Today they have forecast winds of over 50 miles per hour for here at home in SE minnesota. I gues the gusts are supposed to approach the 50 to 60 mph range with sustained winds in the 30 to 40 mph range. Hey, that's windy enough to do what I am going to do.

When this grand blow gets ramped up, I am bringing all of the long rods outside with nothing tied to the lines. One at a time I am letting all the line off the reels, then closing the bail and reeling the line back on the spools. Get any chance of kinks out of it BEFORE I decide to use the rods. Normally I just take them down to the creek and let the line come off with the current then re-reel it, but I'm lazy and getting too old to do the ice-covered-rock hula anymore.

I put all new line on all of the rods a couple weeks ago except for a couple that get Crystal. On those I reverse the Crystal after laying a base of used line down. I get two seasons out of the crystal that way. I have one rod with the new Nanofil and the jury is still out on that stuff, but I did reverse it since I used it a bit last fall.

I hate having the line twist that comes with jigging but I hate it even more when I put the new line on reels and the first cast ends up a bird's nest and twent yards gets trashed right off. I've been doing this loose-line re-reeling now for about 5 years, doing so on both ice and open water rods, and have not had an issue of that sort since. Now I'm pretty good about taking time to do this a couple times during the summer months as well as when new line goes on the reels. Its amazing how much happier fishing can get when this aren't snarled up. Today, I'm letting the wind take my headaches away, so wind does turn out to have a positive side maybe, eh?