1mainiac

They all work but you need to tune them to match your style. The water is plenty clear so set one down 5 to 10 ft behind a rigger and watch it over a range of speeds form sat 2.0 to 3.2 bring it up make a change and do it again after a few tries you will find a sweet spot for each setup and it may not be anywhere near where others suggest. I made a choice to stick to pretty much all stuff made by the companies that sponsored our tournaments this year so my spin doctors took the season off. I did not see any real difference in my numbers of percentage of fish caught on flasher fly setups. Every one of us has setups that worked well for us at least one time and once we get a few go to setups we tend to run them more and they catch fish so why change. The real issue is finding what works for you and building on it like having my wife drive the boat always drove me nuts cause she can't stay on a trolling pattern but we catch fish with her driving. Some days it's the big things some days it's the little things that matter.

Mike is pretty much right I never meant to say AM money goes to the Pro class I don't know of that happening so can't say either way. What I meant was that perhaps the percentage of what other than prizes gets paid out of the entry fees is not equal. One reason is the Pro's pretty much always choose cash and lots of the Am's will be happy with prizes. The expenses of putting on the event have to come from somewhere depending on who insures the event it could easily run 1500 to 3000 for that alone. Add in tent rentals and setup tables chairs and stage equipment and you have some hefty bills to pay. It is easier to take say 50 bucks per entry to cover expenses which seem fair but still has the Am class footing most of the bill. The days of the entire Pro class out fishing the Am class are over and it may be time to go to one rule book and payout trim the top prize a bit and pay down the field further and let the money go to the best boat. Maybe leave the Pro entry fee higher than the Am to keep it fair. But really is some neat math that allows 20 pro boats to pay a extra 100 bucks and have a top prize that is double that of 80 Am boats.

Welcome to the dark side Kevin I been saying this for years. Every time I point out how monetarily stupid it is to enter one all I get back is how much fun it is. Which is why the only major event I fish anymore is the Muskegon Shootout and this year we may do the 333 only. We missed the big Combo by a couple tenths of a pound I actually thought we won when they announced the weight. Simply put the AM's put on the show and the Pro's take home the dough. We Made the money in 09 and it barely covered our boat gas granted we were at the bottom of the payout but we out fished several Pro Boats on Sunday. Toss in all the other issues and you have just as good a chance of winning NASCAR in the wife's sedan. Add in the half dozen AM boats that probably should be in Pro cause they go from port to port to compete and it makes it even tougher for local guys with kids and jobs to stand a chance. It is one of the biggest reasons for Don and Me to run our own events based on fun friendly competition that while you will never get rich you won't go broke either.

Frank Bill fishes with just his son most of the time so pretty tough for him to drop a guy off. The problem is there is only 4 lanes at the launch and we had at least 2 of them tied up more than once. I am sure Don and the other guys will all read this and we can come up with a solution that everyone can live with. One of the big things we want is to work with guys who slip their boats. Fishermen"s Landing would be better but it is at the other end of the lake and for me and a lot of guys it is another 8 to 10 gal of boat gas per event.

I have the Lake Master Pro chip in my Lowrance and love it has over 800 lakes and all of Lake MI most of Huron and Superior very nice detail and pretty accurate as well.

My boat is setup for 3 divers per side seldom run them but can if need be. Usually only do it on harbor patrol which I try to avoid to begin with but my harbor patrol setup is 9 lines 2 riggers 6 divers and a 5 color off the stern. If we are hitting fish the 5 color goes back in the cabin. What I run is 2 wire divers 124 Walkers on 1.5, 2 107 Walkers on 2.5 on braid and 2 Slide divers on on mono. Inside the basin I keep everything between 15 and 20 ft down the divers add width and very few issues doing it.

I agree Frank 3 years ago my wife and I were fishing and having a great morning I was netting her final fish for a limit and noticed a fish porpoising behind the boat. When I asked my wife about it she said it was cool and it had been following us for nearly a hour. I started grabbing rods and found it was on our Starboard rigger which was stuck so brought up the ball and released it and reeled the fish in for our final limit fish. It had hit a J Plug and the trailer hook was in it's eye so the 8lb king reeled in like a perch literally just reeled it in and netted it. I would have felt bad if it had been a small fish we had to release. That however was with treble hooks. I honestly think the big singles are easier on fish but there is always a chance of the trailer hook ending up in a bad location on any fish.

I honestly am not sure how to deal with that. While I know it was only a minor issue one of the agreements I made with the parks and recreation dept and the Harbor Master to use the launch and pavilion which are under separate control sort of was that we could not allow boats to tie up at the launch. It was one of the reasons I went with Dockers and the launch as a backup. The problem was Dockers expected us to hold the tourney indoors and it was a hassle to get the stuff down to the dock for Patty so we could weigh in. Dockers was expecting 40 to 60 possible customers in return for the use of their dock which should have happened but did not. Because of that they stopped holding dock space and we had to move to the launch. Personally I have no intention of enforcing the dock rule and it could be removed. I have a couple of other options but they would drive the entry fees up to cover the cost. My reason for adding the rule was to show the City we are addressing a issue while minor that is one of their concerns with us using the launch. Also guys feel free to make comments as we have not had a meeting to finalize the rules so far we have written up a couple of rough drafts this is the second one. I have no firm date on when we will have the final rules but would suspect sometime around the 1st of Mar will be our cutoff for changes so we have time to get the website corrected and ready and to print fliers. The point is maintain a fun event that is low cost and that everyone feels like they have a chance to have fun and win.

The only difference I can see between them and Magna 45DX is the drag material the new MA45DX comes with Carbonite drags and the Cabela 45DX comes with Rulidium Drag material which is the same as the current model Convectors. The Cabela's Gold series appears to be a mix of Convector and Clarion parts.

Cool will look forward to seeing it in action mine is going on 4 years old so I expect this may be it's last season.

Well I at least knew what it was LOL. Very nice Don let me know when you want to install it and I will be there if you want help. Does that one have the built in maps or did you skip that and just plan on putting a chip in it cause the built in map in my Lowrance pretty much sucked since it had more detail on Europe than the Great Lakes LOL.

It is more a choice depending on the distance between the rod holders if they are close together than staggering the rod length is more important.

Pretty much what Don said try to get the back hook into the skirt of the fly. My hook of Choice is a 5/0 Gamakatsu #02415. I really don't worry about the rear hook on my Tandem singles but with a treble it makes for a tail profile on the fly.

was there one for me next to yours?

Just a joke Frank Merry Christmas

yep mine are Magna Pro 45DX one thing to note that might help all Okuma reels have a lot number on the reel seat. Oh the only thing that I had a problem with was the new drag washers added .020 to the drag stack they still worked however they would not back off fully. So even with the drag backed all the way off it still had about 3 lbs of drag. Since we corrected them I can back the drags off till they free spool and everything between free spool and max drag is smooth as glass. No more touchy drags.

Tournament tie is a large single snelled in front of a treble and the idea is to get them with the front hook with the treble to grab on during the fight or be there in case the front hook miss's. Personally I got tired of the treble ending up in my net so I went to tandem singles a few years ago. Honestly it is one of the best moves I ever made. I have not however had the same success running singles on spoons it just seems to me the spoon pretty much requires a treble even though it gives the fish a better chance of spitting the hook. Once you get a fish hooked up on one of the singles even the Pro's can't knock em off with the net LOL.

I have 4 reels to send in to them and if I have any money left I might do the high speed upgrade on my copper reels.

Merry Christmas to all as well

it is happening this year as well When: Superbowl Saturday! February 5, 2011 from 10 am to 1 pm. No Early Birds Please! Where: Homefront Church, just off 196 near the Rivertown Crossings Mall at 6265 8th Ave SW Grandville, MI 49418 copied that for you

Rebuilt my Okuma reels this week all 6 of them total cost was around 75 bucks for all the parts. Upgraded the drags and repaired the level winds on all of them. For 6 year old reels that have caught a lot of fish there was very little wear or damage inside them I guess that means I took care of them. I got the parts from Tuna's and we had some issues with the thickness of the new drag washers so after a couple of calls and talking to Paul we came up with a perfect solution which got me within .002 of the stock specs and they work fantastic. If any of you are thinking of doing this get a good micrometer or caliper and get all the thickness's before you order parts. It will save you some grief Paul and Tom were great to deal with and sent me the corrected parts at no charge. The issue is that Okuma has used several different drag combination's over the years so for many of their reels it is a matter of getting the right mix of parts to go to the upgraded drags. This is not just a Okuma issue it applies to most reels as well as cars trucks boats and pretty much everything we buy anymore as they all buy parts as needed and make minor changes from production run to production run. Now for the big test to put some fish on them and see if they work as nice as they feel. Might have to do a couple float trips with them pulling plugs and see what a nice chrome fish feels like on them.

I have had my Depth Raider a long time now going into it's 6th season. The Fish Hawk is a great unit but has some things I don't care for. One big advantage to the Depth Raider is you can run multiple probes if you want which was my plan before the financial meltdown. Some day I may get back to it. The pure and simple answer is they all work and they all have issues. The one I would love to try is the Cannon unit with actual depth and light meter. If I could afford it I would have a probe on every rigger but most days I don't even run the one I have now.

Captain John reminded me the other reason my meat program went down hill I don't slow down anymore. Perhaps I should do as he suggested and setup a slow pattern, that might make more sense than selling all the gear I don't use anymore cause I won't slow down to run it correctly. The last few years my slow pattern is 2.5 or better most days I am pushing 3.0 to 3.5 or going from 4.5 to 2.5 all day and making turns to dial in speed and direction. This has left me with a lot of gear I don't run because it does not troll well that speed so maybe I will put together a slow pattern setup and mix some meat back in.

I guess at least here it is not much of a secret I got some advance samples of BW stuff. I have been using glow heads and beads for years and to be honest most of the ones I had in the past had a very dull glow at best that did not last long often making me wonder if it was still glowing once it was even set. When I got these I thought cool another glow head and beads but once I lit one up the difference is huge. While I am still not 100% sold on how much glow causes fish to bite I do know that if it causes them to come and take a closer look even if they pass on the glow they might hit on one of my other baits. Much like running plugs and meat rigs there are times they don't catch much but they do draw in fish so they improve the chance that you will get fish. And if you can think of anything you love to hear more than the sound of your wire diver screaming you are likely on the wrong website LOL.

Telling a bunch of fishermen to keep a secret may be the best form of advertising there is LOL. The way trolling flies were explained to me years ago was that the flasher was supposed to look like a fish hitting or missing a small bait fish or piece of bait fish. The idea is to trigger a bite by making the fish think he is stealing a meal from a smaller fish. This would explain some of the explosive hits we get on them.