How It Started
The first fish I ever caught was a bluegill the size of my hand, off a dock about ten minutes from my house. It wasn't impressive. I haven't stopped thinking about it since.
After that I was hooked. Properly hooked. My friends and I started going out whenever we could: after school, on weekends, that golden hour before dinner when the bass actually bite. We fish freshwater, mostly ponds and lakes around New Jersey. Bluegill, crappie, the occasional largemouth that makes the whole week.
What the bluegill didn't warn me about: I'm a gear head. I love the equipment as much as the fishing. I'll spend an evening reading about drag systems and line types and rod actions when I could just, you know, be doing homework. Figuring out why one reel feels smoother than another, or why a certain lure works in stained water, that part is genuinely fun to me.
So I started keeping notes. What worked, what didn't, what was worth the money and what wasn't. My friends kept asking me "what should I buy?", so instead of texting the same answers over and over, I started writing them down properly. That pile of notes slowly turned into this website.
"I love the gear almost as much as the fish. This site is just me being honest about which of it is actually worth buying."
