Wow! What a great board! Happy to be here.
Rob
Welcome to the site from Northern California, Rob! You're in good company here. ;D
Rob
Welcome, Rob! Nice to have you with us!
Hey, looks like we're even now two Rob's and two Dom's, one set each from NY and CA.
Welcome aboard Rob :)
Ron.
Hi, from So Cal....... ;D
welcome, from the san francisco bay area!
Welcome aboard! Where in NY are you from? Does Robert, Robby, Bob, or Bobby work best for ya? ;)
Dom
Thanks for the welcome. I'm in Long Island. Most people call me Rob.
Welcome Rob, from the Emerald Isle.
aloha rob and welcome to alan's play house
Where in L.I.? ...north or south shore? Hope your fall striper blitz was better than ours in Brooklyn... and to boot we only had about 3 days of Albies and Bonito :'(
Dom
Sort of in the middle Dom, Huntington area. The fall run in the surf here was pretty dismal I'm afraid. One of the worst I can remember.
Hurricane Irene killed us... it was like fishing in Willy Wonka's chocolate factory! ...The fished moved on because of it
Goodnight Irene,
Dom
Aloha Rob from Toulouse, France...at least for another week. Otherwise, I'm in San Jose, CA.
I've heard a lot about your rock fishing in your neck of the woods. I have a lot of friends living and working in Long Island. Please do share when you have the time.
Welcome and enjoy the say. We have a great bunch of guys/gals in this board.
Welcome aboard Rob.
All the best, Justin
Thanks again for the warm welcomes.
Bryan - yes we can have great "rock" fishing here, which we of course call striped bass. We can also have poor striped bass fishing, and that was the name of the game this year. I only got a total of 5 for the whole year and I fish pretty often. Here's a typical striper, caught at Montauk Point in October.
Healthy-looking fish (nice color).... she looks between 26"-28". Was that your teaser up the line that was hit? ... I do best on that little sucker when I use 'em ;)
Thanks for sharing,
Dom
Quote from: broadway on December 12, 2011, 01:31:35 AM
Healthy-looking fish (nice color).... she looks between 26"-28". Was that your teaser up the line that was hit? ... I do best on that little sucker when I use 'em ;)
Thanks for sharing,
Dom
Hey Dom: Do you catch sick looking fish? You sound impressed at the health of this fish. :o Dominick
Dom - It was around 30" if I remember right. What looks like a teaser is just a piece of rope that I had through the fish's mouth. It was caught on a metal-lipped swimmer. I make my own.
Hey Dominick,
Lots of times (esp. summer) the stripers come up with red lesions (bacterial infection could be caused by low oxygen levels also) all over, or sea lice, or are a little more olive than the one in the photo which looks like a fall bass (more silvery than olive). In the fall they can get a red mouth area from breaking clams, rooting around in the sand and smashing eels in the sand. In the spring/ summertime the bunker are the bait of choice so no need for rooting. The eels aren't very readily available in the spring/ summer (at least in Brooklyn) so no smashing. The clams are around however we don't have many storms till late summer/ fall. The storms bang the clams around so they break on rocks, each other, etc. ....Sorry for the long winded explanation, but that's why I said healthy looking.
Dom
Rob, is that a custom spinfisher that you're using?
Sal
Sal,
The reel or the rod? The rod I built myself. The reel is a Van Staal 300.
Very nice setup Rob. I'm more impressed on that custom rod. Can you show some more pix of it when you get a chance? Sal
I think this is the only other pic I have of it Sal. Tough to get a picture of an 11 1/2' 1-piece rod.
I like the design of those Van Staals - a great example of 'form follows function'.
Thor did a tutorial on one a while back that looked really good (http://alantani.com/index.php?topic=2776.0 (http://alantani.com/index.php?topic=2776.0)).
Never seen one in NZ, but will be interested to have a crack at one eventually.
Cheers Rob, Justin
Wow, I'm impressed. I've only done one rod a while back, it was a Broco Unlimited Serie. That thing was a beast, I completely stripped it and refinished it. I think I sold it for $300, never took a picture. I also built me a jig made out of oak with a motor from a rotisserie. After my experience of how much work and patience was needed, I quickly gave up. How did you manage to wrap that 11 1/2' one piece rod? It must have not been easy. Great job! Thanks for sharing. Sal
Sal - I've built quite a few one-piece surf rods using just a Thompson thread holder clamped to the sock drawer on my bedroom dresser. You don't really need a lot of special tools to build a rod. That's how I built the rod in the photo. I eventually got a power wrapper / rod turner but I probably built about 40 rods before I got one.
Regarding the Van Staal reels, they are great for certain applications where the reel gets completely submerged, but a hassle to own otherwise. Fishing in places like Montauk Point, it's nice to be able to use your surf rod as a walking stick due to the difficult wading conditions, so the reel is gonna get dunked all the time. Also, some guys out there will put on wetsuits and swim out to rocks. Thats where reels like the Van Staal and the ZeeBass are a big plus. But the Van Staal, particulary the older ones like mine, were designed to discourage self-maintenance. Sending them to the factory for maintenance every year or two is expensive. There's a lot to be said for a good ole Penn 704 or a Mitchell 302, which are the reels that I use most of the time when conditions don't warrant the Van Staal.
Cheers for the insight Rob - much appreciated.