Recent content by Shad

Dress in layers, so you're covered for a cool morning and a hot afternoon. Pack light. Sunglasses, sunscreen, hat, waders, and boots with felt (no studs in the boat, if you please). A water bottle and a snack should be all you need for sustenance. Bring a couple of your own flies if you really...

A fast 6-weight is good for delivering the smaller Clousers, buggers, and gurglers I use for most of my bass fishing. Same rod I use for fishing trout streamers, just with a shorter, stout leader. On the rare occasion I use bigger or more bulky flies, I use an 8-wt.

Not an expert, but I use gear on them sometimes. Swim baits and Senkos are all I've messed with much, and they work quite well. I have found flies (particularly Clousers) to be as or even more effective on the mostly smaller fish we have locally, but when you're fishing heavy cover for big fish...

Don't tell my brother-in-law about this. He's one of those guys who loves to blast the music on the water; not so loud that it hurts, but pretty close. I sort of enjoy it... for about an hour. After that, I want to bask in silence, occasionally interrupted by the sounds of singing birds, or...

Good work on finding those spots! AS LONG AS YOU CAN FISH THEM EFFECTIVELY, pound those spots. Regardless of where they're ultimately headed, all fish will concentrate in the same lies at rest. Those lies aren't always the same year to year, and finding them is key to catching whatever you're...

I'm no pro, but I've fished for coho in just about every way, salt and fresh, and my anecdote on the matter will read that open ocean coho are absolute wimps (but do seem to do much better if you use single, barbless hooks and don't net or remove them from the water), estuary fish are a little...

Done. It was harder than I would have thought to prioritize the 7 consumptive uses of salmon. The only one I was sure of was that commercial harvest should be dead last. Being honest about it, I think I also ranked recreation pretty low. Ecology was my highest priority. Salmon are perhaps THE...

I think anything posted in this thread would work just fine; bass usually aren't nearly as persnickety as trout. A short, sinking polyleader with 2-3 feet of 10 or 15# Maxima served me well in Florida last spring. Keeping your leaders short and heavy let's you use a lighter rod (like a 6-wt.) to...

Following up... Another take on a "wormy" thing using the Creeper. Sure makes for fast, buggy bodies on flies we're going to throw into the weeds on purpose...

You'll see. When I post the pics of the hawgs I'm ropin' on the Tacky Worm this spring, there will be lines out the door of every craft store. No auto parts, though. They got some good stuff, but it's all too rich for my blood.

All fabric/craft stores are great places to find cheap tying materials. My local JoAnn Fabrics store has figured out that fly tiers shop there, and they have an aisle there now that could only be for us, because the variety of stuff in that aisle makes zero sense outside the context of fly...

I thought the legs were just a tad long for pile worms and might need some trimming (or a lot LOL). The dubbing stuff is uneven and can pile up funny or leave gaps on your hook shank. I think the volume of that material required to hold that stuff together might be the reason (or else it was...

I can see where durability could be an issue. I haven't put this stuff under a ton of stress, but it did withstand being twisted and furled pretty well, so I wasn't too concerned. Of course, a wire counter-rib or similar could improve the durability (of the stuff on the hook shank, anyway)....

Good question, and one which I had pondered but had yet to resolve with a test, so I did one. Turns out it's very buoyant, so much so that I'm not sure it will sink without adding significant weight to a hook or leader. Obviously, the worm on the jig head won't float, but a "drop test" or two...