Few of My Favorite Things # 1 Otter Tails

I guess this would be  the perfect time of the year to list a few of my favorite things. It is remarkable that every video we put out and even though we take pains not go into specifics of gear that we might be holding in the video(for crying out loud they are just props most of the time, stuff you need to hold to make point)  we get  “what rod are you using where can I buy that’?

So if time and life allows I will try to do a list of my few favorite things this holiday season.

The first one and probably the strangest want to Most of you probably think that I am going to sing praises to some thousand dollar reel or newest nanotechnology rod,  but this is about as low-tech as you can get. And most of the time simplicity is the beauty of things.

When I heard that uncle Josh is discontinuing pork rinds I swear to God I almost had a mini stroke.

Because of my elbow injury I’ve fished  bucktails as much as probably any of you and probably more than many of you combined. Then my elbow got better but I realized that bucktails are so damn productive that I just kept on using them. And you know what, the more I used them, the better I got. The better I got the more I used them. Kind of a catch 22.

But to me the pork rind is as important as the bucktail itself. In general I used to striper split tails and stripers strips so when I heard that Uncle Josh will discontinue making all pork rinds, it was a big deal.

Big deal enough for me to run to Kmart after work in Penn station and buy every damned jar they had. With about 12 jars I figured I was good for a while.

He is the funny thing….. I fished all year and I still have 11 1/2 jars !!!

I understand many of you feel that government regulations are the way to get things done or at least to correct things that are ” wrong” or “missing” in our society. But the way our system is designed , private businesses will step in and fill any gaps where there is more demand that supply. As soon as Uncle Josh announced that they were discontinuing pork rind I am sure the light bulbs went off in people’s head.

And now in a very short time we have bunch of products that  are as good if not better than Uncle Josh was. I am primarily talking about Otter Tails strips and Fat Cow strips, two products that are on the market that might be actually a better product than the one they replaced.

I used them extensively, especially in the fall and I have to say I was damn impressed. What is worse than opening your surf bag and finding a shriveled piece of bacon on your hook that you forgot to remove two night ago? Not many things . Maybe finding a live eel that you “lost’ three days ago on 95 degree august night…Seeing your shriveled up pork rind is a plain torture… and removing it is not that easy either.

I am a little more familiar with Otter Tails  (http://otterlures.com/)so  that is the brand I am primarily going to be referring to. I can’t believe I’m saying this but I think these things are better than pork rind. The only thing that I actually miss is the thickness of the pork, but everything else it’s as good or even better some cases. How can you not love the product that holds a scent, that is very hardy,  almost indestructible yet you never have to worry about putting them back in the jar. You impale them on your bucktail and you can leave them forever and they will never dry out. I will be the first to admit that I have not fed them to as many bluefish as I would liked but this fall did not have a lot of blues until very late in the season. I do know that I landed over a hundred bass on the single Otter Tail trailer and it looked great. What I also liked about them is that they are made in bunch of different configurations so if you want to split tail or if you are fan of using curly tails or you just want a long striper strip, they make it and in different lengths too.  I have a video I am hoping to complete to show the action underwater but  low water clarity as usual is dreck where I fish. So there is one of my favorite things, nothing crazy expensive but definitely something that I am glad is around to replace the pork without significant or actually any loss of quality, underwater action or fish catching ability.