a $150 reel, then $10 isn’t much to add a level of protection. The Gomexus R6 costs $12 USD and it’s worth it for the foldable feature.

Gomexus R1 fixed on a 2019 Shimano Stradic FL 1000S. No more worries about scratched reels or damaged bails.

I have no affiliation with Gomexus, or anybody else for that matter. I’m just showing a few of their products that we use. They also make knobs and reel handles for both baitcast and spinning reels. Most of their items are produced in a range of colors as well. If you’re interested, check them out.

http://www.gomexus.jp

Or you can find them on Amazon.