Let me get the sweet Super Strike winner announced first. The lucky dude is Chuck Duval. Chuck ,please send me your shipping address. Congratulations.
I have to tell you, I though this winter is going to be “down time” but it has been anything but. With the re launching of SJ in the new format, bringing new guys on like Dave Anderson and John Skinner and life?…oh my God it has been crazy between kids concerts, sat prep, college visit planning. I was looking forward to a quick trip to Florida to take care of some personal stuff but of course, as soon as I landed, the weather turned to shit and I thought I was going to freeze to death. Never fails..
I did have very limited time to spend there to get all the stuff I planned done. And in that very short window I found out two things. After two months of three-times-a-week elbow therapy it only took 5 casts to scream in pain, worst than before starting the therapy.
And two, Crazy Alberto might be actually crazier than you think. Or I think. Or we all think. Who am I kidding, he is insane. And although I am much younger than him there is no way I could keep up with him even if I had an elbow that was pain free.
Anyway, I got some video to show you when I get to editing room next week. Ok, when I turn my chair towards my Mac. But you knew there was no editing “room”. For now I will only tell you this. I am a Super Strike Darter fan. I won’t be lying if I told you that if I owned 300 darters and 299 are by Super Strike. I used to own wood darters by other makers but found myself using them less and less so I unloaded them
Tactical Angler Darters? I knew guys who have good success with them but honestly I never gave them a fair shake. They are fairly new and my elbow has been bad for so long, even the thought of casting a 3 ounce anything makes me shudder.
So on this night, somewhere in the fishiest state of USA I grabbed a camera while Crazy Al fished and fished and fished..started at 8 PM and I found him at 7 AM after I took a nap in truck still casting. He is certifiably insane, crazy is just too mild of a term. But I did managed to get few shots with camera and video. There were BIG REDFISH . Much bigger than I thought existed to be honest and there were so many. To see two of them on consecutive casts eat a big Tactical Anglers Darter was an eye-opening experience. I never though they eat plugs like that and certainly not an 7 inch one!
Here is the shot of Al few seconds after he got the fish out of the rocks. The most disturbing thing to me is showing some friends this picture and them asking “he did not catch it on that plug, did he?”. Of course he did and I was glad to be manning the camera. Wait till you see the video. And there were big snook there, holy crap were they big. They could eat ones I caught over the years. My props to the Crazy One who seems to be as aware of where the big fish are in Florida as he was in New York. More on this later in a week…
AWESOME Pic and I must say use Gibbs darters but will have to branch out and give the super strike and tactical anglers a try. can’t wait for the video
↓NICE fish AL
↓A great way to start this cold Monday morning! Keep up the good work and will be praying for a fast elbow recovery.
↓I do appreciate the durability of his two darter profiles as they compliment SS’s Zig Zag nicely…plus right out the gate you get the Wolverine/VMC/rattle combo which seems to be a proven combo for success for me.
They swim different then other darters and cover the column and dig differently in current too which is another unique attribute I enjoy about them. Not all darters are created equally and I have had several well known wood darters absolutely shite themselves on a retrieve. I was devastated as I didn’t test them in daylight before placing in my surf bag and they turned over like a SeaWorld dolphin exhibit.
Side note I had an internal impingement on my right shoulder blade which I went to therapy for a year for. I didn’t really see much improvement and if I push it my arm hurts like hell but after learning / working very hard on properly loading my Legend and letting the rod do its job as a lever I can at least mimimize getting too much pain. Something I’ll have to live with but there are worse things to have to deal with. Just not going to be tossing GRS trollers with a 4-8oz rod in a noreaster for a tide anytime soon.
↓SWEET……..
↓Unreal, that would have been the last plug I’d reach for to get a red. Great job.
↓Hope the rehab goes better for you… the length of recovery time is worse than any other part of injury.
Looking forward to the vid with Alberto! I just got an android tablet and the new format looks great on here… The pic above is amazing!
↓Good luck with the elbow pain. looking forward to the video.
↓nice !was that east coast or west coast of fla?
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