More Peacock

[Baitfish]

Didn't have much time to fish last Sunday but an hour and 6 shiners landed these guys.




Had some more time this afternoon and took a couple dozen shiners to my favorite spot. Caught the first five in 20 minutes and the last four over two hours.









Stella strikes again!

[sepaik]

Nice Peas!!! How much for that Stella?????

[Baitfish]

Reel, taxes and a spool of 20#Cortland = $815. It's the 5000SW and I got it at Capt. Harry's. BTW...I repeat your signature frequently.

[sepaik]

Reel, taxes and a spool of 20#Cortland = $815. It's the 5000SW and I got it at Capt. Harry's. BTW...I repeat your signature frequently.

Whoa that's a lot of reelfor the Peacocks. Must be nice!

[Bionic]

is that a daiwa t rod you have it on? if so how do you like it?

[Baitfish]

Whoa that's a lot of reelfor the Peacocks. Must be nice!

I bought it for saltwater fishing, but that has been abysmally slow lately. The peacocks keep me from getting bored. The drag is so smooth and has such a wide adjustment that it isn't onerkill even for the smaller ones.

[Baitfish]

is that a daiwa t rod you have it on? if so how do you like it?

It is indeed a Team Daiwa 6'6" medium. I compared it to a similar St. Croix and the actions felt identical. The SC had a foregrip that I just didn't like and it was almost twice as much as the Diawa.

The Daiwa handles great. It is easily the lightest rod I have ever owned. The fast action makes accurate casting easy. The peacocks are the largest fish I've caught on the rig since I bought it, so it hasn't been put to a real test yet. I'm thinking about Bill Baggs tomorrow morning to try and remedy that. For $80 at BPS, I think it would be harder to find better for the money.

The only thing that I didn't like is that the eyelets are really small. This causes the albright knot to hit every eye on the way out and shorten your cast. I adjusted by shortening my leader so that the knot is always past the tip for the cast. This only had an effect on light lures. Anything with some weight to it and the knot bumping along didn't have that big of an effect.

[krash]

Nice reel and fish, but I just never really understood the need or challange using shiner to catch peacock bass..
1 Rapala Xrap, in gold/black or silver/black is good for a hundred or so peacock bass that size and no bucket needed.

[sepaik]

Nice reel and fish, but I just never really understood the need or challange using shiner to catch peacock bass..
1 Rapala Xrap, in gold/black or silver/black is good for a hundred or so peacock bass that size and no bucket needed.

[Bionic]

is that a daiwa t rod you have it on? if so how do you like it?

It is indeed a Team Daiwa 6'6" medium. I compared it to a similar St. Croix and the actions felt identical. The SC had a foregrip that I just didn't like and it was almost twice as much as the Diawa.

The Daiwa handles great. It is easily the lightest rod I have ever owned. The fast action makes accurate casting easy. The peacocks are the largest fish I've caught on the rig since I bought it, so it hasn't been put to a real test yet. I'm thinking about Bill Baggs tomorrow morning to try and remedy that. For $80 at BPS, I think it would be harder to find better for the money.

The only thing that I didn't like is that the eyelets are really small. This causes the albright knot to hit every eye on the way out and shorten your cast. I adjusted by shortening my leader so that the knot is always past the tip for the cast. This only had an effect on light lures. Anything with some weight to it and the knot bumping along didn't have that big of an effect.

It is a great rod for the money. We use the 7ft spinning for inshore and it has plenty of backbone. I have been on their guide program since 1999 and they have been an awesome company to deal with. They have a lot of nice stuff out this year. The ballistic line of reels are awesome. I have just started using the ballistic 3000 on a fuego 7ft rod and man it's hard to put down.

P.S. I see quit few rods going to smaller eyes, some are using what they call mircos...

[Miami_Chris]

Nice reel and fish, but I just never really understood the need or challange using shiner to catch peacock bass..
1 Rapala Xrap, in gold/black or silver/black is good for a hundred or so peacock bass that size and no bucket needed.

i get what your saying, but when you spend all that money on a set up, and you want to catch a fish on it, shiners are pretty much a guarantee.

good job on the peacocks , i love catching them. ive caught a couple this past week in the lake behind my house, i use a gold/black twitch n rap, its killer, especially during sunset

[Baitfish]

Nice reel and fish, but I just never really understood the need or challange using shiner to catch peacock bass..
1 Rapala Xrap, in gold/black or silver/black is good for a hundred or so peacock bass that size and no bucket needed.

Well... there's a couple of reasons.

First, as Miami Chris points out, shiners are a "can't miss" option. The vast majority of fishing I do is saltwater and that has been about as dead as yesterday's bait so I turned to the canals to get a quick fix and a workout on the new rig.
Second, the new school of thought on artificials and mortality is that the trebles on an artificial reduces the chance of a sucessful release. I have plenty of crankbaits that would probably work, but I don't feel like rerigging with single hooks. I've read several articles by guides advocating this and I agree with them. Using plugs in saltwater, I've caught fish in the back, the gills, the eyes and when they gulp down two or more trebles on a lure, the damage is undeniable. Over the last three weekends, I went out with shiners and a 2/0 Owner bait hook through the lip. I caught 19 peacocks and all but one were hooked in the corner of the mouth. Without the need for pliers, they were unhooked, photographed and back in the water in under a minute.
I do use aritificials for freshwater. My two biggest peacocks ever were caught back to back on an artificial rig. It was a truly ugly lime green, nylon skirted jig with a piece of bright green worm on the back. It took about ten casts per fish, but that nasty green jig really seemed to piss-em-off.
I do agree, it is more challenging and satisfying to fool a fish into hitting a chunk of plastic than to simply booby-trap his dinner, but sometimes plastic just ain't on the menu.

[Baitfish]

P.S. I see quit few rods going to smaller eyes, some are using what they call mircos...

I've only had the rod a few weeks, but I already see one big advantage to the micro eyelets. As I upgrade my rods, I'm going to one piece rods. I like the action better, but the problem is hauling them around in my Tacoma. The small eyes don't hang up on "stuff" as much and they do not stress the mountings when they do. I can't tell you how many Ugly Stiks bit the dust due to busted eyelets.
I took the rig out to Bill Baggs today and was casting a large metal Gotcha. The wind was light and perpendicular to the cast and I'm pretty sure I was getting close to 100 yards. I was getting way more than that at Dania two weeks ago with a Yo-Zuri, but the wind was ripping straight out of the north and you're 20 feet over the water so that really dosen't count. You could practically cast to Hollywood the way it was blowing.

[oldschoolirish91]

Nice fish. And the issue of mortality and switching from treble to single hooks on lures gives me something to think about that hadn't occurred to me. Thanks

[Baitfish]

I decided to give the theory a rigorous testing. I bought an X-Rap and swapped the trebels for two #2 Owner bait hooks. Other than the approximate weight being close to the trebles there was no science in the selection. I'll test it in the same area I was catching the peacocks and keep track of the srike vs. hookup ratio. When I get any info, I'll post it here.

And...

Welcome to the forum Oldschoolirish

[Albacized]

The smaller guides on this new craze of spinning rods are called 'lowriders'...supposedly the fact that the spiral pattern of the line being drastically cut down to a smaller area improves distance...however, I've not tried one of those and the rods I have (with the old standby 'larger' spinning guides) work just fine for me:-)