Garden shop

It was a sunny day today, and I ran 20km at a racing pace in the morning. It was a good workout. In the afternoon, my wife, who loves gardening, took me to a garden shop, though, to be truthful, I'm not so interested in terrestrial plants. While she's browsing through the shop, I enjoyed taking pictures there. A big surprise I found was that a small cute creature (I often call it a 'bait' when I fish) lived in a birdhouse and looked over here. Do you see it in the pictures below?

 

Put my room straight

In the long night of an autumn day, I started to put my room straight, but it was compounded. I'm afraid I can't finish it, as it is so full of fishing tackle.
 

I have to give the ABU Toby bags an airing. I find I also have green and navy ones.

  

I displayed my ABU Ambassadeur 5000C's in chronological order. It is said that the first model was made in circa 1967, and I have at least one in each production year of 1967-1978, and reproduction of 1984. This reel was also manufactured in 1979-1981, but I have not collected them. 

I also organized fishing tackle collection that I named 'All That Takeshi Kaiko (a prominent novelist, essayist, documentary writer, and fisher)'. 

I tried to do out my Chugger collection, but I gave it up. I have to many to handle. Among my Chugger Spooks, there are some standard colors that you may overlook, if you don't pay much attentions to subtle differences. These colors below can be much more difficult to get than you expect.
   

RH (w/ sprayed pupils and black eye-shadows around eyes, clear belly)

XRW (w/ sprayed pupils)

XRS (w/ sprayed pupils and silver scale on the back)

BF (Yellow-eyed one and one w/ yellow eye-shadows)

A bad day of fishing is...

I had a special leave and went fishing in a large pond today. It broke gray, as the dull sky was gorged with deep clouds. I caught many bass, but all were small. Some hit my lures with awesome blow-ups, and I enjoyed burning them into my memory. I expected a big fish, but I never complain. As you often say, "A bad day of fishing is still better than a good day at work."

  
I've recently got a few more old Heddon Wounded Spooks, and last night I wondered which one I should put into my fishing tackle box next. I finally picked up a BF (bullfrog) one, and I cast it very often today. It worked fine, and now it has a lot of teeth marks on the body.

Today's tackle: ABU Ambassdeur 5500C (black), Fenwick Boron-X X-953 M (customed), Stren Low-Vis Green 14lb, Heddon Zara Spook, Chugger Spook, Wounded Spook, Meadow Mouse, etc.

BF=16/29

Saltwater fishing

Whitefin trevally

Yellowback seabream

Crimson seabream

Red seabream

Yellowbarred red rockfish

Godzilla fish  Izu scorpionfish

and Japanese horse mackerel

It was a calm sunny day, and we enjoyed a lot on a small boat in the Sea of Japan. I caught plenty of different species, and am looking forward to cooking them. 

photo: E-PM2 + Quarry Optics MC Auto F2.8 28mm MACRO

Little or Big?

Little George

 Little George

Big George?

Yes, Big George. 

Very similar to Little George but the tail spinner is tandem.

I did know of another Mann's lure named "Big George", but it is a flat tear-drop shaped plastic lure with a spinner on the tail. I guess Mann's first named this tandem-spin version of Little George as Big George, but they remodeled it to a plastic one.

Fluorescent colors

I believe fluorescent colors works fine in muddy waters, especially in fall season when water level often changes due to typhoons and/or heavy rain. One of my favorites is Heddon's YSL color (Yellow Snake Line, also known as YFSL). I've caught a lot of bass with YSL lures, like this one in 2013.

One of mine is NMIB and the box says 9540 RESEARCH, which means it was sold for market research before they decided to sell the color in full swing. I'm afraid the color didn't become extremely popular among fishers at the time, as Heddon didn't bring out so many of 9540's in this color.

I am thinking this color may have derived from other manufacturers such Whopper Stopper, Bomber, or Fred Arbogast. You may find much more of similarly-designed lures like Hellbender, Crapshooter, or others.

I changed lines of my reels and am looking forward to going out for fishing with them, but we'll have a big typhoon soon. I'm hoping it will not bring tough times to Japan any more.

What's this?

Can you guess what this is?

It is a case in which some baby powder is put in advance. After I use rubber lures and/or skirted lures for fishing, I put them in this case as soon as I'm back. Then, I cover it tight with the top, and shake it several times. This way, rubber lures and skirts are hard to be deteriorated so that you can use them for long.

Before the typhoon comes

Another typhoon (#18) is approaching, and it was (and is) very windy today. 
I wanted to go fishing early in the morning before it got stormy, but I could not get up early. While I was doing some chores in the morning, I checked weather forecasts so many times and hoped to go out for short-time fishing in the afternoon. I finished lunch a little earlier than usual, and decided to go to a small farm pond near my place.

I expected the stormy weather would activate big bass, so I chose a heavier rod, which I usually use in big lakes. However, big bass were still slow, and only small ones were bouncily reacted to my lures. They relentlessly chased my lures, and powerfully blew up them, in spite of being hooked or not. 

Considering it was a daytime fishing on Sunday, it was not so bad.

Today's tackle: ABU Ambassdeur 5500C (black), Fenwick Boron-X X-953 M (customed), Stren Low-Vis Green 14lb, Heddon Zara Spook, Chugger Spook, Hedd Hunter Minnow (w/ prop), Brush Popper, Moss Boss (w/ buzz), etc. 

BF=13/25