I guess I should have had a "None of the Above" option also.  lol

Go ahead and vote!  I set it up for a maximum of 6 votes, so chose some or all!  We all need new fishing tackle!

I wanted a Shimano Tranx 500 for the longest time for most of "Big Lure" fishing.  I love level-wind lure fishing "lefty" so I can work a lure rather than just reel and let the lure try to do the work.  Only problem is I don't want to shell out $550+ for a baitcaster.

Daiwa came out with their own 500 for over a big bill less and I was ready to pull the trigger before my group was phased out of employment.  I've been very frugal with money since but have been thinking about the reel all the time and how nice it would pair up with my custom wrapped Rainshadow rod.

Well, I pulled the trigger and when it arrived, told my wife it was just another Christmas present, and I got the shopping done and out of the way early.  I didn't reveal that I bought "myself" a present.  lol

I spooled it up with 80# braid and can't wait to get out and use it!  The 500 holds 200 yards of 80# braid which should be sufficient for most fish except maybe a triple digit BFT.  lol

Well, it looked like it was supposed to be perfect weather out there and I have a really busy week with interviews and doctors' appointments, so I was turning and burning on the boat!  This time my plan was to deep drop.  I heard about the big bonito and yellowtail, but I wanted some "sure thing" fishing and opted as such.

The weather was freezing in the morning and it was crystal clear out.  I had to dodge the "Choomahs" on the way out (My new name for the Strokers), but that's how it usually goes launching back there.



It was glassy as hell and I cruised at 37 mph the entire way.  I actually stopped to see if the yellows were home, but got out of there when I didn't meter anything including bait.

First stop had life on the meter, but no instant hits.  It was actually tough to get bit but I started off with a chuckle who refused to blow out it's eyesballs and stuck him in the livewell.



I move deeper and next drop catch a bigger Chucklehead that blew its eyeballs out so I was one over the limit already.  Thankfully I didn't even need to descend the one in the livewell as he swam back down hard and strong.

My spots used to be money and a guarantee, but the last 4 or 5 times out here and it's been a hard pick at best!  Ugh...

I kept working my way deeper and picked up one here and there.  I caught some huge Starries...



And also some big Green Blotched or Green Spotted depending on the gills (I'll check it tomorrow).



There were a TON of birds working anchovie schools, but only had dolphin and birds.  I didn't see a single gamefish, but that didn't stop me from slinging the jig for a few dozen casts just in case.



I get a huge hit and know this one is different!  It was ripping drag back down everytime I gained line!  I thought it might have been a big red, but as I got it up 3/4 of the way realized it was dogging me still and felt like a nice lingcod!  But of course, on one big bounce by him and off he went.  I got to watch him swim all the way down on the fish finder... Damnit... but still a fun fight.

I worked out to 1000 feet of water and deployed the electric reel... for nothing.  I spent quite a bit of time trying and out of the blue watched a school of BIG bonito slowly cruise under the boat!  I dropped my jig right over them and I watched them swim around it..  I made so many casts into them and even tried squid, but they just weren't feeding.  Oh well...

I finally decided to start metering around the 600' mark and caught this surprise Sculpin!



Along with some big Green Spotted and this BIG starry!



I really wanted something big and even deployed some huge baits on the electric reel in a left field hope for something big or weird.  In the meantime, I dropped my small line counter rod with the 300 gram jig/squid. 
600+ feet on this little rod is quite the effort.



I get a good bite, but it feels like some of the bigger sand dabs I caught earlier.  I get it about 5 or 6 feet off the bottom when the rod almost gets yanked out of my hands!  My initial thought was a big ling hit my rockfish.... but the braided line doesn't lie and I could feel a tail slapping into the line!



It was heavy and really put this rod to it's limits on drag and even my shoulder since it's an old school 7' Teramar that's pretty stiff with about 4" of tip that broke off a decade ago.

I was pretty sure at this point it was a Thresher since I've heard of them taking rockfish before and never caught a shark at 600+ feet deep before.  I was pretty shot at this point, but say the big tail and big wake!



I got as many pictures as I could since I didn't know when my line was going to break.  Wow, definitely a 7-gill shark!







It was pretty big and I'm guessing 7.5' but all I could think about at this point was how to get the jig back and not get bit or get a hook in my hand at this point.



Well, he slapped his tail against the line again and this time it gave way.  Oh well, lost jig, but I have my hand and all of my fingers.

I decided that was the last fish and headed in at almost 40 MPH!!!  I tried racing the hovercraft but he dusted me.



I get back into the inlet and realize that these boys didn't have Vessel Assist or Sea Tow so called the life guards.



Needless to say, it was a great morning out there.  I got it done with some quality, but it was a tough go at some points.  Rockfishing supposed to be easy!  LOL



Thanks for reading and until next tide!

I had a dozen heavy hoops made to my specs and they have been killing the bugs!  The only issue is they start to get really heavy by the third set.




My buddy and I headed out for another night of hooping.  Strike while the iron is hot and it was the last of my lobster bait in the freezer.



We drop the hoops and let them sit for about 75 minutes.  We were just waiting for it to get dark....



Well, we crushed it with bugs.  The biggest net of the night had 46 in it!  3 legals in here and about 20 that were only short by a 1/8th of an inch or less!



The fleas were everywhere.  I think I probably had 1000 in my boat by nights end.



Soon as the current picked up, the crawl slowed, but we ended up with 310 bugs on the white board.  Not bad for pulling 4 sets of only 7 hoops!



We got our limits and only threw back 2 other legals, so it was mostly a small bug crawl... but we got our limit.



Next day, I was jonze-ing for a Mc Rib... and the Cucaracha Coach came a crawling!



Hahaha... My boats is trashed from all of the lobster fishing.  Time to start fishing again.

Thanks for reading!

Man, those big squid look like perfect Sword baits... I'm even wondering if they would work well on the kite?

Great price for market squid too!

Alright Jeremy, now it's time to catch some trout!  (Kogahead loves handling his brown trout)

I really love picking up new tips and tricks when i fish on someone else's boat.  I don't usually go on other people's boats because generally they scare the crap out of me... but there's a few that are tied into the scene.

I've been dialing in my hooping over the past 10 years and really getting it fine tuned from the older days where I was just chucking out a hoop near the jetty.  I've been looking at tides, moon phases, current speed & direction, swell, bait, time of season...etc.  Really looking at it like fishing and not just dropping on hunches.  I know the " hunches" pan out well too, but it at least keeps my mind active and improving.

Well, the guys I went with tonight are really skilled fishermen and are deeply personally connected with the commercial and sport boat fleets (buddy's and grew up with them all).  I have to say that letting them roll with their way of doing things left me perplexed.  Some of the reasoning did not line up with what I've seen or what I thought was even possible like:  When the swell and current is up, the bugs all move into deeper water.  Personally, I can't imagine the bugs wanting to all walk in ripping current hundreds and hundreds of yards in a strong current just because of the swell? I would think that the lobster would just hunker down in place and maybe the deeper water bugs would be more active because of possibly less current.

In any case, they liked the current for bugs and I was the opposite.  I like the end of a current to bring the scent trail and then at slack, the bugs can follow the trail up to your nets.  It's been a pretty proven thing on my boat but I'm only a passenger on someone else's.

Well, the swell was way bigger than expected.  I definitely was perplexed with their philosophy on dropping nets and even the net configuration, but they have been doing it for 60 years out here so who am I to say?

We netted about a dozen on the first set along with an eel.  No legals, but not looking really good.



The swell was driving the nets in and dragging them along the bottom.  The nets definitely needed to be weighted.  I also saw some serious frays in the line that they weren't too worried about which later proved terminal to two lost hoops.

Besides that, the sea lice were terrible!



We lost two more to the big swells dragging the nets a hundred yads into the surf zone.  Not a good night... then we were running to the barn and licking our wounds when we decided to make a last minute drop in the inlet.  I pressed them that the tide was right for how I like to bug and with the slowing tide that was topping out, it might be good.  We also had some of the freshest BFT bait available he got off his buddy that morning from the processor, so it was time to use it.

Well, the first set and we got 3 legals along with 20 shorts.



Next set and we got 6 legals with 40 shorts!



We wanted to drop again, but it was late as hell and we did end up with 3 bugs a piece along with a real doozy of a bug so it was a bottom of the 9th hit!

I was stoked that my philosophy of bug hunting worked to save the day, but they chalked it up to their persistent style that got them.  Hey, I'm definitely not a lifelong bug hunter, and I won't argue with anyone's style of fishing... but I'm glad to know my data driven science did not fail us tonight.  LOL



until the next bug hunt!

For whatever reason or reasons, the last 2 weeks has been spectacular for bugs (for about everyone) so I needed to get out again.  I took my usual partner in crime out since his lower unit blew up and he's been missing his favorite season of the year.

We hit the spot that I did so well at on Thursday.  It was way ROUGHER out than what the forecast predicted so I'm glad I had a second person to keep an eye out on things.  The sunset was awesome, but the NW winds at 10-15 were not.




I only brought 7 hoops because with the extra person and extra hoops, I leaned more to safety than making sure I had 10 hoops.

The first pull of hoops were strong, but nowhere near what it was last week.



First set and we pulled 60 lobster with only 4 legals.

We had some great strucrure aound so moved the pots around according to what was in the net when we pulled.



The second set was quite a bit better with 70 lobster pulled and 7 legals.



The third set went WAAAAY Low... definitely tide swing/current related.  We only got 24 with 2 legals... one short of limits.

At this point all of the other boats were leaving and the wind kept picking up so we decided to pull the last string right away and take whatever we got and hope we had one more to get our limits.  The tide was getting just about right, but we both had to get back early enough anyway.

First three hoops with a 20-minute soak and a big goose egg.

Next three hoops and we got 18 lobster with 3 legals so two went back and we kept a dandy to finish our limit.



Pulled up the last hoop and WTF???  12 lobster with 7 legals in it.  All of the bugs were roughly the same size so we counted and released before stacking and heading back to the ramp.

As we were heading in, the inlet was lit up like a Christmas tree with all of the hoop lights.  As I was heading back, I noticed bright truck lights in an area that I know usually has tweakers or people getting their high on.  Only issue was these were bright LED lights and not the usual dull yellow headlights of a Hooptie.

We get to the ramp and pull the boat out when a truck comes racing in!  It's the Warden.  We weren't worried since we were legit from head to tail, but the warden seemed a little bit on edge.  He made a THOROUGH inspection of all of the hatches and measure all of the bugs as well as checking that our licenses were filled out and we had our Go ID on all of our buoys...  I mean the full 9 yards.

After he was satisfied that we were on the up and up, he relaxed and thanked us for having everything in order.  He said we were the first boat tonight he didn't have to write a ticket to and there was a lot of "Funny Business" going on tonight to which gave credence to why he was on edge when he rolled up on us.

Well, it was good to know he was out there, and we headed back home 30 minutes later than we expected due to this inspection.

In any case, another limit of bugs!  I barely ever go back-to-back with limits, let alone my first two trips of the year so I am a happy boy!



Attack of the Kaiju pic.



Well, time to take a lobster break.  My body is killing me after having two trips in a week.

Thanks for reading!

You and I have seen those guys a bunch of times while waiting to shark fish.
That was a cool read.

Quote from: Dark_Knight_9C1 on November 18, 2025, 06:00:51 PMThe Real One... make it so!

I've been trying.  Steve and
I used to hit the lakes pretty hard looking for the "One".  I've seen him in Jennings, but the damn thing sat there like a log and never took the bait.

The job hunt continues and so does the fishing.

I thought I was at least going to limit on Cats if not catch a trout or two.  Turns out that only one small stocker was going to be my only catch in 4 hours of fishing.



The white pelican's and cormorants were on the hunt and making the trout scatter and swim for their lives so getting them to take a lure or bait was near impossible.

I tried 4 different spots and only one had the one bite.  I did hear a few noisy ass ospreys above me and they were so concerned with each other, they didn't care about me.



That was it.  Tomorrow is a new day!

I needed some exercise and walked around 5 of the lakes this morning before getting back on the job hunt.

The water levels were easily up a foot and every lake was muddy or green at this point.

I didn't see a single fish in any of the shorelines.  When I got to lake 2, there were about 40 people fishing and nothing on their stringers.

I finished my walk back to the truck and as I was passing the last 20 feet of shoreline, there he was.  a decent triploid rainbow just cruising about 20 feet out.  I cast the spinner fly out and he dipped out of sight... until the line went tight and I was on! 

Not a bad stocker bow at all and probably the average sized trout for these lakes this year.



That was it.  I walked to my truck and headed home to resume my job hunt.  I might come back this afternoon, but will probably just wait until tomorrow and give it a good soak while I get soaked.

Quote from: jrodda on November 15, 2025, 09:16:32 PMSounds like a lot of fun! Still haven't gotten a blue cat and those look nice and healthy.

The big blues should be on the chew now that the trout stockings have started.  My biggest is only 22-24#.  I'd love to see a 'Real One".

I spent Friday recovering from sore muscles all day from the Thursday Evening bug trip.  I saw some good rain for Saturday and knew they stocked the ponds on Thursday, so perfect timing!

I didn't get out at the opening today, but made it down before 7:30.  the lake in which they stocked was PACKED!  First of all, that was a lot of people for a normal weekend, let alone really rainy day! 

I moved on to Lake 3 and it looked like a pond full of YooHoo...

I moved to Lake 4 and it was the cleanest of the ponds, but there were people fishing in all of the spots that I wanted to fish.  I walked the shore and saw nothing so I moved on.

I finally just decided to just set out a few rods since the rain started to drizzle a little bit harder and the radar was showing some heavy stuff arriving soon.



I go to my truck and look back to see my 2# rod doubled over and saw a huge splash!  Holy crap I'm on a big one!
It definitely wasn't a cat and I was stoked to see the size of this trout since the splash I saw/heard was pretty damn big!

WTF?!?!?!?  Not a trout, but a husky 3+# bass!  Well, on 2# test, that was a bad ass fight!



I went back to the truck after releasing him and threw on my rain jacket since it started to pour.  I turned around to see my tiny rod doubled over and the SI pinned to the eye!

It wasn't too big at all, but even on this micro rod, I knew it was a catfish, and a pretty small one to boot.



I had to retie this leader since he swallowed the hook and as I finished tying the rig, I saw the other rod doubled over and knew it definitely was a much bigger model.  It fought much different than a channel as it stayed at the surface quite a bit and I realized why.  Nice Blue!



It then was instantaneous bites back to back to back... All of the fish were in a 20 square yard spot and bit the minute you cast at it.  Next two were nice Channels...





Followed by another blue!



Then it just got stupid.  I think I caught 9 total cats and 1 bass.  Some of the cats were small and it was raining hard, so I just flicked them off and recast right away.





I ended up with 3 blues which was really cool since I can only remember catching about 10 blues here the last 20 years. 



These guys must have been from a recent plant in October since they were bright and had some great black lines on the anal fins!  I don't remember the black lines there on any of my last ones, so it must have been from a breeding stock they were growing this year.

I realized one of my old coworkers wanted fish and I sent her a message asking if she wanted any catfish.  I released them all to this point, but it was easy fishing... until now.  Of course she said she wanted the catfish and I couldn't get another bite at that point.... Of course...

I saw 3 trout rats walk by and one had a decent Lightning Trout on his stringer so the trout were here but the cats apparently beat them to my bait... or they were still car sick from the trip down from Mt Lassen.  lol

Oh well.  I went home for a Lobster Lunch and went on perimeter patrol from all of the rain.  I reset all of my trout gear since I felt certain reels would be better on some of my other rods and got everything dialed in.  I'm ready for tomorrow!

Quote from: Chris on November 14, 2025, 09:53:43 PMThe little cotter pin will break after a few times taking it off so stock up.

Also a good time to run a file on the blades

I don't have a cotter pin for the prop. I have a locking washer that lays flat and won't be able to bust off, but at least I can check on its condition.

As for the prop, it's younger than the motor and it's edge is still in perfect shape. I'm going to bring it in every 4-5 years to get tuned. My buddy tracks his gas usage and said a good tuning from the shop is a must. I've always done it myself but I've also never had a HP prop before.

I hope all is well down in Florida Chris.