Line Dancin

It was a fun night fishing tonight. Thanks Jim for having me aboard. Look forward to doing it again some time. Let me know if you want help sorting out tht copper i am pretty good with untangling it.

My boat had bottom paint on it before. It is flaking off and am wondering if it is really necessary to reapply it again since i trailer my boat almost all of the time.I know that if you leave a boat in for an extended time the gel coat will bubble and crack. I am going to put it in a slip through the month of june next summer on lake erie. It is cheaper for me to rent the slip for the month then by the weekend. So my question is, is it something i should do if the boat is only going to be in the water for four weeks then back on the trailer for the most part, and possibly over the three holiday weekends for three days.

ok jim sounds good pm sent

dirty dog you need a rider for sunday? my boat is getting winterized saturday. but would like to get out one more time this year. it was kind of hard to fish and pay the bills being laid off almost all summer.

when i am targeting steelies i will drop to 6 lb main and 4 lb lead on a 9 1/2 light action imx rod in the slow, col and clear months.

i use a 9ft med action rod 10 lb test for rivers and piers. For the rivers i agree with steeliebob on the spawn bags. In the mouth like down by the dow bridge in ludington thunderstick junior shallow divers work great, also spawn on a three way swivel rig with just enough split to bounce bottom like steelie fishing. for the piers at night i like the new moonshine casting spoons, ko wobblers, and glow little cleos. a plug my dad used to use and i still have a couple and not sure where to find them any more is pingatees (not sure of the spelling), those things devastate fish. also you can use this same set up in early spring casting litttle cleos (gold and orange) for browns in pentwater and ludington (i am not giving my brown spot away in ludington). Usually i rig two rods when fishing browns from piers one with spawn(skein works great) and the other with a casting spoon. Another thing you can do with the same rod is early early spring surf cast with spawn bags for browns and steelies. i know a few steelheaders that surf fish grand haven. We usually go up to platt bay for that. Sorry i got off just kings but wanted to show a couple other things you can do with the same rig.

The HDS5 is a great unit. Very accurate on the gps side and very detailed on the fishfinder side. I love mine and wouldn't get anything else. the lake insight is a nice package. it has a lot of great detail in the unit. A couple hints on the fishfinder try to use your sensitivity manually instead of automatically and adjust it as high as you can without blacking out the screen and you will be surprised at what you will see. You may want to look at the lake maps software they do have a little better detail on the depth lines. Another great thing to add is the Sirus weather. It is real time weather and you can really save yourself with that. i have beat in a few rain storms now. It also shows surface temps on the great lakes so when you are looking for warm or cold water there is no searching. It shows lightening strikes gives you marine warnings closer to the actual then NOAA. It costs a few bucks a month to use it but it is great. The nice thing is when you are not using your boat during the winter you can put your account on hold and not pay for service. it is a great add on. If you need some help with it send me a pm.

i am reallt hating the weather this summer almost every time i have planned on fishing the weather has been NASTY to say the least. What is depressing is it is almost time to get the boat winterized as hunting season is just around the corner, and i am getting ready for fall season now.

i used to use the lure jensens but i have been using dreamweavers lately. I think my fish catch is better with them there seems to be more stretch then the luhr jensens

this is the same way i set mine up and it works great..

i agree with nailer completely.you should have no problemwith running 4 on your size boat with no problems of a tangle.

grand rapids chapter.

Here is how i smoke fish brine 2 liter picture of water 1 cup canning salt 1 1/2 cup brown sugar 3 tbsp franks red hot 1 tbsp black pepper 1 tsp onion salt 1 tsp garlic powder or granulated garlic 2 tbsp worchestershire sauce. i also add cajun seasoning sometimes 1 tsp use hot water to disolve all product quicker then add just enough ice to get to room temp. you need enough salt to float an egg(raw in the shell) then 6 ounces more water to make sure botulism doesn't set in. brine fish 12 hours. DO NOT RINSE. dry on paper towell for a good hour to two hours to let the pellicle set up. smoker i always try to do a slow smoke 120 and never the 160 short smoke. if i am doing a slower smoke to get a richer smoke flavor 120 for about 8- 10 hours mix of apple or cherry and hickory chips for a rounded flavor. fish really absorbs the smoke in the first two hours. if i am pressed for time 160 for 6 hours you want a good stream of smoke coming out of the smoker but not to heavy as you can over smoke the fish and turn it to rubber. a test to check your smoke level is to take a tall glass fill with ice and the fill with cold water. wait till moisture forms on the outside of the glass. and the glass itself is ice cold. hold the glass in the stream of smoke for a few minutes dump water and look at the bottom of the glass. if you are getting black flecks on the bottom you are getting to much smoke and you will get the bitter nasty cresote taste to your fish if you go any hotter than that, you are just cooking the fish and the smoke doesnt penetrate as deep into the flesh. you may as well just cook on a grill with cedar planks. and save your time. enjoy

nice job phil. we were supposed to go last night but wasn't able to make it out.

true there. they actually are doing a good job but people tend to only post negative things and not the good things that occur so you are more apt to hear negative and hardly anything positive. Again the people that were the problems are no longer working for the company Navico let them all go and has a whole new staff running the customer service department. the biggest probels were occuring during the buy out. and my dad and i have had lowrance units for ever. only lowrance units. we did have problems with customer service but it was just certain paople you talked to on the phone. if we called back and got someone else on the phone then issues were resolved. There was a lady Carol there that everyone was ticked on the bass fishing boards about because she was let go and some people loved her. I hated if i had a question and she answered the phone. she was a PITA to deal with and the first one let go because of that. there is just to much to post about all the issues on here but navico has worked on turning that around and they are working on getting better turnaround time. For example about 6 years ago a seacharter 480df that i had out of warranty about 3 months got Her on the phone just send it in and pay the 150.00 to look at it. hung up called back and got Jason who is now the head of cust service. he had a new transducer out to me 2nd air. when i got the new transducer i wasn't even billed. At the time it just seemed to depend on who you talked to on the phone. It is a whole different ball game there and Navico isn't playing game to salvage that rep from a few bad people they had working there.

Now as far as cabelas and their return policy, it sucks and i buy all my major stuff at bass pro now if at all possible. I hate cabelas new 60 day policy. Bass pro is pretty good. i bought a lyman reloading press from them and had it for almost a year dealing with an issue that i didn't know was an issue. i saw another press and saw a lock that was supposed to be part of the arm assembly so the press wouldn't over cam. went into the store they looked up my purchase by my credit card number and 11 months later let me return the item cash back on card so i could get another press buy rcbs

That has been remedied so please quit posting that kind of stuff. It was a problem in the past. the problem stemmed from when navionics took over lowrance and the people in the customer care didn't want to conform to the new rules under the new company. Also there was a time that duing the take over they couldn't service the lake insight stuff as they didn't have the licensing in place yet. it only took a couple months but people didn't listen to cust care when they were explained about that and just got on another message board and started spouting off a bunch of lies. they got the licensing in place and there is no issue. My friend is a Rep for Lowrance and charter captain, and told me all about the problems at the time. he also advised me at the time to hold off on buying a new unit due to the issues and let me know about 4 months after that that things had been resloved. Since then they have been remedied and the people giving the problems are no longer there. the new team is great to deal with. My first hds 5 i got back in march had an issue and Lowrance went way above what they would have had to do so that i could fish three days after the problem was identified. Just like anything electronic you can get a melon. we spent 1500 on a new tv with speakers that wouldn't work on the left side of the tv. stuff happens like that. unfortunatley a few people gave the company a bad rap over the 6 - 8 months before it could get remedied. I have a hds 5 w sirius weather and love it. i wouldn't buy anything else.

The lot i store my boat in is in jenison not far away from holland. It is like 35 bucks a month and they have open spots right now. It is very secure and the police like to sit in front of it to catch speeders. There is almost always a cop there. and they watch people coming and going from there. Problem is at 4 am sometimes they stop you and you have to explain what you are doing there at 4 am. Good thing people know this and don't mess around back there. PM me if you want more info.

We had the same thing sunday morning. Every time we have a storm with that much lightening it always shuts the fish off for a couple days. Coupled with the fuller moon, the fish tend to eat more on a full moon, that makes fishing tough. usually when that happens i give it a couple days after a storm like that and then go out. Then the fish become raenous and you can get a lot of hook ups. WE are going out tuesday night (i think).

Well we decided to fish sunday morning out of Holland. I got upchecked the report and it looked ok so we decided to go. My Dad cousin Scott Friend Irv and I. When i got to the launch there was only one truck trailer in the lot. Did someone know something i didn't? Noticed quite a wind at the launch that wasn't noticed at home. We left the harbor at 5 am and it was a little bouncy but not bad. set lines got 10 lines set and noticed we were really getting bounced around. It was up to 1-3s with mostly 3s. fished for a couple hours and nothing. north south east west 60 - 130. wind was getting stiffer and waves bigger than the cross winds. decided to pull lines and the second downrigger i pulled felt like it was tangled reeled it upand found a 5 - 6 laker just dragging. got the fish in then it went ballistic. green with black ladder back aces high j plug down 80 in 95 ft. only fish of the day. tried the two jp slammers again to no avail. although listening to the few boats that were out nobody wascatching anything out there. pulled lines at 10:30 after getting bounced around for 5 hours.

the name of the manufacture was koch on these units. just seen that the manufacture was already mentioned.

call them and ask them if they have rotated all their stock a couple times before you got yours. there reall is no way to tell. i email them as i had four of the original six break to complain about junk quality rods and got a phone call in like three hours from this mike bennette. if they were a recent purchase then you should be ok. if they were from last winter during the sport shows call mike. the first few major shipments were the problems.

when my first one died i got the last one that cabelas had. about three or four years ago. they had to have it shipped in from one of the south western stores and it was the display model with no packaging. I was told they quit making them because of a problem with flooding the unit about 6 years ago. so you are left with the speed and temp at the cannonball units. i still have mine and am not going to part with it.

i have 6 on my boat. when you go to buy them make sure they are of the newer rods within the last few months. they had a problem with tip breakage because the machine they use to sand the blanks was sanding them to thin near the second guide from the tip. Okuma had a recall but some stores didn't follow what they were supposed to do and get the new tips for their rods on the shelves. if you do happen to have an older one call okuma ask for Mike Bennett he is in charge of the recall and will get new tip sections out to you pronto. As far as like they are a great rod with the new tips and i have used and abused them with the new tips with no problems.

bare. 150 or 300 copper and green w black ladder back or wonder bread, both in glow, are my best. i also run them a lot on my riggers.