I've always been very lukewarm on fishing, which kinda sucks since where I live is teeming with fish and kinda short on big bucks. Actually turned down an offshore trip with a buddy last weekend.
I told myself this year I was going to get into it. Kinda lame to live on the river and not fish, right? So I started thinking about how to make it work for me.
For whatever reason, I can sit all day in a deer stand and not get bored, but I have about a 15 minute attention span on the water. I like to bream fish because the action is usually pretty hot. Set lines seemed like a good way to get some exercise, and ensure good action when I was out. Lot of work involved, and it's really been reminding me of the beginning of my saddle hunting career. Building and running a good trotline quickly and safely by yourself requires lots of planning, for me anyway.
I love the excitement of not knowing what's on the line. I run 50 to 100 hooks, so there's going to be SOMETHING, but what? I pulled up a softshell turtle about as big as my truck tire a few weeks ago. Gators, turtles, choupique, gar, big cats, or maybe just 40 or so little ones...who knows?
But, I didn't count on trotlines leading to me buying r&r tackle. That wasn't part of the plan. But before you go through the work of setting and running a 300ft long string of hooks, you wanna see what's there, ya know? So it comes the rod to poke around a few hours. Maybe set one line, scout a new spot for a few hours, and go back to check the first one. And if you want cut bluegill fr bait, better bring the cricket cage and ultralight! I've spent more time with a pole in my hand for the past few weeks than I have for probably the prior 10 years.
I guess what I'm saying is for me the fun is about tied (probably slight advantage for set lines in my case), but it's lead me to a lot of "pole time" too.
Of course, I am a dirty crossbow hunter too. Bear that in mind.