Confessions of a Gearhead

OK. I admit it. I'm a gearhead. I like the equipment as much as I do the fishing. 

Well, almost. Tracking down obscure forum posts on reels not available in America, while appealing, doesn't have the same visceral thrill of your rod shuddering as something big hits your bait down deep, or the splash and swirl of something crashing your topwater lure, or of seeing that you're about to land something special as you reel it into shore. Still, knowing that the Daiwa Presso exists, and that its MagForce (not the MagForceV) anti-backlash system works exceptionally well with lighter lines... well, it's worth a little thrill. 

Will it help you catch more fish? That's the wrong question to ask, as you know the little Latino guy who doesn't even speak english... with the twelve-dollar WallyWorld combo, baiting with part of a dried-out, run-over earthworm, on the same hook he's been using for five years running without sharpening... will land whopper after whopper at the same time your carefully researched and well-appointed rig with name-brand lures will land a slimy bit of pond scum.

But, here's the joke - if you switched rigs with the little Latino guy (who has more beer cans hidden on his person than you can fit in an 80 quart cooler, and loves to share), he'd still catch whopper after whopper while you caught some lilly-pad stems.

So, if you're going to fail, fail in style. Get equipment that you want to use,  equipment that makes you proud to own it, and feel bad when it's a nice day and you're not out on the lakeshore trying to catch a big fish with it. Get lures that make you feel good about them, that makes the world seem in balance and spinning the right way 'round when you tie it on. 

(For me, this is the Kastmaster. My favorite lure as a kid, as I'd catch all sorts of stuff with it, both in freshwater and off the dock. Since I've rediscovered the fishing bug, it's gotten me a nice pickerel or two, including a two-foot monster, and a good sized smallie to boot. What's better it that it's made by Acme Tackle, right here in Rhode Island. It feels right feeding out, and it feels better than right on the retrieve.)

So, because you have nice tackle, you like to fish with it. Because you like to fish with it, you like to fish, as often as you can, for as long as you can. Because you fish as often as you can and for as long as you can, you start to learn things about the subtle sport of fishing. Like how to catch fish and not turtle-weed. Lessons the little Latino guy learned over a lifetime of fishing as often as he could and for as long as he could.

Figuring out how to break out a 30-pack so it all fits in your pockets without showing is something we'll simply have to chalk up to ancient Mayan wisdom. 

Americans aren't lazy, we simply rely too much on the short-term balance sheet - we don't like to put in the work without an immediate payoff. Getting the right gear, gear we can be proud of, it motivates us to put in the work regardless: the more we invest, the more we're willing to see the investment pay off over the long haul. Investing in nice equipment will pay off for that reason alone.

So, the question isn't whether it will catch more fish, but when it will start to catch more fish for you. The best equipment will have you catching more fish in a smaller span of the calendar, simply because you hate to put it down to do something else.

("Best" doesn't mean "most expensive" either, but that's a post for another time.)

Poppers Popping

Had great success with the Rebel popper in the 1/8oz size, silver-and-black pattern. Pickerel were hitting the hell out of it on almost every cast. It's hard to get the hook to set, tho, so I only would up landing two small ones, 14 inchers, before something significantly larger ate it right off the line. (10lb braid - snapped it in a hurry! Didn't help I had the drag torqued down way too tight.)

WallyWorld didn't have any more in silver-and-black, so I'll try the silver-and-olive shad color, and see if it has the same effect. I also managed to find some Owner #1/0 offset worm hooks - more svelte than the Gama hooks in that size. We'll see how that works. The dropshot hooks I had been using are really for nose-hooking soft baits, not Texas rigging them.

As an aside, it kind of sucks that the local outfitters are all saltwater shops - WalMart and Dick's (and to a lesser extent, Sports Authority) are the only places to find freshwater stuff without hiking up to the Bass Pro Shop or down to Wildwood Outfitters. I'm looking at mail-ordering Little Cleo lures, because no-one within a half-hour driving distance has the real tiny ones in stock.

Two That Got Away

I was fishing a texas rig with a 4" black worm, and had two monster hits. One of them, over by the sunken trees, the fish was dragging my lure around the pond, and I thought I had a hell of a fight... until the fight stopped. Both times, the fish spat out the worm, as I wasn't able to set the hook. The tip was still in the body of the bait in each case. I'm using Owner dropshot hooks in a size 1/0 - and the hook may not have a wide enough gap to be effective. I know it's a PITA to rig a worm on it so it isn't kinked and/or sticking out the back.

I may switch to a Gama wide-gap offset worm hook, but they're only available in 1/0 and up, and that's a little on the large size for the bait. I may use a smaller straight-shanked hook instead - the kink of the offset does only a fair job of keeping the fake worm in place, and as Gulp! gets slimy in the water, it doesn't even do as well as that.

I'll try it both ways, and see which will land one of those monsters for me.

First Friday Booze Review - Pyrat Rum

First friday of the month, so I'm trying something new to get sidewise. Now that I'm all blogged-up, I might as well share the experience. 

This month, it's Pyrat XO Reserve Rum. Now, in cognac terms, by law, XO means older than 6.5 years. According to the website of the distiller, Pyrat XO is a blend of 15 year old Caribbean rums. 

I'll have to take their word on that, because you sure as hell couldn't tell by tasting it. Harsh, medicinal, and with none of the delicious creme-brulée and vanilla notes a rum of that age should have. No sipping this one straight, mix only.

There's a citrus note, vaguely reminiscent of bergamot (the stuff that makes Earl Grey teas so awesome) that's completely out of of place, spiked right in the fat part of the flavor. It's sharp and unpleasant and in conjunction with the molasses notes found in golden rum, tastes a bit like an overripe diaper smells. Using Diet Coke with Lime, or any cola with a wedge of fresh lemon squeezed in, lessens the effect, but buying a different rum would lessen the effect even more.

It was discounted to 20 bucks, and it's still not a bargain when you consider that delicious Captain Morgan is $15, and the even more delicious Appleton is $18.

The damn cormorant caught a trout, why can't I?

The Spiderwire Stealth was all I could have hoped - you need to take care in spooling it onto the reel for the first time, making sure there's the right amount of tension, but once that's out of the way it casts and retrieves a dream, light and straight and supple, with no memory. It makes me eager to find some Invisi-Braid, because man, for ultralight, flouro sucks. 

I've given up using it as leader material - I can't use it to tie a Palomar knot to my terminal tackle, as it's impossible to get it to loop tight enough to thread through the eye of a #14 swivel, or even an Owner #1/0 offset drop-shot hook. (I'm using these hooks to texas-rig my little stickbaits... they're smaller and more svelte than the Gama offset worm hooks in #1/0.)

It's not just 10lb-test that's the issue, either - I have 4lb-test Vanish, and it's even more of a bitch to tie, as you can't see the bugger without a magnifying glass while being as inflexible as the heavier stuff. I have ten thumbs and a serious caffeine habit - my fine motor skills are not up to the task of tying a Trilene knot in any conditions that don't involve a comfy chair and the Red Sox on the radio and a few hours to kill. Lakeside? Nuh-uh, no way.

Which is to say, the stuff is probably perfect for Carolina rigs, so I'll whip up a batch for this weekend. The Sox are playing Toronto as we speak, and I have this gorgeous old rocker my Granpa left me... I'll use the 4-lb test for the floating day-glo orange fake salmon eggs I bought on sale at Bennie's, and the 10lb test for the Berkely Gulp! 5" turtle worms.

~

As an aside, for soft bait, I only use Gulp! brand baits. Plastic worms will be in the pond for centuries after they fall off your hook, and the fish that eat them, over and over, for decades to come, are in for a world of hurt. It's as bad as gut-hooking a fish with a lure. Done for, over and out. They won't be growing into the trophy-sized monster you dream of landing. Now, multiply your lost soft-plastic baits by several hundred, or for popular fishing spots, several thousand. Not good.

Gulp! baits are made of edible stuff, so if it falls off your hook, the fish gets a tasty, nutritious treat, or it simply rots away like an apple core. If you hate Berkely, Bio-Bait offers some very nice soft-bait if you don't mind mail-order. There are others, too, just google around.

This stuff fishes better than plastics, offering better wiggle and a more natural motion. This year, I bought a package of the Gulp! "Silver-shad" bait, and I'll be damned if the thing doesn't swim on the retrieve. What looks like flat grey in your hand turns silvery-flashy underwater. 

By the same token, I don't use lead weights, especially for freshwater. RI water is bad enough as it is without me tossing in a toxic heavy metal like lead. Now, if I was the only man fishing in Rhode Island, who cares? But I'm one of several hundred thousand. Even if we only lose three or four sinkers a year, that's a hell of a lot of lead in the water-table our drinking water comes from, and in the meat of the keeper trout we feed our families. So, I only use lead-alternative weights: heavy-steel alloys or tungsten. They sell them at every Walmart, Dick's Sporting Goods and local bait shop in the country for a few cents more than regular lead weights. There's no excuse not to use them.

~

The "Silver-shad" may be too silvery. The trout weren't biting at all, but that may be because it was too chilly this week for them to be overly active in pursuing larger baits and lures. I know there's trout in the pond, because the local cormorant came up with a whopper... it couldn't even swallow it, and it's mate came over and started to fight with it over the fish, who then escaped. Still, it's somewhat disheartening. A damn bird can catch a trout on this pond, why can't I?

Can't Always Get What You Want

My search for Spiderwire Invisi-Braid in 10lb-test has come to a sputtering end. The local bait shops couldn't help, as they are mostly geared at saltwater anglers, and only had it in 30lb and up (this is Rhode Island - there's a lot more fishable coastline than there are streams and ponds.) The local sporting goods big-box stores, Dick's and the Sports Authority, were basically looted in the buying rush before Opening Day, and it will be another month before they're restocked. Even Wally World only had Spiderwire stealth. So, I bought a spool of that and a spool of Vanish flouro in 10lb to make leaders (and Carolina rigs.)

That may have been a waste of money, as Tackle Tour put the best fluoro lines up against plain-jane Trilene mono, and the results were depressing. It does have some advantage in abrasion resistance and visibility, but not as much as advertised.

I probably won't be able to pick up any Invisi-Braid until the next time I trek north to the Bass Pro Shop up in Foxboro. While I'm there, I'll see if I can get any barbless trebles in sizes small enough for my lures. I may need to order online, but the smallest I can find are Gamakatsu no. 8 - I think I need no. 10 or smaller, as that's what's on my Rapala J05. (Which is one of the two lures that caught anything for me last year. The other is the Kastmaster 1/8oz in Blue and Silver.)

I don't even know if Gama makes a smaller barbless treble - their website isn't exactly helpful. I'd like to avoid mangling my existing hooks by flattening the barbs with a set of pliers, but needs must when the devil drives. Fretting over tackle is fun and all, but I'd like to do some fishing.

I swear, it was this big!

Yesterday, I caught a monster chainside pickerel at the pond across the way. I didn't have a scale with me, but the tape measure said 22", and as the record in RI for a chainside is a shade over 27", it was a damn big fish. Biggest I've ever caught in fresh water.

I was really just on the pond for a shakeout of my new rig. I wasn't expecting to catch anything, and was too busy fussing with the way the new Pflueger President Ultralight spinner was winding 8lb Fireline Crystal onto the spool (or wasn't winding it onto the spool, as was the case) to pay close attention to what I was casting where.

I did catch a few smaller "snakes" last year at this spot, 15 and 17 inchers, maybe a couple pounds each. They love blue-and-silver Kastmasters, and seem to respond well to a heavy plunk. I had the 1/8oz Kastmaster on, as it was a nice, heavy lure and I hoped a few dozen casts would break in the line. I screwed up a cast and ker-plunked it pretty hard near some sunken logs, and bam! Fish On!

The fight was intense, and it was a job to keep it from heading to deep grass. My fishing spot is just a little break in the treeline that slopes quickly down into deep water, with a lot of reeds and lillypads (or lillypad stems this time of year) bordering a clear patch in front of the break. You can cast to a lot of stuff from this spot, but the danger is that the fish can make a run for the jungle once they're on the line.

The new rig was definitely up to the task - I love ultralight, as it lets you feel what the fish is doing. I was able to hog it out from the grass and play the beast into the clear all by feel, and the rod did a remarkable job of getting out of the way. The best tools never remind you that you're using a tool. The reel had been giving me fits all afternoon, but under load, it worked like a champ.

I think that Fireline has too much memory for such a small spool. I'll try some Spiderwire Invisibraid, and see if that works any better.

I had some trouble removing the hook from its lip, and this reminds me to track down some little barbless trebles to equip my lures with. In the end, it swam away, and I hope to catch it again in a year or two, when it becomes a record-breaker.