jdh

I'm going to look inshore first. I'll look for the edge of the muddy water. I need to figure out what port first! Also, I'm going to start late morning.

I'm likely #1A moment ago

Thank you Joe & Kelly for fishing with me in the Brown Blast Tournament on Saturday. We started on a north troll fishing around 7:30 am about 5 miles north of the St. Joe pierheads and tried for brown's in 5-20 fow a few hours with nothing. We then slid out into 20-40 fow and went 4-5 on coho over about 2 hours. We then turned around and slid out to 50-70 fow and went 5-8 with another coho & 4 lake trout. We pulled lines around 2:30 so we took the DQ and did not weigh anything in the tournament. On Sunday, Kelly and I fished south haven and worked 50-70 fow in many directions north & south of the pierheads. We ended up 6-6 on Lake Trout and had a huge rip on a 3 color that sank the board but never hooked up. I was hoping to limit out quickly and head out deep, but it took us until the end of our fishing time when we picked up our last laker. What worked Saturday: 3-3 coho on floating Rogue's in silver/blue/orange 80 feet back behind the boards on mono lines. 2-3 coho on firefrog ministreak with a white back on a 3 color lead core 3-5 lakers on silver streak mag blue dolphin & BLL blue kato on riggers down about 45 feet & 20-30 ft leads 1-2 laker on silver streak mag blue dolphin on 200 copper What worked Sunday: 3-3 Silver streak mags blue dolphin, greasy chicken wing, monkey puke -riggers down 45-60 ft 2-2 Trash can dodged & green/chrome spin n glo ticking bottom on a mag dipsy 1-1 spin doctor Kevorkian with a poofster fly on a dipsy out 90 ft. Good luck everyone.

We got a few coho yesterday running Smithwick Rogues clean 80 feet behind the a board. I've also run body baits on a 1 or 2 color when fishing slightly deeper water (more than 20 feet). I picked up a few lakers today on a trash can dodger with a green/chrome spin n glo on a 30" leader. Ticking bottom with a mag diver.

Trolled the beach for a few hours with nothing. Made it back to the pier heads and notice some nice marks near the bottom in 30-40 fow. Went 2-2 with a nice walleye (dr @ 30 ft) and a nice laker (3-color) - on small spoons - 1.7-2.0 mph. Forgot the net, but managed to land them without incident. Great day to start out the year! -JDH

Thank you for organizing this Larry. Indeed a great event! -JDH

There's a new twist to the project now. I'm getting another Islander hull delivered on Saturday. This one has a hardtop, but no motor. I need to figure out if I want to swap the motor to the "new" hull, or swap the hardtop to the old hull.

Terry, it looks like because the WFML page is a group vs. a subforum, the posts are not appearing as new posts on the homepage. Maybe Chad has some input on how to fix this? I see posts from the 3+1 showing up?

Well I've started the rebuild, or as I should call it right now - a disaster zone. I don't have the most recent pictures, but I have the hull - floor/foam/stringers - almost fully cleaned out. I'll post some more in a few weeks as I keep working on it. The transom still needs to come out. Overall, anything wood was a disaster, but the condition of the hull and anything metal is very good. Motor was running nice before I winterized it. I have 12 bags of trash I need to work on getting rid of. Ed, I'll get around to restoring the trailer soon. Once I pull the motor I'll drop the boat off in it's parking spot and bring the trailer back to the garage. The trailer needs to be done before I start putting the boat back together.

Thanks for the replies everybody. I would just have to run the numbers, but I'm leaning towards keeping just the 1 vehicle. Not sure about slipping the boat, but storing the bigger boat in Holland somewhere might be my best option. I'll have to finish rebuilding it first though. It's just a shell & a motor right now.

I'm looking at a couple options for towing my boats around and trying to consider them from a financial point of view. I have 22 ft Starcraft Islander & a 17 ft Lowe currently. Right now I have a Nissan Frontier which gets the job done for now. I'm putting on about 16k miles a year - with about 3.5k miles towing (mostly 80 mile round trips. The option I was considering was selling the Frontier and buying a used truck for about $5 k and then buying a used sedan for commuting & trips for about $12 k. I would estimate 5k miles a year would be driven on the truck, and the rest in the car. Have you done something similar with having 2 vehicles and how has that worked out for you? I hate putting all the highway miles on the Frontier when I don't need to be driving a truck. Any other thoughts/suggestions?