Clay (US)

 So, I'm currently in Erie, PA, on business. Didn't bring any fishing gear, because I figured I would be working overtime every evening, and therefore not fishing. However, I was somewhat mistaken... To the tune of $225 dollars, all told! I bought myself an ultralight graphite rod and a Shimano sonora 750 with 6 lb test, a lot of poor boys gobies, some gamakastu hooks, and a half pound of split shot :D

Guess what I caught? ;-)

The first smallmouth I caught drop-shotting wasn't a big big guy, but since then I've perfected my technique quite well. Caught smallies, largemouth, rock bass, and even a sheephead drop shotting the plastic devils.

Today was the best though. Over my lunch break, since we don't have as much work to do, and my supervisor is doing employee training, I decided to actually take my entire lunch hour as a break. I took my lunch to the lake, and threw a few casts with the pink and blue goby. I tell ya, I couldn't buy a bite for the longest time, and got quite cold (the weather went to hell up here). Then, he hit. Finally :) 5 minutes before the (scheduled) end of my lunch break, I set the hook in a monster. It took 5 minutes of battling just to get him to the surface.... Biggest smallie I had ever seen at the time, and the smaller one I had seen before had broken off when I tried to lift him to the top of the dock. And, wouldn't ya know, my spiffy new net was about 1 foot too short. Drat.

So there I went down the pier, taking my newfound smallmouth buddy for a walk! I'm sure he found it quite dignified, as did I, and the few other anglers who laughed as they got out of my way so I could continue my fish-on-parade routine. I finally got him to the low section, and got a tape measure on him... 19" all told. My biggest ever by far, and on an ultralight! What a blast.

I might end up fishing this rod a lot more than my other, more expensive and higher quality bass rod. It just makes them all so dang fun!

Oh, and drop shotting is absolutely murderous if you put in the time to figure it out. At first it's boring, but before long it's like shooting fish in a barrel :-D and it seems to select big fish for you!