Dobyns Rod Pro Staffer Paul Mueller - Takes home top prize in Forrest Hills - FLW Event

This is just a short post to say congratulaions to a fellow Dobyns team member on his vicroty at the FLW Forrest hills event this past weekend.

Paul Mueller as he took home  the co-angler championship along with $60,000 in cash. Mueller had success on day three throwing swimbaits on a Dobyns 7ft swimbait rod. He had the biggest bag of the field on day 3 and secured his victory with 28.7lbs over the three day event, beating out the 2nd place angler by just over 1lb in total weight.

Again Congrats to Paul on this sweet come from behind victory (paul was in 10th place after day 1)

Frog Review: Yum Money Frog

As you can see from reading some of my other blog posts I have been on a bit of a  YUM money series kick. I recently gave the Money Craw and the Money Hound a try with success, so thought it was time to break out the YUM Money Frog.

I gave the bait a thorough work-out this past weekend while spending 3 days on a heavily padded lake. It was put to the test against a favorite frog of mine.. the Gene Larew 3 legged frog.. although it did not fair as well as my old faithful, there still may be a place in my bag to give this one another shot down the road. here are some pro's and con's

Pros:

the Money frog has a thick fairly durable body, the kicking legs have more bulk to them then most soft plastic frogs and will not easily tear after a few hits. The leg design is similar to the Money craw arm design and gives off good motion in the water when buzzed from pad to pad.

This bait easily stays on top of the water when pulled from the pads into the open. It does have a slow sink, so long pauses will cause the bait to fall beneath the pads.

I really like to color options available. they have a great mix of natural colors with high vis accents that allow you to see the frog even when casting long distances in heavy cover.


Cons:

I had a few issues when using this bait for the first time. First and foremost unlike many other soft plastic frogs this bait does not have a top slit or notch to help keep the hook point weedless. The plastic on the bait is firm and the hook point has a hard time staying buried. this causes snag issues when in thicker weeds and pads.

When pulling the frog in open water between the cover, you need to keep up a high rate of speed, the bait has a tendency to helicopter when not supported by pads/weeds or a high speed retrieve. I tried various hook placements to ensure the hook was centered but I was unable to rectify the issue.

I also had a hard time finding the perfect hook size for this bait. The length of the frog is conducive to a 3/0 hook. When using the EWG hooks the lack of hook keeper allowed the hook to much room to move and it constantly popped up. I moved to a standard offset worm hook and remedied this issue for the most part, but this also provides less hook, when setting the hook.

Not a fan of the packaging from this product. As an angler who likes to make quick changes on the water, this bait takes time to remove and place back in the package. The Money Craw and Money hounds had similar issues when launched, the packaging of the Money Craw has since been rectified

Pricing:

the Yum money frog comes in at a whopping $8 a pack and only contains 4 frogs.. yep thats $2 a bait. I easily used up 3 of the frogs in a 5 hour days. The nose of the bait is the least durable part, and was the cause of most of my "dead bait" issues.


When all is said and done the Money Frog ranks in last place when it comes to the YUM Money series of baits. I had high hopes since I fell in love with the money craw earlier this season. But the issues listed above on top of a very high price point, make this a bait that I wont be replenishing any time soon. I have not given up yet, but there are many more frogs in the pond if ya know what I mean.

Weapons:

I was throwing the YUM money from with my Dobyns 735c, one of if not the best frog rods on the market today (believe me, i have tried many). My reel of Choice was a Shimano Curado with 50lb PowerPro line. The Hooks used were both Gamakatsu in the thicker gauge for heavy cover.

6th Annual Trip with the Boys - Paudash Lake & The Duke

A few buddies and I have two annual trips that we take.. we leave the wives at home and take 3 days or so to do some fishing on various lakes and cottages in Ontario.

This year the trip was to Paudash Lake in the Bancrfot area and we stayed at Anchorage resort, a nice collection of cottages about 15 minutes outside of Bancroft. The cottages have everything you need to get you by over the course of a weekend. this includes a BBQ and a fire pit

for the 4 of us we decided to take two boats and have 3 single day tournaments switching up partners each day. This was a lot fun and Im happy to say I was on the winning team on both day 1 and day 2.

(my little guy was not in the running for big fish)

For those not familiar with Paudash lake, the lake is broken into two sides divided by a bridge and it contains 4 (or so) large bays. Pinpointing active fish was not problem as each bay had a healthy crop of year 1 and year 2 bass. The problem we had was finding the elusive "dukers" as one of my buddies calls them.

(Brad showing off why they may be small, but mighty!)

When we asked around on where to fish and what works, we got a variety of answers.. one that came up often was "laydowns" or fallen trees. By the end of the weekend we realized why the locals were so quick to give this info up.. this lake is nothing but "laydowms", they might as well have told us to "fish in the water" it would have been just as help full.

(Aaron starts off the trip with a nice 3lber)

All joking aside we came across a few patterns that worked well, and had a great time on the water. We each caught a ton of fish, and will be sure to head back to Paudash in the future. I know I will need to stock up on my plastics before I head out as I burnt through a couple pack of soft bodied frogs on the first day. the fish may be small but they are mean

We moved around and fished well over 80% of the lake in our 3 days on Paudash. Many fish were caught and all were released. The high point of the trip was this 5.22lb largemouth caught by "Kenny" on day 2 of our trip. In case you missed the pic of it above (yeah right) here is another view of a hawg by any ones standards.

(Kenny with the "Duke")

Weapons:

Dobyns 335C/Shimano Curado/Gene Larew Three Legged Frog
Dobyns 805CBRM/Shimano Curado/Baby BrushHawg
Dobyns DX703SF/Shimano Stradic/Tubes

Pimp'n your Reel - TH Reel Tuning & Cleaning

(Reel by: Calfish - Image from TH site)

Recently I added some reel grips to all the reels in my arsenal. And I thought that was the extent of pimp'n a reel.. but a friend pointed me in the direction of a very cool website that not only cleans and repairs reels, but also provides the ultimate pimp'n experience..

TH Reel Tuning and Cleaning

 the TH stands for Trey Harpel a fellow Dobyns Rod team member. His site is dedicated to the art of reel tuning and cleaning, something he has over 10 years experience doing. The prices look very reasonable with his experience and quick turn around, you will be very happy with your reels tuning

If you want to add a little flash to your reel, be sure to check out the painted reel section of the site. All paint jobs are completed by Calfish from Tackle Tour and there are some pretty cool samples available to look at.. Im not quite ready for a paint job yet, but I like what I see and may be sending some work his way in the future.

(Reel by: Calfish - Image from TH site)

Fear & Loathing on the BBTS: Jacks Lake

well normally I would start off a tournament post with a pic of my partner and I along with our catch for the day. But seeing as the above fish, a beast, weighing in at 6.85lbs broke the BBTS tournement series record for largest fish weighed in at an event, there was no way I could  lead off with anything else.

A local team of mark Dunford and Terry Lucas won the event.. Terry's fish is what put them up over the edge, a 17lb bag with a kicker fish of nearly 7lbs.. wow, that thing is a beast.

Now that thats out of th way, we will move on to my results and my quest to break the 10lb mark this season. The first two events we finished with just under 10lbs and with our results on Jacks lake we made it a threepeat weighing in 9.85lbs.. good enough for 13th place for the day, and we now sit in 12th place for the team of the year standings with on three days of fishing remaining.

Our Day:

Our day started off with a decent draw.. #9.. but when we blasted off we quickly noticed 2 boats were already stationed in the spot we had marked as #1 on our hit list.

I quick direction change and we were headed to spot #2.. a bay in the back of the lake loaded with timber and pads. A prefish conducted a few weeks earlier had us on a spinnerbait pattern, this quick proved uneventfull and we switched to top water.. frogs, frogs and more frogs.. the bite turned on and within 45 minutes we had 5 fish in the live well, but a total bag weight of only 6lbs.. time to move on

Spot #3 was another back bay with similar structure as the last spot, the water was a bit shallower and we only managed a few dinks.. nothing that would cull.. time to move on

We decided to reverse directions and head back to spot #1.. three boars now visible we moved on to spot #4, a nice rock line that we had previous success on. The spinnerbaits and cranks again proved useless, not a single fish. Getting a littler nervous by this time as our bag was still very weak, the morning was now over and we had 3 hours left to play with.

the decison was made to run up the lake looking for more top water situations.. we found some further out back bays with friendly locals who let us know there was not fish to be had.. we proved them wrong and were able to cull up to 7lbs..

with 1 hour left we made a run to a feeder creek that proved uneventfull during practise, we knew it was loaded with pads and worht a shot today. We locked the boat down and threw till our arms fell off, the pads were hot and we missed a few big blow-ups early on... it had been awhile since we had seen a fish..lol

In the last hour we culled up to our final tally of 9.85lbs.. all fish that day were from frogs.. live target walkers, live target hollow bodies, berkley freaks, and a 3 legged gene larew that also made some pike excited. It was a great day on the water, we just missed the 10, one more pound would have done it. Next stop is Limerick lake, i have a 2nd place finish under my belt on this lake so im hoping for big things

Congrats to Mark Dunford and Terry Lucas on the win.. here they are with there catch.. as you can see the brute dominated the bag

Weapons of Choice:

Dobyns 735c / Shimano Curado
Dobyns 805cbrm / Shimano Curado

Reel Grips are the real deal!

You know a few months ago if you asked me about the "reel grip" product, I would have probably given you a smart ass remark about them being a gimmick, a product that is not really needed and just a cash grab.. boy would  I have been wrong

When placing an order with Tackle Warehouse this past spring, i decided to order 1 pair of reel grips to give them a shot. My one bait-caster has smaller reel paddles and although I loved the reel, it could be uncomfortable when used for long periods of time.

the grips arrived (black in case you wondering) and I threw them on my reel. Immediately i noticed and felt the difference. They added that something extra, made the paddles a bit wider, and much easier on the fingers when spending a long day on the water. They are textured (ribbed for your pleasure) and provide superior grip and comfort.

It was not long before I placed my second order, this time ordering enough to outfit the rest of the reels in my arsenal.. including some of my spinning reels. (Small reels like a 1000 Series Shimano Stradics are perfect for these grips). On the second order I also branched out and tried some various colors.. adding the orange/white, and metallic orange. the only problem I have now, is I much prefer the colors to the standard black so I will be placing a third order to replace the black grips with some more colorful choices.

here are some of the pros and cons to the reel grip as I see it..

Pros:

the reel grips come in a wide selection of colors, from the standard "black" for those of you who want to be discrete to bright Oranges that look great with my Dobyns Champion Extreme rods.

the grips fit a wide variety of reel with out issue. the soft rubber can be slid off and on fairly easily, but still stay put. They are durable and take abuse well. (I have pulled them off and on a few reels multiple times without weakening the grip)

these things are super comfortable.. from skeptic to believer after 1 use

the grips are readily available online direct from the source or from other retailers like tackle warehouse.

Cons:

not to many cons to these grips, for me they are slightly pricey coming in at $5 a pair.. if you are looking at one pair it was not really a price issue, but when buying for 10 or more reels the $50 price tag hurt a bit.

the grips will fit nearly all reels on the market, but you may have a hard time sliding them over any reel with a larger paddle. My Curado D series reel has wide paddles and it was a struggle to get the grips on. Once on they slide a bit with heavy use, but are easily slid back into place

Be sure to check out the reel grip website to see all the cool options they have for your reels. Also check out the new product recently launched.. a rod grip.. a 10.5 inch tube of plastic that sides onto you rod to provide the same grip and comfort that the grips add to your reel.. a cool idea and something I may have to give a test drive later this season

Berkley NanoFil - Update

I thought I should post a mini update to my blog post on NanoFil line. Over the past week I have gotten the chance to spend some more time with this line, and found that some areas I have had understated it's usefulness.

With a few more uses the line seems to have softened slightly and I have seen some casting improvement. Throwing a texas rigged worm, this line allows for superior distance. I was able to hit spots 10-15feet further then when previously attempted. I dont know if this is standard, but the line has seemed to limber up.

Last night I was also in a situation in which the float-ability of NanoFil came into play. Casting a weightless worm long distances, the line sat up high in the water (or on top) and acted like a strike indicator. Many times I saw the line move prior to feeling the tap. the white color worked well standing out against the water and helped me increase my hook-up ratio.

I will continue to use this line over the short term and report back my findings. At this time I feel it has some applications it will excel at, and others Im still not sold on.