Haris122

Thanks for providing some options guys, I’m trying to figure out what I’m going to end up doing. I’d like to check out the ones Gavin has and go from there since that seems like the best deal right now and I like the handle profiles on those.

Like to find a $50-60 5’6” or a 6’ light casting rod if possible for my small omega spincaster. Anyone know where to find any selection for them around stl, cause cabelas, bass pro, and academy all dont have them, and I usually only can find 1 type from denny dennis, and I’d like to upgrade a bit from that.

So a quick bit of background regarding this question, my favorite combo to fish with for a variety of species from trout to bass to crappie, is a 5’6” light action casting rod with one of the smaller zebco omega spincaster reels. I recently got me another light omega reel, and I figured I see if I can up the rod quality a bit since the only one I’ve found in the past that works, is a cheaper $25 shakespeare rod. I figure with a nicer rod to boot might keep even more fish from getting of. I knew it would be a bit tough to find but this evening I went to cabelas, bass pro, and academy sports and didn’t find anything that fit the bill. So anyone know of any places around St. Louis that has any kind of selection on light 5’6”-6’ casting rods?

My main reasoning was having stronger line for similar diameter line size, provided that it does other things about as good as the mono, which so far it unfortunately has not. In case I get a big fish on that peels a lot of drag I’d like to have that extra peace of mind that the line won’t get cut as easily from abrading against the reel. About a month back I had a real nice fish on that took me for a ride, and though the drag did a good job, it really helped knowing that the braid was not going to get cut easily if it had got stuck like the drags on a lot of the lower quality spincasters.

I have spinning reels that I use along with the spincast ones, and I know they’re more problem-free a lot of the time but while I can’t explain it, I have a personal preference fishing with spincasters. I have used braid in the past in lower quality spincasters and they did eventually cut into the pins and reel-head but it wasn’t that quick, and the drag on this reel seems actually quite a bit better so I think that would help it from extending the life of the reel for longer than those. I am going to look into some of these other lines too, so keep the suggestions coming.

Why are knots a pain? Is it worse than mono?

Push button spincasting reel.

I went this past weekend up there with some fishing buddies, but unfortunately I have very little useful stuff to report. We fished a good chunk of Saturday, and a bit on Sunday, but we had electrical and motor issues almost the entire time, which cut down on our fishing. Saturday they caught some crappie and a little bass around Ray Behrens and a few more crappie in the Spalding recreation area coves on minnows under bobbers and slip bobbers in shallow water, while I struck out trying tube jigs under slip bobbers and throwing small crankbaits close to shore, hoping for crappie and bass or anything else for that matter. We tried catfishing for an hour or so Saturday night from shore by the ramp on BB with some cut up shad but nothing came of that. Sunday morning we headed out from the South Fork ramp and fished a bit from there with no success, but electrical issues caught back up with us and we were forced to call it a trip before we got stuck out in the lake. Weather was quite nice, and a lot of people we're out, but water visibility was really low, less than half a foot I'd say, and there was lots of debris close to shore from the high water.

Did better than I did. I went Saturday and Sunday with 2 fishing buddies of mine, one of whom has a boat, and we we're going for crappie. They caught a few crappie on minnows, along with a little bass, but I struck out mainly fishing tubes and smaller cranks for Crappie.

Wanted to see if you guys had any suggestions on some good braided line that casts out about as smooth and close to as far consistently as mono does out of a light action type spincaster. I tried out some fancy 6# braid thats equivalent to 1# mono diameter out of my zebco omega but considering how much I paid for it, I was dissappointed by how much casting distance I lost with it compared to the regular 4# line I use. Then this weekend went up to mark twain with some friends and there was a lot of short casts towards shore to be made and when making those, it would get in the habit of sticking and messing up the accuracy of my casts in comparison to a smooth release with mono. So yeah, suggestions on what type to try instead? Ideally something 6# strong. Thanks.

Will do.

Might get to go up there in early May but until then got nothing to post.

So yesterday evening I went up to Busch and started fishing lake 33. After about an hour of trying to fish it in the wind, I moved over to lake 38 hoping it would be better shielded from it. Either the wind died down, or it really was better shielded but bottom line, I kept casting there without a bite until after sunset. I was within my last 10 casts for the day when I finally caught a bass. So I figured I give it a few more casts. In the end I caught another little crappie too, but in-between those 2 I wound up hooking into something giant. Granted I got it on my light action rod but since I was using 6# braid in the reel, I still had the drag set a bit tight. That fish took off and made that drag sing for what felt like minutes, like there was nothing hooked up to it at all. After a little bit and 2 surfacings (though I still couldn’t see what it was) the line went slack and I realized it threw the hook. So here’s my question, anyone got any of the little notecards from prior years that shows what fish species are stocked in what lake? A friend of mine showed me a current one but if I were to take a stab at it my suspicion would be that I snagged into a good sized grass carp or something of the sort, yet I didn’t see them mentioning grass carp being in any lake on that new card, even though in the past I could’ve sworn they had them listed in lake 38 specifically. Any other guesses what it could’ve been? I hooked into it with a shad colored crankbait, though again, I don’t know for sure if it was foul hooked or not.

Seth do you drift your trout magnets under a bobber or how do you rig them up? I tried some trout magnets about 1.5-2 feet under a slip bobber, with some split shots thrown in to pull the float upright, for a while and had 2 lightbbites on it but most of them would just circle around them and then swim off.

Well, I made it down there by 8, found out about 3,000 fish had been stocked, and by 8:30 I got to fishing, with my usual pumped up mindset of "this will be the day" (when I catch fish after fish, get to 15-20 fish, with plenty of other bites too). As usual though, Meramec Springs pulled me back down to earth, and anchored me there. Because of the crowds and my preferred methods of fishing, I pretty much went straight for the lower half of the park, from the pool by the bathrooms on down, thinking it might be at least a little less crowded, and more conducive to my frequent casting. I had a couple bites by 12-1pm, but after watching countless people come, catch fish nearby and go, while nothing was happening for me, I started thinking that I may end up holding the very unique distinction of having been there almost all day, without catching a darn thing, on opening day no less. I decided at the very least I was going to keep trying different things in hopes of getting something, but by 5pm I still didn't even have 5 seconds worth of a fish on. Somehow in that last hour, I managed to catch 2 fish, throwing some crank/jerkbaits like I had been doing without luck at various times earlier in the day, and managed to salvage a little bit of pride, but man, today sucked for me. How was it for the rest of you guys that went?