Willie Bee

For the Okuma and Diawa reels the color will come back with WD-40.

It's always nice to see fish on the sonar, but it's not that big of a deal. Temp breaks, current breaks, and talking to other guys on the water is what I'm looking for. If you noticed at daybreak and sunset the sonar gets full of fish. The fish are always there just inactive sitting on the bottom. The trick is to wake them up and get them to bite. Thats where the fun in fishing comes in.

second video was added

Does anyone have any documented answer to the maximum weight limit for a Type 1 adult life jacket? The regs require a type 1 life jacket to fit everyone on board, but there is no max. limit on the jackets. I'm finding out some boats were boarded last year by the coast guard and they ask to see the life jackets for some larger people on the boat. The manufactures I contacted only make a child for under 90lbs and a adult for over 90lbs per the coast guard regs, but no type 1 for larger people. I would think the manufactures would have tested the weight limits and as long as you could squeeze into the jacket it would hold you up. I hate to refuse people and tell them they are to big to go fishing, but it looks like that maybe in our future. The airlines have enough trouble with this. Anyone else run into this yet?

Your going to love the speed control. Been running mine for the last 16 years. I wouldn't want to fish without a hydraulic system. Saw some for outboards and i/o's for the first time this year. This probably will be a option on boats soon. Don't forget to hit the up button before hitting the throttles. http://s378.photobucket.com/albums/oo224/willie-bee/?action=view&current=IMAG0003.jpg

running a pump off of a inline can be done with the smaller weights, the 10-12oz would be all they would hold up, but fighting the fish gets messy with the board diving and the ball usually doesn't let it layback to reel in very easy.

The waves do not indicate current, I just follow the downrigger balls and use my sonar to watch the ball depths. I fish in every direction of the current, usually if conditions allow you can make one circle and figure out what direction the bite is at. You have to keep in mind if you are fishing into the current you have to slow way down, if a 2.7 mph speed for the lures is the goal you may have to troll at less than a mile to compensate for the water moving below you, same going with the current, I've run at 4-5 mph to keep the lures going the proper speed under some conditions. I use the corner pumphandles to tell me how the lures are working at depth. The probes may help a little bit, but with the blow back they are running on a angle so you just can't goto a speed on the probe and have the lure running at that speed. Let the fish talk to you, when they hit look at your speed and direction and continue on or if your structure fishing make the turn and duplicate the run.

If you can run the dual transducer or just learn to flip flop them, aside from holding a bottom reading at higher speeds, you can dial in the gain to see your downrigger balls which aids in blow back calculations. Then if you play with more buttons and it is in color you can mark temp breaks at depth and if your running short leads on the riggers you can watch the fish bite and the fish that just miss the downriggers lures.

Gave them a try last year, on flies, they did not get as many hits as a treble hook, must be changing the action enough to turn off the fish. I like the design for better hook sets, because a treble would get the line caught behind the hooks and pull out. cured that with a drop of epoxy on the hook. Single hooks stay hooked up when they penitrate, but we get alot of short hits without hooking up then. Tried circle hooks with the same results, the fish stay on but the trebles must fluff up the fly without throwing it out of balance to get more hits. Still working on this subject.

Here's a link on what fish sense: http://www.geocities.com/aquarium_fish/how_do_fish_sense.htm Stuff get very interesting to see how many studies are out there and why they are looking at it.

I have been experimenting with the ion control/elecrical voltage and the e-chips. The pulse is very small on a e-chip, in my opinion not enough to draw fish in, or at least not salmon. I think the rattling of the chip does most of the attracting. According to some studies sharks can sense a heart beat 500 miles away, I havn't found any studies on salmon. I'm convinced the science behind negitive and positive elecrical current to attract or repel is real, but water disipates the electrical current, which leads me to belive you do not use the science to attract fish, you use it to eliminate negative voltage which repels fish. If you have stray voltage running down your downrigger wires that is negativly charged you may want to find where the electicity is coming through and have better grounding or add a black box .

In WI firstmates have to be on a random drug test program, thats the only requirement.

Northeastern Wisconsin Great Lakes Sport Fishermen's 35th Annual Salmon Derby July 3,4,5 2009 Located in Manitowoc WI with headquarters at Manitowoc Marina 3 day big fish derby with over $30,000 in prize's $25 per person entry Go to www.NEWGLSF.ORG for more information Walker Downrigger OFFSHORE CHALLENGE $5000.00 Guaranteed 1st Place! That's right 2009 offshore will have a guarantee $5000.00 1st Place Minimum 2-days 3-man plus observer see rules at: http://www.newglsf.org/walker/walker.pdf Papa Murphy's Tri-Port super Tournament 1 day 2-man super tournament see rules at: http://www.newglsf.org/derby/2008%20Papa%20Murphy's%20Quad%20Port%20Rules.pdf

I've played with the E-chips for a while, the idea behind sending a electrical pulse of a bait fish makes sense and we did test them to see if they emit electricty. They did produce a small amount, but I'm not totally convinced such a small pulse can attract fish from a distance, studies on sharks say they can feel a heart beat from 500 miles away under the right conditions, but I didn't find anything on salmon. I do know they rattle when used so the pulse or the noise is still the debate if they are a attracting fish with electricity or not. By using them, they have not repelled fish for me, and they sure are showing up on alot of lures.

I know of one boat that rigged a underwater camera, this was a few years back and it wasn't a cheap unit, some $2500 for just the camera. We finally convinced him to drop the camera and try it and he was discusted with all the fish that just follow the lures and swim in them without biting. After one use he had the camera removed, it was to much stress to see all those fish and not being able to trigger a bite. So far I hear with the newer cameras the visability has been a issue only being able to view things a short distance away doesn't show much action. I herd the new probes with the blowback it's hard to get them to point backwards, alot of the time there pointing up, just like the speed and temp probes do. There might be somthing out there with night vision technology. It would be nice to see once, but I would not want it on my boat. It's bad enough when you see them on the fish finder, I'd hate to actually see the smile on there face when they don't bite.

Al Depending on what location you are fishing in, the name is differnt for the same thing. Pumphandle = thumper pole, # ball rig, bottom bouncer, river rig.

Boomerang: I am running 10 pumphandles 3 off each side with big boards 2 out the back corners and 1 on each outrigger.

The 8oz pumphandle rigs were the best for us this year, followed by the two back downriggers with the large flashers set deep. Most days we were no longer using divers.

The shows have moved to a new link, here is the 2008 show: http://www.huntfishtv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=30e

I don't know of any place you can buy a diverter, most guys in the area here make there own. The Jack from fishertackle is the closed product that could be purchased and then bend the tail end to pull the balls away from the boat.

I've run on boats with SS and braid, the differences I've considered is the sound, ss wines braid is quiet, ion control or electricity flowing on the wire, I'm running Cannons with ion control so I have a positive flow down the wire, with the braid there is none. Depth, ss goes deeper with less cable than braid, yet ss comes generally in 150 foot spools and braid can goto 300 foot spools. Crossing wire is alot easier to seperate than the tangles of crossing braid. If your having crossing problems I'd look at running diverters ahead of the ball, that will eliminate any of those problems. I've run at 200 feet out and havn't had a problem after adding them. Just some input I've observed.

Glad to hear you enjoyed this years show. You may want to go to my website at www.williebeecharters.com and click on the video section to see last years show, I have a few more shots of the pumphandle system we are running. We can't drop any weights in WI and I'm trying to get to the desired depths with the least amount of weight to provide better fish fighting action. The spread consists of 3 pumps out each side on the big planer boards, 2 out the back, and 1 off each side on the outriggers, for a total of 10. We then add 4 downriggers and if there is a spoon bite we run sliders on the side downriggers. We didn't use the dipseys much this year, but we would try them off the side of the boat if we hear they are producing from other boats. You can get very percise with putting lures in a zone with this method, but you need to use identically set up poles to duplicate the action on all poles. The boards I use, we designed from a combination of designs from other boards and added modifications to fit my boat. The boards have very little sag in the line even when we run upto 4 lines or run some dipseys off them. I generally run the boards out 130-140 feet off each side, some boats are streaching the 250+ feet per side mark, but you need to have a clear path and plan for limited manuverability. The lines are not vertical at the 2.7 to 3.4 knot speeds we troll at with flasher flies, but when we run plugs or spoons on the pumps they could be slowed to run vertically if you desired to do so.

The link is back up, enjoy the video.

http://www.brightcove.tv/channel.jsp?channel=1078942630 Here is the link to out latest salmon show we did with Hunt Fish TV.