u/Legitimate_Fill6906

I've been fishing pretty consistently the last two years, any chance I get I'm hitting the lake with my back seat rod, stopping for 30-45 mins before work etc, I live in Canada so my only common lake fish are trout, perch, pike and walleye.

I've caught dozens upon dozens of pike and walleye on Texas rigs, wacky rigs, and dropshot all with EWG offset hooks and senkos/paddletails, but recently I've tried to mix it up and bought some hard rigs with treble hooks, spoons, xraps, inline spinners hoping for trout/maybe the odd perch.

So far, every time I feel a bite I instinctually hookset like I'm trying to send my lure into outer space, half the time it flies out of the water into a bush behind me, I'm pretty confident I'm ripping hooks straight through rocks with how hard I hookset but it's just become second nature.

Often times I think I spook every fish in the lake when I do this and end up going back to my safety net immediately after.

Am I ripping too hard? Everywhere I've looked says I need to delicately hookset and treat treble hooks more like a circle hook and just reel as normal and the fish will set the hook for me, how do I train myself out of the deep hookset mentality? I have 10 feet of 4lb fluoro tied on with an FG to my 6lb braid on my current ML car rod (typically run 15lb braid with no leader on my MH rod but no way I'm throwing out a 1/8th lure with that), should I swap out the trebles for a different hook? Swap fluoro for mono to gain some stretch?

Lots of more experienced anglers here so figured I'd ask, I'm also not 100% certain of how to "work" spoons etc either, my current style is just consistent reeling with the odd drop/flick but worry I'm doing too much/going too fast. Any pointers are heavily appreciated!

So I hit my local river now that it's open and hooked up on a sturgeon (wasn't really targeting sturgeon, just had a worm on a hook looking for some river action), got it in as fast as I could (I actually thought it was a log until it screamed off down the river, most intense 20 mins of my life) but on my way out I struck up a convo with another guy heading out for sturgeon and he had a massive rod that dwarfed mine, I pulled it in with 15 lb braid on a medium heavy tatula XT and he had a 10ft 4pc crazy thick rod with 120lb braid, is that completely overkill or an expected setup to target sturgeon? There's nowhere close to me that sells setups like that the biggest I've seen was medium heavy trolling rods. The rough measurement of this whale was 47" but was told not to measure it and just snap some pics in the water and calculate later for proper fish handling of these dinosaurs, any info is appreciated!

I've been crawling around every rabbit hole for weeks now, and I think I've finally convinced myself of what I think is a good setup for the future, my gf is getting wild over birding but I want to make sure I have some "expense insurance" incase it doesn't last past a summer or two, and ive kindof set my sights on the r50v.

There's not alot of information out there on it but from what I can tell it's nearly identical if not a bit better than the r50, but lacks a flash and viewfinder, neither are massive dealbreakers for me but then again I'm not a pro and have used my cellphone for photos and nothing else.

I can find a r50v locally for around 800$(canadian), and would do everything my phone can and more in terms of video/vertical mount/colour grading etc, making it in theory perfect for daily life (zoo/portraits/wildlife/cars etc), which I could convince myself that it's worth it long term personally if the birds fade out (throwback to the expense insurance haha).

I do know for birding I'll need a 300-400+mm lens and there's the tamron 18-300/400 and a few like it that I would be interested in pairing with it.

I'm by no means experienced so this is definitely a dunning-kruger effect so don't be too hard on me, I just want to ask for some more experience input before I do something I'll regret later.

Are there any drawbacks I'm overlooking or is there something out there better than this for a day-day camera for maybe a bit less, that has all the benefits? Most cameras I've been seeing and been recommended are in the 800-1500CAD price range so unless I find a steal on marketplace I'm not really going to get much better of a deal.

Any input is appreciated!

I'm searching for a two piece casting rod but I feel like I'm either a unicorn or its something not really necessary? I've got a medium light Fenwick HMG paired with a Daiwa Regal 100, and a Daiwa Tatula XT medium heavy paired with a Daiwa Tatula X TW 100, I'm really enjoying the baitcaster but find the rod loses alot of sensitivity over the HMG. I figured I could just grab a second rod and swap the reel over depending where I'm going and what I'm targeting but every rod I can find in a two piece setup is either a moderate speed or a one piece, is this something I need to just deal with? I've been looking around for Fenwick/StCroix/Daiwa rods and don't have much experience outside of those for quality/warranty/price, any help is appreciated!

So I've been designing some things for a while that don't really have any competition in their respective spaces outside of mega corporations charging insane markup for the final product, and I'm trying to figure out what to do next.

I've designed, and modeled them in a CAD software, and as far as I can tell they are copyrighted now? Anywhere I look says IP falls on the creator unless created for a company/commissioner, and as this is a personal time passion project it falls under myself, I've self taught myself how to use CAD purely for the fact that I can design and create things that keep me up at night.

I'm sure that doesn't protect me as far as a patent would, or maybe it does?

I'm worried these spaces have been over patented to the tune of "this wheel is a circle and we own the patent to the circle", is there a website or government entity where I can find the patented diagrams of my competition to know if this is the case?

And as far as marketing and manufacturing after the fact, if I go ahead and make something, can I just sell it to anyone? What is stopping them from grabbing a set of calipers and designing the exact same thing and selling it as their own? Or even changing the dimensions by a fraction of an inch?

Patents cost thousands of dollars and I haven't made a penny from anything, do I just start slinging them all over THEN worry about patents?

Any information is extremely appreciated, thank you for your time!