1mainiac

Once I have a combo I like I tie them together in the past I have also put bead swivels on a lot of my flies and added a snap to the flasher. But for the most part I go with less connections to break is better so I direct tie a lot of my setups. When you start thinking about it a lot of our setups have way to many connections that could fail a typ diver with a flasher fly has 7 or more connections that could fail. If you reduce that to 5 you have increased the chances of catching more fish by reduceing the number of failures you could deal with. There are times my wallet cringes when I think about how much money I hang on a peice of string with a dozen knots in it LOL.

There are several variables but generally I run longer leads on clean spoons 6 to 8 ft and tend to shorten up my flasher fly setups. I usually run 3 to 4ft leaders between the snubber and flasher. My reasoning is based on what a friend of mine told me several years ago when he talked me into not running meat rigs. That a diver is by no means a stealth presentation and if we pick our divers based on color to attract the fish make sure the lure is close to it. Speed and a few other things also play into it such as size and type of flasher Spin Doctors for instance for me work better on longer leads. The 11in Pro Troll paddles seem to like 6 ft leads as well but for the 8in Pro Troll's I like 4ft or less. Another reason for me liking shorter leads is it helps keep my gear from finding my other gear.

Green Splatterback UV and Yellow tail Ace Hi's for me

Never once do I think I have said they or anyone else is guilty. That is not the point the point is when several suggest they should change the rules to stop cheating my point is that people who cheat will find a way around pretty much any rule. My other points have been what are the legal recourse's for those caught cheating. Because I can see that for some even multiple witness's are not enough to prove guilt. While for others the results would be different do any of you actually think if it was you and not BC2 you would have been allowed to walk away to fish again? I have Quit during a few events and went fishing since I would not weigh my fish and even paid my entry fee that is not cheating. Had I weighed in and accepted the prize I would be cheating. If I or anyone else chooses to withdraw from a event that is their right to do so but you don't do that after you win and accept the money and the trophy that my friend would be cheating. All of you guys know what it costs to fish these days so frankly if I am in a fun event that even winning won't cover my boat gas and I decide to give up and just fish who is harmed, the answer is no one it actually improves everyone elses chances of winning. Honestly the Oh well it's over lets move on attitude about this major black eye to our sport makes me wonder just how many really think it is no big deal and that everyone does it.

Unfortunatly Mike that is the problem way too many people just want to move on and get over it. Cheating to win or even cheating and still losing is fraud as long as we allow it to go away the problem will never go away. Letting this go if they are indeed guilty of culling fish just means it is ok to break the rules to win. Perhaps we should give them the money and the trophy back. Sooner or later someone has to grow a spine and as much as I am sorry it happened to BC2 cause I always looked up to them if there is no rules enforcement then why have the rules? Or should we just ignore it because they are the best or are they the best because they have been able to stretch the rules for a long time. They know full well they pushed the rules which is why they withdrew if I accused you of cheating would you just walk away? Or as they did say everyone does what we did so it should be ok. Personally I think anyone who cheats should have to live with the possibility of going to jail as well as losing the right to play anymore and this should apply to any sport where money is a prize. Cause apparently just being able to call them names for cheating does nothing to stop the cheating.

I posted this on GLA but would like some opinions from you guys on it. Can someone correct me if I am wrong but since cheating in a tourney is fraud and in the amount of the LOC it would be a felony. How would the Coast Guard deal with a charter captain commiting a felony in his chater boat? I understand they do background checks before you can even apply for a license but I don't know what they would do after you have one? It would seem to me that any offense which this type of offense is if I remember is listed on the questionaire that can provent you from obtaining a license should also be grounds to remove the same license. I guess that some of the guys that think cheating is no big deal should look at all the possible penalties for doing it. So here is my list of possible penalties feel free to add more or correct me if I am wrong. Cheating to win a 7500 dollar prize amounts to fruad at a felony level. Cheating by the Rule book is grounds for a lifetime ban from the event. Commiting a felony while using your charter boat possibly with paying customers on board should be grounds to lose your charter license. Aside from just plain being a low class way to win have I missed anything? This in no way is meant to imply Guilt or not I am not the judge here this is just to discuss the possible outcome. Since the rules state Cheaters will be punished to the fullest extent of the law How far can this really go? Under maritime law the captain is fully responsible for the actions of his crew.

Personally I would use resin and hardener on both sides and the edges put a nice coat of gel coat on the edges and bottom and use a medium roller to put the gel coat on the top and you would have a non skid floor that will likely out live you.

There are several formulas one I use as a rule of thumb is 20% of trailer weight up to 1000# 15% of trailer weight up to 2000# 10% up to 5000# and equalized hitch above 5000# This will keep your tongue weight around 200 lbs till you get into heavy trailers and under 500 untill you go to a equalized hitch.

I don't think the rules really are the problem it is people who spend time trying to avoid the rules that are the problem. It is sad that often even amongst friends you have to have strict rules to keep people from cheating. Just like the rest of the country and the world for that matter no matter how many laws you pass it still requires people to follow them. People willing to cheat to win will always be willing to cheat to win even if they have to find a new cheat or try to find a gray area where there really is none. If we have gotten to the point we need a team of lawyers to write a set of cheat proof rules it is time to give it up. Cause there will always be another set of lawyers writing how to cheat under those rules. Don't mean to sound like lawyers are the problem but the fact is they are not the solution either, honor and honesty have taken a beating this month in our sport. You should be able to look your fellow man or woman in the face give your word and be done with it no documents required but sadly that is not the world we live in.

Well heck now that makes me feel a whole lot better 22nd out of 60 and never wet a line that is some fishing LOL. Guys I can assure you I would enter this every year even if I did not have a boat to fish in. Lets shoot for 100 entries next year sign me up today. Heck I might get my entire team to sign up individually that would be 4 teams on one boat I guess that would mean we could run 36 lines LOL. Just put Jay in his Kayak and tow him behind us. Or maybe get a couple of guys on Kayaks and use em as planer boards. Let them each run a 3 rod spread and we pull the rest up the middle. Guys no matter how you fish it or if you fish it this is a must enter event. Listening to last years family for a min tells you no matter what it was worth it. Cant wait to see the family from this year tell us about the bear hunt. It is the one event every year where I don't really care how well I do.

As to the AM class well it is called the cheaters ball by several people I know. I for one have no idea how any program other than clubbing the small ones off works in a no cull event. Perhaps they have retractable hooks on the lure like James Bond and can just push a button on the remote to dump small fish.

I don't think the issue was just reeling in skippers fast it more about clubbing them repeatedly with the net till they fell off. This was reported by several people including the observers on their boat for both days. Honestly Mike how many shakers do you lose in a year at the back of the boat? I am not all that good and I seldom lose one so if some stated they lost 4 smaller fish in a row what are the odds and by smaller he was talking 5 to 8 lb fish.

easiest way to learn is get someone to fish with you and your gear then you can work on what will work for your setup. You could come fish on my boat or others for that matter and see how we do it but what will help you the most is someone who knows where you fish and can figure out what will work best based on what you currently have. All of us have our goto setups and even though they are pretty much all about the same they all have some differences as well. Many of the patterns are made by every lure company with name changes and variations in color and such. And the bottom line is any or all of them can work. The flip side is there will be days when nothing you do will work that is up to the fish.

Well for me it was my best one ever we got up headed to the boat with lightning everywhere. After several calls we went to breakfast where we discussed our options which were wait it out and fish the slop after we missed the morning bite or grab my boat and head north till we cleared the storms and again miss the morning bite and spend a ton on truck fuel. Or we could call it a day save the money for a real fishing trip and buy a few extra tickets for the raffle we went with plan C And when Mark called to see what we thought I told him he could go back to bed. I went home took a nice nap and met Mark and everyone else at weigh in. Got to see the hog and know that we made the right choice and as luck would have it I won the Charter out of Holland and 4 hockey tickets gotta love it when a plan comes together. Other than opening my flies and flasher to rerig them the rest of my tourny pack is unopened so for the second year in a row I did not lose a lure and got to help another great cause. I know most would not be happy about tieing for dead last in a tourny but this one is about the kids and the extra money I had for tickets will help them much more then a winning box would have helped me. Looking forward to next year already.

Not about who is perfect and who is not however cheating is stealing and if someone steals from you do you really care if he is normally a great guy and popular with his friends? Not in one place have I seen anyone including them say they did not knock off fish. All they said in the paper was that they did not do anything other guys don't do to win which means they accept that they broke the rules but hey lots of other guys do the same thing so it is all fair. I have no personal say in the outcome of this however I do have the right to point out the obvious and that is if they cheated to win 7500 dollars they are guilty of a felony in this and most states probably the only place they would not be guilty is Washington DC cause it is clear they don't consider it theft till it runs in the billions there. Lots of us have paid to hear them talk and wished we could win like them do you still want to win like they do? How much have they cheated all of us who fish out of over the years? And frankly if there is any truth to what they said in the paper there are a lot of other cheaters fishing for our money. And like it or not that sponsor money comes from us we buy the stuff they sell and some of the cost of what we buy goes to making sure the Pro Staff is out winning with their stuff so we will buy more of it cause it wins. The Auto industry standard was win on Sun sell on Mon. Heck I am just a little above a complete nobody and yet if I posted a huge box and said they all came on a flasher fly combo I bet a few people would go buy them or start fishing them if they had em in their boat. How many guys will run that Spin Doctor and fly combo that caught the big fish in the Dreamweaver for the next couple of weeks? My bet is by Sat 1/2 the boats out of Muskegon have one at least of the guys who have internet. Heck I might even run it and I have not ran a Spin Doctor in years I have em just don't run em.

My point exactly I remember reading about a guy who won a truck by cheating in a tourney going to jail.

Sorry but it is not a done deal Cheating to win money is fraud in this case for 7500.00 dollars which in this state is a felony. Letting them walk after the event is no different then letting a bank robber give the money back. The observer on their boat Sat accused them of cheating yet they were allowed to weigh the box and fish Sun do you think they would have let you do that? Multiple boats protested them on Sun yet they walked up and took the check and the trophy I have no proof they cheated however if they did they are not only cheaters they are criminals. Sorry pretty much all cheaters are criminals because they are stealing something they don't earn or deserve. It don't matter if you cheat at golf or any sport if you gain something from it you stole it from someone else however in this case we are talking about felony level theft. There are lots of people doing hard time for taking much less than 7500 bucks. The statment that they did nothing that others have not done to win means that what they did is something they and quote others do all the time to steal from the rest of us who play by the rules. I guess now I know how they always have great boxes and I always end up with some shakers in my box cause I guess their big fish program includes clubbing the little ones of at the back of the boat. As for the rest of the guys in Pro Class they should consider sueing them for slander as BC2 pretty much outright accused all of them of cheating in print either that or admit they all cheat now and then to win.

I'll let mine go for half a million LOL. Either name is correct they are the same unit built by Koch industries and were marketed by Cabella's under one name and elsewhere under a different name.

I have one have not used it in a while but still not sure if I want to part with it as it took me months of searching to find it. There are a few out there and they show up on Ebay now and then. Problem is guys that use and know what they are seldom part with them I used mine to verify my dipsy program since I have speed and temp at the ball with my Depth Raider it was nice to be able to clip it on a diver or core and see what depth and temp it was really runnning at.

Storms going thru right now odds are fish will move south if I were choosing I would try Ludington and fish little point.

One thing that is a issue is the fact that the observer on the boat stated he knew very little about Salmon fishing and was not paying attention. If that is true then part of the blame should go to the team who provided the observer. Lots of theses guys are paid to be observers yet a few of them just go along for the boat ride. If the observer has no clue what is going on then all he is doing is taking a boat ride and filling out a sheet of paper for the captain to sign. I really have no issue with BC2 I have met them many times and they are always great guys to talk to lots of guys get sloppy with the net when they know the fish will cost them points. My issue is 2 things first better observers are needed and second this sets a new low point for our sport as now if caught cheating you can just withdraw? The sad part for BC2 is now they will be considered cheaters which has many already talking about how long they have been cheating when it was not proved either way so no way to get the stink off. I seriously doubt they tried to cheat or that they were the only ones having problems. The rules say you can't intentional knock off a fish says nothing about a accident so you have your best man net the big fish and your worst net the little ones. What is hard to prove is intent to cheat but bottom line is I would fish against them any chance I got cause they are among the best. Most of us know the difference between a clean net job and a lost fish is very minor but if what people say is true it is sad.

Certainly not going to accuse them of cheating but the big boys always seem to lose a lot of small fish and I am not meaning just Bill and Dave. I don't know about you guys but if I had won the Ludington event I would have fought the protests all the way if I felt I did nothing wrong. Sorry but they basiclly pled no contest to the charges which in court is a guilty plea where you hope for smaller charges in this case it means they can keep fishing in tourneys. Lots of ways to lose a fish at the back of a boat but when you see a team that nearly never loses a big fish miss 3 or 4 small fish at the boat in a row something is up. I am not talking about Bill and Dave either but fishing in tourneys the last couple of years I have seen it done several times. The reason I would not and did not protest is it is tough to prove it is intentional. But when you fish the same water with similar programs and at the end of the day you have a mixed box and the other boats only have big fish kinda makes you wonder.

Well the truth is there are a lot of guys who lose fish on purpose during a tourney. When you put a bunch of money on the line someone is going to push the rules. In a no cull tourney bringing in consistant boxes of all big fish when most of the feild has several smaller fish is tuff to beleive observer or not. Sometimes I wonder if some of them have scales built into their reels so they know which ones to lose. But I guess after you catch a few thousand you pretty much know what is on the other end. It is sad to see but not a bit surprised by it the funny thing is I doubt Dave and Bill would do it for money however to maintain their place as top boat maybe.

Normally I would say 3 to 4 hours but this year so far has been mostly tourny fishing or prefishing so all longer trips and less of them.

True and if you are fishing for a differant species you are ok and not your fault if the wrong fish bites. However fishing by yourself or with friends you are supposed to remove rods as you approach your limit. SO if you have 4 in the box towards a limit of 5 you should only have one rod in the water. So a box of 13 would leave one person done fishing no rods and the other 2 with 1 rod each as each of them only has 1 more fish to go. I realize this is not enforced and no one does it myself included but is how it was explained to me by a DNR officer a couple of years ago. I was asking him how come the charter boats keep every line in the water till they are done fishing he said they were in violation if they had more lines than fish to catch to limit. Again as we all know it is pretty much up to the officer as to what they choose to enforce and sometimes how much, like the discussion about fishing with children as if the officer feels the kid can fish he can run a full spread but if he decided the kid was too small to fish the gear you are using then you would be in violation.