,,,, to that little piece of line. You are great and very powerful and can easy catch little ole me !!!!



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Next trip out I shall be having these following my boat everywhere I go. Again some of the plastics have been partially amputated to appear more diminutive. Yesterday the fish were offering me clues as to what they prefer at this time of year. Now it could be that the smaller minnows are easier for them to catch, and the plan is to grow fat, and that may be why they like little ones. The fish I managed yesterday certainly were fattened. Maybe they can simply stack more in their bellies. Maybe the smaller minnows just taste better. Final posibility is that the minnows are all that are available to them. Maybe the shad have moved to other locales and no longer offer themselves to the fish. In Summer big fat (shad) jigs with blades were doing the work for me.

Top left Devil’s Minner that has been cut down.
Under that are Bob’s jigs, the worms have been cut down
1/16th oz heads with a short shank 1/0 hook.

Right side is 1/4 oz

I am getting a little better at threading the baits onto the hooks, but that shortened shank is a huge help. Such a simple thing, but get off just a little and the bait is crooked. Better than half the time I do acceptable, but every so often perfectly.

Ran out of my super glue and had to substitute with Godzilla Glue in the big bottle. I daubed it onto a piece of scrap plastic and used a toothpick to apply a smattering to the head of the bait before sliding it up. This glue requires a long curing time so everyone is just kind of hanging out waiting to go to the pool.


Earlyier this year I decided to try my hand at hand ties, and ordered up some stuff, and bought a bunch of junk at local shops. Well I still have my huge piles of junk and wondered if I shouldn’t revisit the world of hand ties, but with a new perspective. I want smaller sleeker so……



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I am going to slip a few of these into my 10 rod set and see if the fish enjoy that sort of thing. They are currently in the box absorbing some Slab Sauce.

I learned from earlier attempts that less tail is better than too much tail. So these have smaller tails. I like the short shanked hook much better for tying as it leaves a more compact lure. These are small jigs with big hooks. I lost two big fish yesterday, but I do not suspect that it was due to the hook being too large. Lots of little fish came to hand with the bigger hooks and upon inspection seemed to be more than capable of inhaling them. Lots of room down inside there. Besides those two, where the jig ripped free, I lost only one other and that was due to me being unable to get to him quickly. I had another fish on the line and left him to wait. Never give up a bird in hand for two in the bush. He hit the short rod next to the boat and I saw him surface and he was a solid medium, so it’s OK.


I also re-done up my rods and such and this time used fluorocarbon leader material and it did OK. I had some of this left over from my surf fishing days. It probably did not enter into the equation, but if it is durable enough to last a few trips, I will continue to use it. It does very nicely with my loop knot. Anyways busy day today so no fishing for me. Maybe I can go this weekend and test out the hand ties. The colors are right and the sizes are right so I suspect they will work just fine. If they don’t I can swap them out for plastics.