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Courtland Babcock

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Gearing up for Sri Lanka
February 14, 2015, 06:28:31 AM
I know there are a few of these threads going around but hey, who doesn't like to look at tackle and talk techniques. We are fishing with Game Fish Asia for 6 days. The first fishing day will be Thursday, February 19th. I have a crew of 3 plus me. Two guys from Texas and one from New Jersey. Most of us have fished together and 2 of them are good friends of mine. Although separated by many miles on a daily basis, we love to get together and fish wherever we can. We have at one time or another fished Panama, South Carolina, Canada, Cape Cod, India and North Carolina together. It is this love of fishing that brings us to these magnificent places to share these special times. To me that is what it is all about. The fishing is fun and important to us but the camaraderie is what makes these times special. We all begin our respective journey's this Monday and get to Sri Lanka early Wednesday morning after 36 hours of travel through the Middle East.

We were scheduled to fish out of Trincomalee in the North East but some water issues have the crew moving the boat south and we are slated to fish out of Kirinda instead. I have started to prepare my gear and got my tackle, leaders and lures sorted yesterday. I am only fishing RealLife JigSkinz on my lures, a lot of which are custom lures as well. So a lot of prototypes in my bag and I am packing a bit more lures than I might normally. The real beauty of the skinz is the ability to change the pattern of a lure for $1-2 instead of $50-100 per lure. If fish don't eat fish I can always change my patterns or colors but I think I'll do OK.... My rod tube lure sleeve that I made should sort the weight out nicely and not cause much issue for the extra gear.

I always like to get some shirts made for the trips. It is nice to have a reminder. These are this years model.



I started with terminal gear, hooks, assist cord and sorted the junk out of my boxes. I am not going halfway around the world to throw some rusty hooks and terminal gear out there...




Got everything into a HPA bag



Jigs were sorted and shrink wrapped 4-5 in a bundle for insertion into my lure tube.






Courtland Babcock

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Re: Gearing up for Sri Lanka
February 14, 2015, 06:36:42 AM
Laid my lures out and made sure I had enough....



As you can see, my lure selection is a bit different looking than most, at least by pattern. I am excited to fish these right next to my buddies proven lures like Siren, Hammerhead, Gammas and Heru as 2 of my buddies are pretty good customers of SaltyWater Tackle....



I then took the lures and put some of my blemished skins over them so they don't get beat up during travel. I will bring some extra skinz for the return trip but I will not be fishing anything other than the RealLife patterns while there.



I'll start on rods, reels and packing the lures tonight and follow up with how many lures fit in my tube.

Courtland Babcock

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Re: Gearing up for Sri Lanka
February 15, 2015, 07:32:08 AM
Got the gear sorted and mostly packed today. Going with 6 reels and 7 rods. It was also the first try of loading my lure tube and it has taken a lot of weight out of my other bags. My rod tube usually comes in around #14. With this packed full of jigs and lures and then placed in my tube it brought it up to #30 and I still have room for some clothes in there. Camera and clothes to go but pretty much ready for action.








Trevor Skinner

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Re: Gearing up for Sri Lanka
February 15, 2015, 08:50:23 AM
That's a great idea


Trev

Courtland Babcock

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Re: Gearing up for Sri Lanka
February 15, 2015, 10:50:41 AM
That's a great idea


Trev

Thanks. I have tried to think of ways to get those pesky jigs especially out of my bags for the weight. I have put them in my tube and had one get lose and break a tip off a rod before. We'll see how this goes.

 I had put up a thread on building it if interested. About 10 minutes and $10.00.

http://www.gtpopping.com/forum/index.php/topic,7200.0.html

Damien Rynja

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Re: Gearing up for Sri Lanka
February 15, 2015, 11:42:29 PM
I'm a friend of Lance from reeltackle.com and have seen this JigSkinz in person and to say I was converted from a skeptic to believer would be an under statement.

I wish I possessed your packing skills, I'm a shove it all in and hope it fits kinda guy when it comes to that.

The new skinz look amazing.

Amr Kehila

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Re: Gearing up for Sri Lanka
February 17, 2015, 01:33:21 AM
Some good ideas there. You have way more patience than I!