1mainiac

agreed PURE BS

I don't make any single color flies just counted the desktop and have 26 in front of me plus the dozen in a bag I tied last week. Add in the couple hundred or more I have in the basement in my tackle and you can see where my illness has taken me LOL.

Personally I just love to night fish it is intense when you get it right and you have all day to figure out the weather pattern and check reports. Since the big bite is at the end of daylight you can scout the area for bait fish and a good spot to be at sunset. Morning fishing is often very iffy nothing worse then rolling out of bed at 4 am on your weekend to find the wind kicked up overnight and you drove all the way to the lake to not fish or try to fish in conditions you would not have driven over for.

You might consider Muskegon there are a couple of campgrounds on the lake and pretty good year round fishing with Muskegon lake as a backup if the weather blows you off the big lake. Pretty much can fish every day for the rest of your life here if you can put up with the weather.

I also have never understood that so i have been running more colors that match the spoons and rest of my spread Dark Blue with UV was killer many days last year. I also have a couple of yellow flies similar to Yellow tail spoons that worked good for me. Also white flies I run a lot.

I think a lot of it has to do more with the number of guys all running similar programs and having success. None of my flies have official names and I don't use a pattern to make them all of them work I tie a lot of reds and yellows and glows as well as UV patterns and have found many of them are depth and light condition dependent. I pretty much gave up on pre-tied flies years ago when I realized how little it costs to tie them. My problem is I tie way too many of them as it is a great way to work out the winter blues.

No problem guys for the last 3 or 4 years I have brought up the idea of a night fishing league and I always get a lot of people who would like to do it but never can get enough to agree to set a date and actually do it. I can get some sponsorship for it but if I can't get boats in it why bother. So what I may do is set several dates make it a fun only meet and greet with no prizes or entry fee and just see if anyone shows up side bets would be allowed.

I will be there again with a bunch of stuff to sell so sign me up Tim

I would like to do weekday evenings but can't get enough people to agree on a time and rules to make it work. Is funny every time I mention doing it people want to do it but then can't work out a schedule that works for more than a couple of boats. Oh well I doubt I will bother to bring it up again.

All the books and gear in the world won't beat learning how to fish a area from someone who knows the area go on some charters where you want to fish and get together with some of the guys here who fish where you do. Every port has it's own patterns the key is learning them and factoring in the weather changes and how they affect the patterns. Dan's book is great reading and a ton of info but find a friend who knows how to fish your area and make him fish on your boat. A lot of things have changed since some of the books were written water clarity changes from year to year even day to day and learning how to catch fish hundreds of miles from where you fish won't help much. I run completely different setups in Manistee then I do in Muskegon head to St Joe and it changes even more.

nothing better than taking your father in law fishing every time my wife complains about how much I spend on fishing I remind her I take her dad and he can't afford a lot of gear on a fixed income so I have to buy extra for him to use LOL.

anyone?

Been fishing that stretch for decades can't remember a skunk I wish I had a jet sled most days. I have a single pontoon that has made a few trips from Croton to Henning but I usually do Thornapple to Henning in it. The only issue is getting my wife or someone to drop me off upstream and leave my truck at the launch so I have a ride when I get back. I have a small outboard for it but when the river is fast in the spring motor or not it is a one way trip.

Generally I would start at a 9ft medium to light action rod longer is better however some rivers don't let you fish long rods well my go to rods for new water are a 10.5 ft St Croix spinning rod with Okuma bait runner reel. And for flies and Chuck and duck I use a 10ft 8wt that was custom made for me with a Okumq large arbor 9wt reel. I am getting into center pin fishing but have not bought a reel for my rod yet so it also has a Okuma bait runner reel on it now. Honestly if I could catch Steelhead in the rivers all year round I would consider selling my big lake boat. Cause the first time you get a 10lb or better Steelhead on light action gear with a 6lb leader in a fast section of river you will be addicted as well.

Ok I have not fished it much in years so not a lot of help there if you decide to fish the Muskegon river I could help cut down your learning curve. What is your equipment and tactic plan so far? Lots of options depending on what gear you have, we do good pulling plugs and running float setups but also trow flies and bottom bounce spawn at times.

Ok so I have been kicking around the idea of a night tourney for a couple years I still want to do it. Have not been able to make a weeknight schedule work so anyone up for Sat night thinking 5 events out of Muskegon. 30 dollar entry 20 towards best 5 fish box 10 towards biggest fish. Kinda open to names but leaning towards Midnight Maniac Challenge. Biggest issue I have is how many will fish it before I put a lot of time into it. This is not about me making any money cause I won't get a penny for doing it no membership fees just meet fish and see who wins. fish 6 till 10 weigh at 11 who's interested ?

What river you want to fish?

Just think how much it will save you when we all get free electricity from the windmills. LOL LOL LOL.

Sorry Terry you will have to fish 2 rods to be fair to others LOL

Not to pick on Dan but there is no actual number of cycles 70 to 100 is probably average but that is for smaller batteries that are seldom well maintained. For example a forklift battery can last for decades and they are run down and recharged daily. The biggest issue is most people have no idea what a cycle is and often go way past dead. Depending on cell type a battery is dead at roughly 10.6 volts however it will continue to work well past that voltage but becomes damaged as the damage accumulates they go dead faster and faster and the owner complains that he bought junk. I work on 12v systems all day every day and see guys who take care of their stuff get many happy years out of the same batteries other people consider junk.

You can purchase a battery isolator which is basically a set of diodes that control the direction of electrical flow. It has to be matched to the size of the charging system in amp rating this allows one alternator to charge multiple battery banks. If you are running a kicker with a charging system I would put it on it's own battery and run the riggers and electronics off it. Put your main engine on a separate battery and use it for starting only. Run the output from your main engine to the isolator input ant a output from each side of the isolator to each battery bank. Doing this will give you 2 separate battery systems that can both be charged by the main engine. And no switch's to flip or remember when you run out on the main engine it will make sure the aux battery is charged and when you run back it will again top it off. As to running batteries in parallel there are pro's and con's the first being that the batteries have to be closely matched so they can equalize correctly mismatched batteries in a bank are only as good as the worst battery. I will not replace a single battery in a set we change the set it just avoids problems. The Pro side is you can double the capacity of your system which reduces the chances of having a problem to begin with. Feel free to contact me and I can go into more detail.

I will be honest I mostly fish 8 rods however it is nice to fish 8 and be able to toss another one out while changing lures or even fighting a fish. Many times on rigger bites we will have a replacement rod back down before the fish is in the box which would mean even though we fished a 8 rod setup we would have 9 in the water at times. Also as much as I dislike Laker fishing every now and then I will put my pump handle setup down the chute. so to me if 3 guys are allowed 9 rods that should be the max and I never fish with less than 3 it costs too much to not use every thing you can to catch fish. I guess a second thing to consider is the fact it is legal to run attractors we got stopped by the DNR years ago and he was going to write us up for 8 rods till we pulled lines and showed him that 2 of the rods had no lures or hooks just spin doctors. so we were legal because we were only fishing 6 rods.

Can I ask why not just make it 9 rods so all 3 guys can fish. the 6 rod limit made it a 2 man event I can kinda understand that even if I disliked it. To me 8 rods makes zero sense kinda makes it a 2 and 1/2 man contest. I know there are a lot of days I don't run my full rod limit but that is weather and setup dependent. I know several will point out I did not fish a single event this season and I may not fish any next year either but the reason is simple for me it is a fun event that even if I win I can't cover my expenses and the rod limits mean I can't even just enjoy the day of fishing and donate my money at weigh in. Also I would move it entirely to Holland the setup there is way better than Port Sheldon and you don't have to risk your prop to get in and out of the launch. While it would cost me more to fish Holland I personally would be much more inclined to fish there than Port Sheldon and not polish my lower unit getting in and out.

Yep oil pumps can go bad and cause low oil psi if your motors are holding that good of psi at idle I sure can't see a problem. Like I said GM considers 7 psi or more to acceptable. PSI is not as important as maintaining oil flow and coming up with a way to cool the oil.

The only difficult part would be making the hyd lines which you should be able to have done and some you can do yourself. the install is straight forward mount the components in recommended locations connect the wiring and hyd lines bleed the pump to remove air. Personally I would do the entire install my self then pay them to verify and commission the system. A couple hundred bucks to have someone make sure it is ok and works would be money well spent and let them know that is what you want to do before you buy it if they won't do that shop somewhere else.