Buy a house 5 minutes from the Canal, and ride your bike to and from
Sell off the expensive reels. Rehab the old Spinfishers and the original (single zero) SS, or that old Daiwa Silver or BG. If you're a conventional man, dig out the old Squidders, or the original all-black or P-series Newell, or the old red Ambassadeur, that've been gathering dust in the basement.
Plastic plugs--especially Superstrikes and vintage Bob Pond Atoms--still catch. So do Bombers and Redfins.
Jigs catch. But for the price of one "canal special" style jig, you can buy 4 plain leadheads and a 4 pack of Riptide Mullets at Wally World and have 4 productive lures for the price of one. At the end of the night, after you leave 4 jigs stuck to the bottom, you're only out the $5 for the 4 makeshift jigs rather than the $20 for 4 Canal specials.
Superglue works as well as Zap-a-Gap. All cyanoacrylic glues are water soluable no matter what they try to claim. All will eventually let go from the head of a soft plastic.
Expensive reel lubes like Rocket Fuel, Hot Sauce and the new Penn synthetic don't work any better than a $2 can of 3 in 1 oil from Bennys--and the 3 in 1 will stay in the bearings longer. Ron Arra won 4 US casting titles using 3 in 1.
Threaded Mode