bmac

☝ This. Samurai for light spinning applications due to its castability. line lay and performance. Boat braid for jigging. High quality, strong and I like the color coding.

I'm sure they'll fix it, but dang, how could they have missed that glaring error, at a Veterans cemetery no less?

Those look great. Bet a big brown trout would smash one too. Nice work.

Many years ago, while chasing my dream of becoming a better fly fisherman, I made the error many of us have in thinking that a better, more expensive rod would make that dream a reality. I bought a Sage RPL+ nine foot five weight that cost just a shade over $500 at the time. An expense I really couldn't afford then. It was a good rod, and I could throw a fair amount of line with it. The reality, as Lefty Kreh is reported to have said, was I could just throw bad casts further. Of course I couldn't wait to show that rod to a fishing buddy of mine, an older gentleman who was a superb fly angler. He was happy for me but not overly impressed. We fished smallmouth for a couple hours that afternoon and took a short break up on the bank. He picked my rod up, inspected it a bit, then he put it down. Then he said something I'll never forget. "You know, a five hundred dollar rod in the hands of a hundred dollar caster like you is a hundred dollar rod." Now that's a good story, and I've told it to many of my fishing friends over the years. There is a lot of truth in it. Yet I'd still argue that a high quality rod can help a great deal. But only with proper technique and, as mentioned earlier in the thread, properly matched fly line and leader for the type of fishing you are doing. IMO, the major rod manufacturers over emphasize casting performance and distance over all other qualities. That's fine if you are flats fishing or fishing from a boat where casting distance can make a big difference and all the angler has to do is cast and strip. That's all well and good, but that's just a thin slice of the fly fishing universe even if it's what the majority of salt water fly anglers do. Many of those high octane rods that throw tight loops and 100 foot casts all by themselves do not perform well when fishing in current.

SA Absolute Hard Mono. Also great for leader construction. Carey Greene has a great thread on that. (In the Fly Fishing forum).

Whatta you think's going in that lemonade?

For anyone fortunate enough to live within the listening area of "The Big Show with John Boy and Billy," they do a running spot called "The Diary of Gary Busey." Pretty hilarious.

That is a great looking fly.

Brewski's video is the tip of the iceberg. North Carolina should be the destination fishery it used to be. Sadly it has been grossly mismanaged for decades. CCA North Carolina is suing the state. That lawsuit has survived all of legal challenges to date and should go to trial in the summer of 2024.

This is a pic of the balanced perch fly. A guy named Phil Rowley has a series of YouTube vids on tying balanced flies. Popular for stillwater trout fishermen in the Sierra Nevada at places like Lake Crowley and in Nevada at Pyramid Lake. Usually fished under a float. An option for that is a Float N Fly rig, developed and marketed by a North Carolina guide named Gary Dubiel. It's basically a popping cork for a fly rod. I'm sure there are other people who have developed something similar. You can buy them from Fish Skull, but they are also easily homemade. They work great for bull redfish in the Neuse and Pamlico here in NC. A bit unwieldy to cast but with the right rod and line combo you can get them out there a ways.

A frequent quote in the Tavern!

One potential method by which fish schools might thwart predators is the "predator confusion effect" proposed and demonstrated by Milinski and Heller (1978).[28] This theory is based on the idea that it becomes difficult for predators to choose individual prey from groups because the many moving targets create a sensory overload of the predator's visual channel. Milinski and Heller's findings have been corroborated both in experiment[29][30] and computer simulations.[31][32] "Shoaling fish are the same size and silvery, so it is difficult for a visually oriented predator to pick an individual out of a mass of twisting, flashing fish and then have enough time to grab its prey before it disappears into the shoal."[4] (From Wikipedia, so it's probably BS)

I copied Hilltop's basket. Very happy with it.

The best. Spicey Craw Taters are my favorite, but the jalapeno is pretty darned good too. Utz bought them out a few years ago.