Finesse-Fishing.com has closed and has nothing left to sell, other than a few used books. I have decided to leave the website up as a resource for people interested in fishing with light rods, light lines and light lures - true finesse fishing.

Part Two of Southern Appalachians

by JJ
(Upstate SC)

The rod is the Tenryu RZI50UL-4. I absolutely love this rod. The five foot length is a great middle of the road size to handle the larger open pools, but not be too cumbersome when things get real tight. I tend to find both scenarios on a lot of my outings. The fact that it’s a four piece and fits in my smallest pack means it will be with me on every journey from now on. Even when I add the 3’9” Tenryu that is on my short list, this rod will ride along.

The reel is just a place holder until I can convince my wife that I “need” the Shimano Soare to make the set complete.

I made the mistake on this trip of leaving my spoons at home in favor of testing some homemade spinners I have been making lately. I wanted to give them an honest test, so I thought I would remove all temptation in case things went poorly. As I stated earlier, I did catch fish, but wasn’t satisfied with the overall activity and response from the fish.

Since I have started spin fishing again, one of the things I am getting used to is at least coaxing the largest fish in the pool/run out for a glimpse. I may not catch it every time, but with the ability to work something at different depths I now expect to at least see the big one.

It just wasn’t happening today. There of course are other factors at play, it’s just always easier to blame the lure. Besides, the very next day I got some abbreviated time at a couple of different streams to do some comparative testing and the response to spoons was consistently better. As in one case where I threw 4 different spinners thru a run without as much as a flash or bump, and on literally the first cast with a 2.2 gram Daiwa Presso Adam in Area Mocha it got nailed. It was a downstream and across drift as I had started with the previous 4 times.