hoglaw

At the risk of sounding like a fanboy here, I can vouch for his methods though I wasn't with him on this trip. He seems to make everything into a bigger game than it is (that's the Lousiana influence i think). So on his quest to catch 3000 last year, he used a clicker. He keeps a cumulative running total. You ask who carries a clicker when they fish? I ask who feels the need to cross examine folks about individual fishing trips. In that regard, I suppose he's staying a step ahead in the arms race you perpetuate.

Glad your rod is working out well rps. As for my wart setup, it's the cheapest rod I own. 7' berkleycherrywood that someone gave me. I just put a 5:1 lews on it. Idk the model, but it was under 100. The rod is a little softer than what I'd call perfect, but overall I really like it. It's funny to throw lures worth more than the rod you throw them on.

Yeah, get comfortable with the sand/gravel bar thing. IMO, you'll have a much better experience than in a designated campground.

I did this for my bachelor party the first go-round with five buddies. Had a great time. I think we did it in late April/early may though. Spent one night at rush and two on the river.

I have an invite to fish the Thomas reservoir on feb 15 and 16. It's a fabled lake in Arkansas duck hunting lore near hazen. It is about 800 acres when not flooded into the woods, and full of crappie and bass. A good friends family just bought about 3600 acres including the lake. My worry is the water will be near freezing with this weather. So the question is how would you fish it? Jigs and square bills hoping to catch bass? Ignore the bass and drown minnows for crappie? Or ride around and shoot stuff? Can't imagine water temps are over 40 and there may be ice on the thing.

I'd echo everyone else's comments. I'm surprised to hear the rainshadow blanks are overrated. I haven't tried one yet and maybe I won't. I've been a big fan of the MHX blanks. I tried one of their blend blanks for crank bait fishing and I don't care for it at all. But other than that, I really like it. I think I used one of those spin jig blanks for my carp rod. I don't recall all of the model numbers I've used, but by and large I've been a big fan of their blanks for the price. I haven't tried their high modulous ones yet but I want to. Probably the nicest blank I've built on for myself is a St. Croix SCV blank. It was probably around $220, but I got it during a half off sale. I'm a big fan of that rod. My friend's grandfather is an old rod builder in Little Rock. I'm pretty sure he still has a stockpile of G Loomis blanks squirreled away. I'm going to try to get my hands on those soon. All this talk makes me want to start building some more rods! I haven't done one for myself in a while.

My placement method is really simple but difficult to describe. I didn't come up with it. It's called the 27x method I think, but I've found that it works extremely well. First, put your reel on the rod. Use calipers to measure the diameter of the spool lip - the widest point from the center of the reel that the line must pass over. Multiply that number by 27. The product is the distance up the rod that the choke guide must be placed. In test casting, I've found 28 or 29 to be a little better. The choke guide equal to the smallest guide you will use, and it's the same size as the rest of the running guides from the choke to the tip. On most spinning rods, the choke guide is the third guide up, and you will have two reduction guides below it. Placing the reduction guides is also very key, and here's how you do it. Use a piece of tape to tape the line coming off the reel to the top of the reel, so that it is coming out of the dead center of the top of the reel. Run that to your choke guide, and put slight tension on it to form a perfectly straight line from the center of your reel spool to the choke guide. You will place your two reduction guides (the bigger guides) below the choke in such a location that the tight line runs just against the inside of the ring furthest away from the rod. It's easier if I draw a picture here. So that means the placement of the reduction guides depends upon their size and profile. When you're done, there should be a perfectly straight path from the center of the reel spool to the choke guide, and on the way the line will just barely touch the inside of the guide ring on the two reduction guides at the point farthest from the blank. The line path should not be deflected in any way whatsoever. Once that is done, the hard part is over. Tape the rest of your running guides on where you think they should go. Do a static distribution test to make sure your angles are correct and adjust the running guides as needed. Now take it to the yard. It should cast flawlessly. If it doesn't, adjust the positioning of your choke guide and running guides and try again. This part can be trial and error, but the methodology outlined above should get you very close. When properly set up, the line will absolutely sail through the guides and you won't hear any "slap." Implicit in this method is the idea that your guide placement depends upon the spool lip diameter of the reel you are using. So it is absolutely not one size fits all. The rod must be customized to the reel you are using. Also, folks talked about weight savings earlier. As we've already established, you do not need more micro guides than you do regular guides, particularly if you use a spiral wrap on a baitcast rod. So that's out the window. A set of micro guides does weigh less than regular ones. Even if the weight savings is just an ounce, the key is the location on the blank where the weight savings occurs. Additional weight in the handle is meaningless. Some folks will add weight to the butt to balance a rod at the reel. The key is saving weight towards the tip of the rod. This has a tremendous effect. A friend's grandfather gave me a rod he build a while ago on a nice Loomis GL3 blank. It was a good looking rod with a cool handle and I thought it would be a great white bass spinning rod. It was build with gigantic blanks but I didn't think it would effect that much. I was wrong. It didn't cast well and it had a completely dead feel. I couldn't feel a bite unless they slammed it. It was so bad I thought it was a counterfit blank. I didn't want to mess up the nice work he did, but I knew I wanted to try different guides before it became a decoration instead of a fishing rod. So I stripped all of the guides off and replaced them with a proper micro set-up. Now the rod is spectacular.

Micro guides work flawlessly on a spinning rod when placed properly. But its truly a custom deal. There is no one size fits all placement chart. I would never buy an off the rack spinning rod with micros. Consequently I would never build myself a spinning rod without them.

Mitch, the advantage of a spiral on a casting rod with micros is that you can use fewer guides. You just have to pass a static distribution test (google image search it). If you put the micros on top like a normal casting rod, the low guide profile means you need more of them closer together to keep the line off the blank when it's under a load. If you buy an off the rack mico guide casting rod that's 7', it will have 12-14 guides on it! That's nuts. If you spiral wrap it, it will only need 7-8 usually.

Guide failure is pretty rare (aside from the ring popping out), but I guess if you were grinding braid over cheap inserts with a lot of tension for a long time you could see some groving. I've never had a guide grove, but maybe I'm just not hat hard on them. The mega bucks guides with swanky inserts may be necessary for saltwater stuff and really heavy gear. I'm not sure. I'm by no means as accomplished a rod builder as some on here and haven't been doing it as long, but I build everything that I can with micro guides. As a result, I don't feel like I have that many choices really. Spinning rods are difficult to set up properly with micro guides. Anyone can slap them on there where they think they ought to go, but to really get them placed right you have to fit the guide placement to the reel you're using. I'm a big believer in that method. With the 27x placement method (or whatever the multiplier is), I've found that just a little tweaking is necessary to get it to cast properly. Casting rods are far easier, and I always spiral wrap micro guides. If you don't, you need more guides which is always a bad thing. So to answer the question posed, my "choice" of guides for a dream rod would be micros - the smallest ones I can use and still pass any knots I'll have in the line, and always spiral wrapped for a casting rod. I haven't had any durability issues with them and I know they're lighter than the most expensive conventional guide systems (although we're talking about fractions of an ounce here).

I don't know any details and completely understand crowd and safety concerns. Just had a Saturday free for the first time in a while. I'll probably either fish my buddy's lake over near Siloam or go play Omaha at the elks lodge

A friend on the board told me they have jackpot tournaments at Swepco on Saturday mornings during the winter. I'd love to fish one (including this Saturday) if anyone wants to go. I have a 21x56" trout boat with a 90 jet and a good trolling motor, but was hoping to ride in someone's bass boat if anyone is inclined to go do it. I'll be happy to cover gas and split the entry fee. I don't know much about the lake other than catfishing it a few times so I don't contribute much aside from good company and sharing expenses. If anyone wants to give it a shot, please let me know.

They were a little old for my taste but they were friendly. We declined their invitation to join them. That was at Jed's landing now that I think about it. We were supposed to take out at Russ's place but missed it in the dark. Jed was super nice and let me bring my rig down to his property to retrieve my canoe.

I was the one that said the rainbows have a short lifespan in the river. Don't know how true it is, but a guide told me that a long time ago. He said during the warmer months, the average lifespan for a rainbow from stocking to dinner table is about a week. I think Phil mentioned a similar study on Table Rock that put it around 30 days. The holdovers get smart quick I guess. I have caught some big rainbows on the Norfork, but never any over 24" on the White and only two or three that came anywhere near that mark. I did see one in the White Hole area this past fall that was over 30". It was a 10 or 15lb fish. Saw him cruising around at night with a spotlight just looking to see what we could see. He was a heart stopper. While we were there, a group of very big fish would come up close to the ramp at White Hole at night. They were either after carcasses or the shiner minnows that were piled up all around the ramp.

I THINK I know where that was. The trick to the Little Red is access. On the White, most of the really good water has access nearby. There are quite a few shoals on the Little Red, named and unnamed, that are a long way from public access. Access through private property is one way to get at them, but the best way is to canoe the river. At low flows like the LR had this fall, I don't care what kind of boat you have or how well you know the river. You simply cannot get to a lot of these shoals. Canoeing it is the way to go in my opinion.

The bass was likely a crooked creek native taking advantage of the warmer water in the white!

We fish it on moon lit nights in the summer. The drunks are still there, but they're landlocked. Had an interesting experience missing my take out and coming upon a group of a dozen of them skinny dipping once. They were very helpful and let us take out at their property, but none were fit to give us a ride back upstream so we walked. Fiancee caught her pb smallmouth this way.

Oh the humanity!!!! All joking aside, what a jackarse. You can get away with that in Norfork Arkansas. I'd love to see the coward try it in Little Rock.

What does this mean?

Thanks for all the good input guys. I didn't expect it to be as accurate as the M9. I'm not much of a gun buff, but I've been a naturally good marksman ever since I was a kid if I do say so myself. I only mentioned the Baretta patterns in an effort to show that this wasn't user-influenced. But just because I'm a decent shot doesn't mean this isn't user influenced I suppose. I haven't shot a lot of other small pistols to compare it to, just a 1911 .45, my M9, and a handfull of others. The bench rest is a good idea, as is the laser. It has a laser rail. Yes, this gun was bought as a keep in the night-stand gun for my fiancee. The slide is very easy for her to operate, and the grip is very comfortable for her. She also has really short fingers and the gun fits her perfectly. I just wanted something reasonably reliable for her to have around and feel comfortable with. Last time out we shot paper first, then I inflated some small baloons and she shot at those from about 7 yards. She had no trouble popping them one after another with only a few misses, so I feel like she can fire this gun competently. I guess the M9 is just going to be a lot better at punching prettier holes in paper from longer distances. I've never heard of the smoke light thing...I'll have to google that. I didn't get the one with the laser for her because I wanted her to not rely on it. But that's not a bad idea at all for teaching her (and me) the proper sight picture. I hear you on the quality of ammo too. That .380 ammo is expensive if you don't shop regularly to pick up the cheap stuff. The green and yellow remington box of hollow points are the most expensive ones we've put through it so far (about $30 for a box of 50 after tax...too expensive for plinking in my opinion). Right now she's shooting some eastern block stuff that's more like $14 a box, and she keeps some better Hornady defense rounds in it when it's at the house. It does have an external safety and the hammer can be cocked back for a very nice trigger pull (can't remember whether that's true da, dao, or what) just like my M9. Her technique is pretty good considering she has no better of a teacher than me, and she's super comfortable operating and shooting. I guess I just expected that most any firearm should shoot consistent groups from 20 feet if the user is shooting consistently. Apparently that isn't the case. I'll try bench shooting with some higher quality ammunition and see if that addresses my concerns. Thank you again to everyone who responded.

I bought my fiancee a Walther PK380 for her birthday. It's fun to shoot but for the life of me I cannot get it to shoot a decent group. I don't think it's user error as I have zero trouble shooting good groups with my M9 at the same time. I clean and maintain both pistols in the same way. I'm using pretty inexpensive brass FMJ rounds in both guns, though they're different manufacturers. I'm not sure what else is going on. Obviously the Baretta has a longer barrel which seems like it should help. The sights on the PK380 are not adjustable. There is a lot of "play" in the sight though. As in, you could have what looks like a decent sight picture and be pretty far off from left to right. It tends to shoot low based on the sight picture I think it should have, but I can compensate by taking more of the site and really covering up what I'm trying ot hit. But it still strays left and right. Any thoughts?

If you can't find a guide, canoe it. Float from cow shoals to swinging bridge (put in sucks) or from swinging bridge to lobo (longer float and you'll do a lot of paddeling towards the end). Both floats will get you on water that doesn't get beat to death. That's the best way to do the river on low water. There are some terrific shoals below swinging for about three miles. Best fishing om the cow float is cow shoals itself and about 300 yards below. There's also a great wading shoal at the mid point but folks can access it privately I think. Idk about guides.

I use either 20 or 30 lb braid on my spro frogs and horny toads, and I'm fishing them over and around hydrilla that's almost thick enough to walk on in a private lake full of 5s and 6's with the occasional bigger fish. Well rope is absolutely not necessary in this part of the world.

The delta tohatsu stories are absolutely true. Tohatsus and Suzukis are the rage in bayo meto and other places limited to 25s

Interesting stuff ham. And nice fish tb. I've caught more good fish 300yards in either direction from that spot than anywhere else if it's where I think it is. The lampreys freak my fiancee out, especially when they fall in the bottom of the boat. I've always wondered if good fish will eat them or if they know to steer clear.