1mainiac

I got the Raymarine SPX-5R with a P70R controller cost me 1800 bucks plus a few bucks in hardware and a few trips back and forth to the boat to install it. It is a cable steered boat other than issues with clearance on my helm it would have been a under 3 hour install. It is 4 pieces a compass head you mount at waterline level a computer you mount on a bulkhead a controller you mount on the dash I removed my speedometer and put it there. And a drive that mounts under your steering wheel. Run the wires from everything to the computer hook them up run 12v power and ground to the computer and run the setup and your ready to go out and teach it how to drive your boat. Aside from missing a terminator in the network and not being able to get the wheel where I wanted it was a very easy upgrade. Wish I could afford to drag it over to you and have a go at those Walleye. We fished in 1 to 3 all night and in every direction and it stayed on course I did play with the rudder settings a bit and found a setting I liked which slowed it down and worked very well. If your boat is like mine only lighter most people have a problem with over correcting so a slow rudder setting helps. With the rotary control you can change course 1 deg at a time which is cool. If I had known it would work this well I would have bought it 5 years ago but everyone told me I needed hyd steering to get what I wanted. Well that and 5 years ago Raymarine could not get all the bugs out of the system.

Very Nice Ken

Frank come on over and check out my boat I have bags and the fish are going crazy right now. I have just under 2 grand in my AP and it does a nice job. we were not below 2.2 last night but I never put the bags down either. Into the wind across the wind with the wind the only thing that changed was boat speed it held what ever course I set it on 3 of us fishing for 4 hours and I never touched the wheel just adjusted the AP all night.

14 for 16 or 17 second trip of the year on my boat and second 14 fish box. Fish were not where they were Sat night so was kinda slow to start as we hunted them down and picked away at a few here and there. Finally hit them just before dark whille talking to Fishsniffer on the phone thanks for the call Don we had 1 on when the phone rang and I had to leave the phone while talking to him because the rods were firing fast took 8 nice fish under 40 min and thought we were limited out but actual count was 1 short. I love my AP now that it works.

You can count the number of Battery manufactures on one hand and probably close to 75% are made by the big 2 Excide and Johnson controls.

Only thing I don't like about trolling plates as they reduce thrust which means you lose some steer-ability meaning on a windy day it is going to suck. Honestly look into bags once you get them set correctly you will be glad you did as you can keep the boat squared up and even reduce roll. Also the first time you have go in and reset the trolling plate because it is bound up you will wish you had the bags.

Buy quality wet cell batteries if you are going to work them hard I would suggest 2 of the big 6v batteries in series. Sorry there is no magic substitute for heavy duty batteries the charging and discharging creates heat AGM's and Gell Cell batteries don't deal with the heat as well and as such have special charging requirements. In the big lead acid batteries you have to maintain the water level but they can take more abuse then you would imagine if well maintained. I don't know how much room you have for batteries but if you want capacity check out the Interstate Workhorse UL 16 HC 6v batteries any decent multi stage charger will charge them fine.

Here is a thought on over glow I have left some of my Moonshines on my dash by mistake years ago now I do it on purpose. The reason is the sun fade of being on the dash for a couple of days ends the ultra bright glow they still glow for hours but no longer look like a light bulb. I am pretty sure I am not the only one to find that a old nearly worn out Moonshine spoon often works better than a new one out of the package. Oh and it is the UV light spectrum that activates the glow many of the UV lights are actually much brighter than our other lights but much of the light output is not visible to us. A neat trick you can do when fishing at night if you have a UV flashlight is put some glow tape on your boards with a UV flashlight you can recharge the glow while you are fishing. You can try it with you spotlight but a decent UV flashlight will do a much better job. And since the glow lights up as soon as the UV hits it it makes them much easier to find in the dark. The Walleye guys will love this waves and the size of some of our salmon spreads make it tough to do on the big lake.

The only advantage to a roller rod anymore is reduced drag. I am also no longer sure the reduced drag is worth the possible drawbacks found in most of the budget roller rods. I for one cringe every time a rookie has one of mine in their hands because a mistake is going to cost me any where from 40 to 100 bucks plus a fish. Roller rods require you fish them correctly and takes a different mindset to catch fish with them. They have nearly zero room for error every wonder why many charter boats only let you hold the rod and reel the fish in. They don't want to lose their gear so you sit and monkey drag the fish in. Don't get me wrong I love my roller rods but there have been lots of people fishing on my boat that have never seen them because I will not put them out I will grab the braid rods and live with it.

Sounds great Ken not sure how many I will be able to fish other than the battle in GH but I will try and make a couple.

As to the welded ring that is true I lost a complete setup behind one when they first came out sent them a email and they said they were sorry they would not replace my flasher and fly however they did send me 5 new Walkers with the S ring which was worth as much or more than the flasher fly even though it was one of my fav setups.

Guys the website is updated lots of new stuff including a forum area for news and conversations regarding the events. There are now sponsor sections where you can make comments or ask questions of some of the sponsors. We also have a store link with Blood Run Tackle where you can get a discount by using the code mcst when you check out. over the course of this year we will move nearly all of our info to our website so check it out and sign up to stay informed on what we are doing. www.mscst.com

a couple years ago I got a 17lb King on my 10ft steelhead rod with 8lb test had to throw the boat in neutral and yank the rest of the gear but what a blast. More than once I have stood on my bow and used a casting rod to fish while trolling out deep and catching Steelhead that way. What I would really love to do is use my 8wt and drift out deep for Steelhead but have never found the right spot with a rod on board.

My wife calls it etch a sketch which is what my GPS trail looks like LOL. I used to yell at her for it then I realized we caught a lot of fish with her driving so I learned to shut up and reel.

Both of my rods were retied on the water so I am missing the tubing so I need to remember to redo them before the season starts. On the boat repairs don't get anything but a good knot and a bead it also allows you to see which one broke if you do it with the tubing at home. The only bad thing I can think of about the tubing is it would cover up a knot problem that you might see if the tubing was not there. It does however make a nice clean appearance on the end of the line.

I guess for me I would use 32# to replace a core but if you want deep get the 45# which is what I run. A full core with a dive bomb will hit 60ft so is about the same as a 300 of 32#. The sheath on a core makes it behave different than any other line combination. Many feel it triggers fish to bite they could be right I have had days when the fish would smash a lure on a full core but not touch the same lure on a rigger or diver. With the warm water last season 300ft of 45# was deadly in 85 to 110 ft as I could get it to bang the bottom on slow turns very often getting a fish doing it while still trolling fairly fast. So by doing a lazy S pattern I could often drop one on the bottom while yanking the one on the other side up and then reverse it.

No Luhr Jensen products for me thanks the Walkers work and work very well. Honestly other than a well known name they are nothing like they used to be. I threw all their snubbers off my boat years ago and for the last 2 years have only carried a couple of their dipsies as a back up and I sold them at the swap meet. Have a couple boxes of J Plugs to part with and then there will be nearly nothing they produce on my boat.

Don't forget to put a bead on the line before the swivel I also used to put a small piece of latex tubing between the knot and the bead so when you put it away you can reel the bead all the way to the tip keeping tension on the line

Ken is right on the bags best way to slow down with a 21 pitch you should see a little more top end do you remember what your WOT rpms were?

one event in Grand Haven the rest in Muskegon www.mscst.com for more info

WOT is Wide Open Throttle your range should be 4400 to 4800 rpm your prop is a Thru Hub Exhaust & 15 Tooth Spline, 4-¾ Gearcase style. My best guess would be a 14.5X19 3 blade prop. Which would give you Theoretical top speed of around 42 mph and 3200 rpm cruise around 26 to 29 mph. and on paper idle at 5 mph. I had a 17 with a 140 and my prop was a 13.5X19 and speeds were about the same.

I would drop the full cores and put a 200 on the side with the 300 and a 250 on the side with the 350. Then you would have consistent separation and less line to reel in. I use the 45# copper but I am seriously looking at swapping my full cores for 32# copper and going to 5 color or less for my other rods knowing I can add a Torpedo diver or Dive Bomb to them if I need to get deeper. Doing that will end any interaction between setups. But then I can run up to 3 divers per side and could run 4 per side if I ever saw a reason to do it.

Prop School first what is your current prop it will be stamped on the hub usually like 15X15 or 15X17 first number is diameter second number is pitch. Diameter give the amount of thrust area and pitch tells how many inches of water it will grab per revolution. Second what is your WOT rpm? You did not say what motor you have so assume a V-8 you should have a WOT range of roughly 4200 to 4800 rpm at full throttle with correct load and trim. If you RPM range at WOT is in this area you are pretty close to being the correct prop size. Next just because you are close to correct size does not mean it is the best prop amount of cup, 3 blade versus 4 blade all make a difference. A 4 blade would be better for water skiing as you will see better hole shots but will often reduce top end performance. Reducing pitch will get better take off but you need to make sure the RPM's won't exceed manufactures recommendations or you will find motor parts where they don't belong. As a rule of thumb 1 inch of pitch will make roughly a 200 rpm change if the cup and rest of prop factors are the same. 2 years ago I messed up my prop and had to run my spare which is 2 inches smaller in pitch thinking since my WOT range was about 4250 adding 400 would keep me under the 4800 max except the cup was different and my rpm's went to 5300. Also the boat was very fussy on plane and could not find a sweet spot. So spare prop went in yard sale and I got a good used prop for a spare and a new prop for the boat. Once you get the boat and prop matched if it is too fast to troll get bags or lower the engine rpm, bags would be better. Make sure you do all your prop testing with the boat setup the way you will use it because a couple hundred pounds will make a difference.

I would go with the keep em separated plan while in theory you could run the copper inside the core they odds a angry fish is going to follow your rod alignment plan is slim at best. My experience is when a fish grabs a long line he pulls up and away from the tug. I try to keep 50ft between my boards and still have fish crash the whole program with way more separation than you are talking. This is one reason I don't have any short coppers yet and when I do the core that runs closet to them in depth will be removed from the spread. So if I had a 150 copper out the full core would be in the cabin or on the other side of the boat at minimum. One of my plans for this season is to convert 2 of my full cores to 150 coppers add a 450 copper and cut all my other cores down to 5 colors or less then I will run Torpedo divers on them to get the depth I want.

Well the rigger bite is not what it used to be but I would not fish without them they add way too many options to the spread. And when the release trips it is just you and the fish no diver boards or miles of line and trinkets between you. It is also pretty much the only way you can run light tackle down deep trolling. And when you add up the other stuff it can be the least expensive option if you find a good deal on some used riggers. I run fairly cheap wire diver setups and still have over 200 bucks a rod into them now tie on another 40 bucks worth of stuff on the other end and it is not a cheap setup. Copper is the same way not hard to get close to 200 bucks each into rod and reel setups ready to fish. then add in planer boards and lures. Lead core is cheapest option till you want to get deeper than 40 ft or so then you need a Warn Winch for a reel to hold the line and again a planer board top that off with the fact no one ever runs to grab a long lead core rod because it is a PITA to reel all that line in. I used to run a dbl core and no one ever wanted it to go off. Only times I ever saw guys give up their turn for a fish is on long cores. But you can put your kids Zebco setup on a rigger and send it down. And it will catch fish, will likely burn up on contact but it will hook a fish down deep.