If I had broken this lure rod it would have been my fault completely, only realised my error when I zoomed into a photo

I fished a brief session yesterday with a rather lovely 9’ 10-36g lure rod I have been trying out and which I believe hits the market sometime fairly soon. The fishing wasn’t remotely epic and I blame the shift to a NW direction for the slowness (no good for man nor beast), because the day before there were a few bass around compared to one tiny little thing yesterday - and the wind wasn’t blowing a frigging NW. Anyway, I digress……………

Because I had caught the best bass of the previous session at range on one of those little Seadra 3D Live Scale Baitfish casting jigs the day before - admittedly not a record breaking bass! - I naturally turned to the same lure yesterday when it looked like things might be rather quiet. I was sure I had the 30g version of the very long-casting Seadra 3D Live Scale Baitfish casting jig in my lure box, and I didn’t hold back at all with putting it out there as far as I could. Much like the day before when I had turned to exactly the same lure on the same lure rod. Goddamn these casting jigs fly, but then to be fair you’d expect most casting jigs to cast really well on the right setup.

This shot isn’t from yesterday, but it is of me casting the same 9’ 10-36g rod I am talking about in this blog post - this time with a 30g Surf Seeker

I like to think I can cast a lure okay, and when I need to really dial in the power I also like to think I can give whatever lure it is a pretty good thump. I know this particular 9’ 10-36g lure rod very well now and I wasn’t going to hold back at all when banging a 30g casting jig out there. Distance isn’t everything of course, but the better bass from the day before had picked the jig up on the drop at a fair old distance out. No bass picked the jig up yesterday I might add - screw you NW winds! - but it sure was getting out there okay.

The light was pretty flat yesterday so I shot a few basic photos of this particular casting jig on some bladderwrack before I started fishing (less reflections on the lure), and a while later I then got a bit cheeky with it and snagged the lure up good and proper. My braid (36lb Berkley Sick X8 in white, I treat it as a 25-30lb braid because the numbers on the spools are a bit all over the place) and fluorocarbon leader (20lb Sufix Advance, loving this stuff) were obviously connected by the only leader knot I use and have used for years now, the FG knot, and my lure clip was the excellent HTO Lure Clip. The lure and/or hooks were obviously jammed solid and when I pulled for a break it went where I would expect it to with this sort of braid, leader and FG knot combination - on the knot in the leader to the lure clip. Easy then to tie a new lure clip and carry on fishing.

What I didn’t realise until I was back home and keywording my photos was that I had been blasting the 40g version of the Seadra 3D Live Scale Baitfish casting jig at full power on this 9’ 10-36g lure rod. You would hope that a decent rod would not break when you overload it like that, but if the rod had broken I’d have had to own up and accept that it was completely my fault. I wouldn’t have known I had been overloading the rod if I hadn’t shot a few photos of the lure in question because I had gone and lost it and put something else on, but I wonder how often anglers do this without realising? I was properly whacking it yesterday and I had obviously also been whacking the same lure the day before without realising. Oops!

Going through some of my recent photos it has twigged my memory that as per above I wanted to play around with just the one single hook on one of these casting jigs. I had put a #2/0 Mustad Kaiju single hook on the bottom of a 30g Seadra 3D Live Scale Baitfish casting jig and without realising I must have also got a 40g version at the same time - busted for not being able to get just the one lure! - and put it in another lure box which I took with me yesterday. Some snag might now own that particular casting jig now, but from now on I will be taking greater care to put my glasses on and check the weight of the thing before launching into it at full power………………

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