(somewhat) beginner to fishing <need tips!>

[TRUTHFUL_LIES]

Okay, so I guess im not 'completely' a beginner, I have reeled in my own 27 inch pike while ice fishing with my friend. I have caught quite a few panfish now, and I have caught some smallmouths (less than 15 inches, so no keepers..). I have reeled in a Redhorse carp as well.

I know some stuff, but I still feel lost. Basically, my dad would take me fishing in California, but we went to crappy places to fish, and rarely got anything. I now live in Wisconsin, and without my Dad. He didn't know much about fishing, so I didn't learn much from him.

I have a really good friend who's into fishing and has some stuff and lets me come with him fishing. He supplies all the stuff, which is extremely courteous of him. We were in his shack last winter in March when my tip up went up and I caught that "monster" pike (at least to me! ). Since then, I loved Ice Fishing.

So now that it's summer, I had to move to a different house, so I have been busy and couldn't get together with that friend of mine. Finally, last week, we went together and in total, must've caught 20 panfish. (10 were worth keeping) I know some people dislike this, but if I hear a fish tastes good, and the size looks about right, I keep the fish. I mean, I want to try out all different types of fish.. And it just feels good to know that I'm going out there not just to hurt a fish, but to get something out of it, food.

So anyways, suddenly my step dad comes out of the blue saying "Hey, I think I got 2 poles and a tackle box in my garage, but the stuffs about ten years old.." It felt like christmas. Half the stuff in his tackle box was never opened, and the poles seem like they're in great shape (and i get 2! now I can try to take my sister out fishing too!). He has a couple jigs in there, but it doesn't seem like he knows TOO much about fishing, so I don't know if I should ask or not. He's not a very emotional person, so I tried not to bombard him with appreciation, but I really appreciate it.. It seems like he bought all kinds of stuff 10 years ago to take his daughters, they didnt like putting on worms and all that stuff, he had to do everything, and he started disliking it too. So he may not have too much knowledge about the stuff.

So anyways, there's quite a few spinners in there, and sinkers, and hooks, and two rapala lures (i hear they're really good, these ones have one hook in the middle and one at the rear), and bobbers, and an actual stringer (lately I was just using fish line as a stringer for the panfish).

I think I'm good with knowledge for the panfish, I know one spot that seems pretty good, and I just use a 2-8 hook with a half of a nightcrawler, along with a bobber about 8 inches from the hook. But I have no idea what to do for other fish. My friend told me there's bass, walleye, carp, and panfish in the water that he took me to, which is the Wisconsin River, and is only like 15 minutes away from here.

Lures? Spinners? What do each one do/catch, tips, techniques, spots to use them? Bobbers? Sinkers?

And then there's water near my new house, the eau claire river, that I see a couple of fishers go to sometimes. I saw a couple of 5th graders who had a bass and a pike in their backpack, and they were using lures. They were EXTREMELY helpful, but I still don't know too much of fishing freshwater.

I got some spending money, and I can head over to Gander Mountain to buy some more lures, if I should. Give me name brands and what they catch, and I'll see if I can get them.

Sorry for such a long post..This was more of a rambling post, I guess. I just have so much to say! And I want to learn so much more! Thanks, and have a great future fishing.
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[albinotrout]

Lots of info needed there. Well to start out the spoons and spinners are good for most fish. I have caught bass, trout, catfish, roundtail chub on spoons. Spinners I have caught trout and green sunfish with. The rapalas work well gor all species as well.

Without knowing your area it is difficult to be able to suggest what you actually need. Visit your local bait and tackle shope whether it is the mega stores like gander mountain and cabelas or a small mom and pop shop, either way they can get you started with different baits and how they work and how to fish them.

Sounds like you are off to a great start![cool]
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[TRUTHFUL_LIES]

yeah, i got a couple of spoons too. The area i live in is central wisconsin, i go to the wisconsin river mostly, there's some dams i visit too.

Thanks for the info so far!

Oh, and i bought this 20 dollar zebco pole-and-reel, its giving me nothing but problems.. What pole/reel do you recommend thats under 50 dollars for the combo that i could use for panfish and other medium sized fish? [reply][/reply]
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[albinotrout]

I would recommend an medium light to light spinning rod and reel. Graphite of course. I have gotten some from cabelas in the past for decent prices. Such as an im6 or im7 type rod. These will handle most fish with ease.
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[davetclown]

strip the line out of that reel, it is garbage.

guess I will be saying this for ever, it is my number one tip. Factory shipped rod and reel combos come loaded with garbage line. 100% of the time.

put on some nice Silver Thread AN40. this will get rid of most of your problems.

unfortunatly you picked up a plastic reel, zebco reels are pretty good untill thay started making them out of plastic. Look around for a zebco 202 or 33 clasic, even 404 or 808's are good. Look at garage sales, the old ones are the better ones, if they havent rusted out they live for ever... and the parts are pretty much interchangable.

the rino combo is not a bad combo, rino rod glow tip and rino closed face spinning reels. "low finance" they are equivilant to what the old zebco's used to be for the money.

[TRUTHFUL_LIES]

Thanks much, but I believe my zebco's reel is NOT made of plastic. It's got a metal top, metal bottom, and plastic middle (holds the line), so I dont know if thats what you consider the junk plastic reels. Maybe it is, I might be wrong.

So somehow I managed to work out the string and it's working well, so I guess I'll just use it until the strings busted again, and then I'll replace the string.

Anyways, I took one of the poles my step-dad recovered and went to the river thats behind my house. I used my rapala floating topwater lure, and 5 minutes after casting/reeling, I get a bite. I felt so proud. I had no idea what fish it was, I had to send a picture of it to that friend of mine (haha..I know. Epic fail. I'll learn..), and he told me it was a Rock Bass, and at the size it was (it's the length of my hand, my hands really long), it was a good keeper for eating. I heard of how good they taste. So I put it on the stringer and keep fishing. Then, the string starts knotting up on the pole I was using (well, it hadn't been used in 10 years!) and I called it quits for the day.

As I'm re-examining my fish I caught, I find a nasty little bugger "sticking out" of the fish's tail. I yank it out, and started thinking *that doesn't look right..a parasite, sticking out of the fish. I shouldn't eat it* and threw it back in after removing the worm. Turns out, it was just a little bloodsucker that are common in that water channel. Boy, was I beating myself up for that one.. At least the fish was still very much alive after the while I had him out of water/on the stringer. I'll probably catch him again.

Well I'll restring the two poles sometime this week and go for another try.
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[TRUTHFUL_LIES]

so that zebco snapped and i ended up getting a better pole and reel combo that had no line on. I bought some 10 pound line, and i used a uni knot, and made the spool of line come off counter clockwise, and tried my best to keep the line tight, but the line still twisted every now and then and when i test-casted it, it didnt go very far and when i reeled it in, the line came off that little bar thats on open faced reels. So i took all of the line back off. Anyone got any tips/quality videos on how to spool line on an open face? Please respond asap.
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[TRUTHFUL_LIES]

So I purchase some new line, and I put the spool label up so that the string is coming off counter-clockwise, while the reel is turning clockwise. I keep tension on the line.

So guess ****ing what, after 4 times of trying, it still somehow tangles up and screws up. I'm done. I spent 10 dollars and basically just wasted it.

Now I have no more money to purchase line, and so that means no fishing for weeks.

I need someone to actually respond to this with a video guide that has EVERY SINGLE STEP BY ****ING STEP because all these videos I'm seeing is not the whole thing.

Sorry, I'm seriously ****ed and am extremely pissy right now.

P.S. Why is this website so slow with responses? I mean no offense users, but I thought this was a heavily populated site. Every thread I see only gets like one response every 3 days.

EDIT: I would like to apologize for the aggressiveness of this post. I was extremely frustrated and have cooled down now. I just dont know how im going to be able to put the line on my pole. I just love fishing and an obstacle like this that is usually simple for everyone else and somehow isnt for me is extremely frustrating. I just want to get back out there and fish. Oh, and the pole is medium with an open face reel. The line is 10lb line.

Thanks!
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[gdn443]

All you had to do was google How to put on fishing line. [url "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDYquiQKa1A"]www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDYquiQKa1A[/url] Another trick is to put a piece of bandaid to the reel seat before putting on line.
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[TRUTHFUL_LIES]

trust me, i use google very often and i had clicked about 20+ google search links to see if i was doing something wrong.
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[TRUTHFUL_LIES]

Ah, what a relief. I FINALLY found out what the problem was! [cool]

I took a look at the reel, and in small letters it said "lbs/yards: 8/290". So I definitely didn't have too much line on, because the spool has 330 yds of line on it, and I only used 100 or so yards every time I attempted to put on the line. So..That comes to the lb test line. I was using 10!

Well, at least I don't have to beat myself up for not being able to do something that everyone says is easy. I mean, the poster who last responded to me posted like I was an idiot, and that I should use google. Which I understand. It must be extremely easy to do, I just didn't have the right line on.

Well, thanks guys for posting, guess this whole topic was a jumbled mess. I might have to make smaller, multiple topics, that make more sense, to get everything answered.

Happy fishing! I know I will [] [fishin]
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[davetclown]

the old zebco 202 I started out with some 40+ years ago, I was able to put 70 pound test line on it. "it is only rated for 8 pound, "Ya, I was a dumb kid but willing to try anything."

I even pulled in a 50 inch stergeon with it from out on the st clair river.

The line held up, I had no problems with twisting, I was taught by my dad from the vary beginning to always use swivel snaps.

My zebco combo also had a solid fiberglass rod. Tough as nails.

I had battled many a bruit with that rig for nearly 10 years. I finaly broke the rod battling a 28 inch Large mouth bass in a privet pond. I had fought with that fish off and on for many a summer in my youth, every time I had been bested by him. He always snapped my line. This was why I had gone with the 70 pound test in the first place. I realy wanted that catch.

the last time I fought him I tightened down the drag, and made him bend my pole over double. we stayed hooked up like that for what seemed a good half hour.

When finaly it snapped right at the metal cupling, and all the tork was now on the reel. That poor zebco screamed bloody murder as that bass stripped the 70lb line from its spool, Ping Ping Ping and the reel rang out till that bass made its way over to the brush pile where he had tangled many an angler for years on end.

I grabed a stick and rapped the line around the stick and preceeded to drag him in, I figured he was mine now. So I played tugawar holding constant preasure while walking backwards. The line sang in the wind like some eiry harp for several minuts, I could see the bass on top the water and the line just a half loop over the willow limb.

Push come to shove, I figured it is now just a waiting game, that bass was going to give up eventualy and alow himself to flop over the limb. It was then my poor under rated swivle snap bent open and the line flung back at me like a rubber band and the swivel hit my hand.

so now I stood there dumb founded, a broken rod, a stripped reel a stung hand and a stupified look on my face as I looked at that bass swiming around the limb with my black jitter bug still in his mouth.

I sat down there next to shore contemplating what had just happened staring at that bass as he slowly slipped back in to the deap. 20 minutes when by and I had not moved from my spot, my fishing buds said they had a spare rod at the house I could use, but I sat there staring in to the pond...

conciderable more time had passed tho I had no idea of how much because I had lost track of every thing as I stared in to the pond. Then from out of the deep to 3 feet in the air that bass jumped, flinging his head back and forth dislodging my bug from his mouth to send it flying twards me landing at the waters edge in front of my feet.

Landing back in the water he swam twards me, stopped and turned sidways to me and stood there. A good cople minutes went by as I looked back and forth from my bug to that Bass before I busted out laughing.

many a year had he taken lures from me. But this was the first time he ever gave one back, Many a year had I tried to catch him to put on my dinner plate. I must have loggen a good couple thousand hours over the years chacin after him.

I had given him all I had, Given him my best shot, I finaly realized that some fish are just not ment to be caught.

As he staried at me I got up and picked up my bug from the waters edge, and I said to him between chuckles, "You Win" then he turn his tail twards me and with a cople slow paddles of his tail he was back in to the deep. I never tried to catch him again after that. He had earned my respect and admiration.

You are probably wondering how I knew his size seeing as to how I never managed to land him. It was two years later when we ended up with a sivear winter freeze, Ice thickness reached 5 feet around us, in in shallow small ponds that is devistating for fish. I walked back to that pond to see if I could see him swiming in the pond, I was not sure if he had managed to survive. I walked around the pond looking in. Then I spotted him, laying on shore off the waters edge, he must had froze in the ice and washed up floating over the edge just as the snow and ice melted and the ground started excepting the melt off.

I pulled out my tape and measured him just so I would know how big he was. At the time of my finding him on shore, he was 30 inches in lenth and 36 in girth. I figured he must have grown a couple inches since I last fought with him, that is why I gave a measurment of 28 inches.

I thought about picking him up and bringing him back home with me, I thought about all the fish tails I could spin, Then I decided that the truth was a big enuff story. So I left him there on shore and told the story of how I found him. Sure enough some one went back there and picked him up. Any tails of how any one caught him was forfitured because I had already told of his dimise.

There is a moral to this story,

Never put line on your rod and reel combo that it is not rated for.

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[Tarpon4me]

The only exception to the reel's recommended line pound test is if you are using braid. The pound test doesn't necessarily refer to the max test, but more so the max diameter of mono it excepts. The primary reason for this rating is based on the diameter of the spool, and the effects of mono line versus the OD of the spool. Memory plays a major role when it comes to mono lines and reels, and the heavier pound test line, the more memory it has.

In todays market, many of the higher-end, braid ready reels come with two seperate line recommendations; one for mono, and one for braid.

I'm not sure how braid would work on a spincasting reel like a zebco, but the info I provided above is more geared towards spinning and baitcast reels, not spincasting reels.

I've always found that you really get your money's worth with fishing equipment, especially rods and reels. I ceased to purchase fishing items from walmart years ago because thier items are of a lesser quality in many cases, than that of a more reputable dealer. I remember us debating about that years ago on this website, and I called the manufacturers to validate it; and it's true. More recently, I checked on a rifle about 3 years ago, that walmart had very, very cheap; compared to other retailers. It was a Weatherby Vanguard, and it was around 100 bucks cheaper than everywhere else. I called Weatherby, and the response was they use cheaper components(plastic where maybe it is steel on the normal version) where possible, to provide Walmart a better price on the product, so they can sell it cheaper. That was very discouraging, and further turned me away from their company in that regard.

You get what you pay for, most certainly. I'd rather save up for two months and buy a high quality outfit, than skimp and go with a walmart special. For the average occasional angler, the cheapo's might be fine. But if you're going to be hitting the water hard, quality gear is an investment. [cool]
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[davetclown]

you get what you pay for is the golden rule with out a doubt..

but there is the golden suckers... "name brand high priced junk"

aka martha stewart brand or opera brands... I picked up a packet of seeds from the martha stewart line, the packet was a higher price than top of the line seed brands, the packet had one quarter of the seed count of the major top of the line brand, and the seeds were smaller and mishaped and in some cases broken.

While I will rant and rave about the quality of Zebco, not all zebco's are made in the same shop, or same contry from year to year.

some of the barby combos made by shakespere are great while their look a like conter parts I woulnt use to wip a dead horsefly.

Our market is flooded with look a likes counterfits at some times seems like bargan prices or exagerated high prices as in the case of the marth and opera and many other seleb brands.

so while you get what you pay for is the golden rule, there is an asteric, *** buyer be ware.

[Tarpon4me]

Very true. It's hard to tell sometimes what is the real deal, and what has been built "down" to satisfy a major retailers requests. That's why I hesitate to buy used gear, unless I know who it's coming from.

More importantly, I usually spend my money at places like Basspro, Cabelas, and especially the local bait and tackle stores. (I SUPPORT MY LOCAL SMALL BUSINESSES!) I know they carry only top notch gear, and i'm confident when I get on the water. []

You made a good point though, Dave. Depending on where a certain piece is manufactured, can especially effect the quality.
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