1mainiac

Was on my list of tournies but not enough money to fish it maybe next year

11in Pro chip any color you want as long as it has blue or green or white in it fav's are blue bubble chrome and green and chrome and blue wonderbread also on top of list. Also get at least one of the new UV paddles I have several and they have been working great this year.

No problem but the way you said it sounded like you kept 4 Coho's and 2 kings and I have seen many people misunderstand how the limits work. I watched a guy try and argue with a CO one night that his Walleye and Bass would not be under the same limit since they were differant fish. I am sure he lost LOL. And yep we have all had extra fish now and then but as was explained to me by a CO you are supposed to remove lines as you approach your limit. No one I know does it but that is the Quote correct way to do it. So by the rules if you are one fish short of your limit you should only have one rod in the water who does that LOL. Last Sept we got our limit of Steelhead one morn and as we pulled lines got 4 more they were nice fish kinda sucked to have to release them but the rules are the rules I guess if I had pulled lines as we approached our limit I would not have caught them but heck if anyone asked I was Salmon fishing with the other lines LOL.

FYI unless one of those fish was a walleye or non Trout or Salmon you were over the limit for a solo trip. Glad you did not get caught. Sounds like a nice trip .

That motor has to drop down to roughly 650 rpm to shift does it have a hard time shifting? Something is not right we had the same motor on a 17 ft bass boat and it would troll all day long a friend of mine has a 60 which is pretty much the same motor with smaller carbs and it will troll all day long but does run a bit rough below 700 and will foul a plug now and then so he carries a set of plugs.

What Nick said about the Dolefin could be right however if the boat is designed correctly it should be out of the water on plane any how if the Dolefin or whatever name is on it is still in the water on plane something is wrong either you are over loaded or have your weight in all the wrong places.

Never heard of such a motor who makes this motor that was not designed to idle? My 89 350 will sit at 600 rpms all day the newer electronics improve low speed idle. Sorry I have to call the BS card on the person who told you that crap. Get a real mechanic to look at it the one thing I love about the new engines is that you can get them to do several things well vs when I started building motors back in the late 60's as a kid and thru the 70's when you either set it for general purpose driving which would run good but never great or you set it to run great at one purpose and lived with what it did the rest of the time.

actually you can run small divers behind boards however it is a suicide setup as it has to go on the outside and go out first. You run the small diver on 0 send out the line you need for the depth you want to run clip on a board and send it out. Here are the problems number one your boards won't track for crap as they will be pulling a ton number 2 it is a optimistic setup because if the fish does not trip the diver you are screwed and must pull any inside gear to get it back in. I tried it many years ago and it did work to a degree and used to use mini divers behind boards for walleye because you could get them down about 15ft and run a longer lead behind them cause Walleye don't fight like salmon at the back of the boat. If you want deep and wide copper on boards is the best bet. There are lots of ways to do this but when you get a lot of gear going the odds of knitting a ugly sweater increase big time.

The fish Sat were up near Duck Lake to Whitehall Sun they were closer to the point. We got our only 3 fish Sat south of the nets in 144ft all on flies and all 3 in under 45min as we were preparing to pull lines and go in skunked. Sun we fished Duck Lake but the fish had all moved north made for two long days.

The primary thing the fin does is to stabilize the drive at idle speed if you adjust it you will move the drive position at trolling speed. It is possible but unlikely that it would effect trim at speed unless you are not actually tracking correct at low speed. The first thing I would do is find out if your drive is running true this means make sure the drive is completely straight behind the boat and mark the wheel position. Then take the boat out and run it with the wheel in the marked position. If the boat runs straight the fin is correct. If not adjust the fin to get the boat to track straight once it tracks straight then see if it helps you with trim. Set correctly you should be able to let go of the wheel on calm water and the boat should continue to track.

I have both Off Shores and Z Boards and love them both really like the Z Boards for copper and heavy gear as they are bigger. Honestly they pretty much all work and all have the little quirks you need to get used to. I hated my Church boards and put them in a yard sale soon after I bought them but have lots of friends who love them. I have done several mods to my Off Shore boards and untill I bought the Z Boards thought they were the best. The Z Boards flat out ran better out of the box than any board I have every ran or seen run but however they also have some quirks and need a bit of fine tuning because if you get them pulling to fast they will dive and trip. Z Boards however has a nice 6 board package that will give you 2 copper boards 2 full core boards and 2 high line boards. Good luck you will figure it out.

Yep but I hope it is over cause has been a bad month so far and days like this have my wife talking about selling the boat. And make me want to start drinking again LOL.

I would have to say work was looking pretty good several times. Can't say how many times I tried to figure out what my final bill would be for the weekend or Marks for that matter. I did not mention that we lost another cannonball today cause the Blacks release broke below the probe thank God. July has not been nice on my wallet so far we have had problems we have never had and in bunches. The funny thing is we had a couple of knocks offs that came up empty but we did not lose a single fish that was hooked up when we got to the rods. And to top it off I just remembered that I needed to put the canvas back on the boat in the pouring rain. I almost said to heck with it and left it open what the heck it is insured.

I would call it a a tourney from #$^%$ our weekend in the Muskegon Shootout started with my boat dieing as we left the dock to go stage for the start. So we had to transfer to Marks boat which was 28 miles away. Broke a brand new 300 copper rod while setting up finally and fished for 6 hours to come in with 3 small fish. Thought oh well I guess we have been due for a bad day sort it out and try and make a comeback on Sunday. Left this morning with a solid game plan only the front that moved thru took all our fish away with it SO we sat down on a empty hole but grabbed a nice Brown so that was a bonus to get a Brown on a 300 copper with a plug on it. Spent the rest of the day going the wrong way looking for fish and ended up with 4 only to have Marks boat start running like crap and having to nearly troll in. We made weigh in with our little box and thought we at least won the Combo 333 but missed by roughly a pound. Helped Mark put new plugs in his boat took it for a short run and he went to run it back. It made it back but was messing up again when he got there so is likely we both got a batch of bad fuel this weekend. The sad part is had my boat ran we would have been on the fish Sat Morn and likely would have followed the pack up on Sun. But seeing we had a 22lb 3 fish box and there were several 100 lb plus 10 fish boxes we spent the day looking for a kicker fish for our combo box but even though our Brown and Steelhead were bigger we got beat by a bigger King. So missed the 500 dollar combo by roughly 1 pound. I guess all in all we still made the best of it and had we followed the pack to the Point we would likely still be there cause we would not have made it back. On the bright side we found that having Steve drinking beer on the swim platform with his feet in the water and Jay joining him after the first fish Sat landed us 3 fish in the last 45 min before we had to pull lines and run in so we did not get skunked and we were never in last place. We ended up 25th out of 34 and maybe that is not bad for all the problems we had.

Nice job we started the Tourney with a dead boat had to row back to the dock with our net. Then had to transfer everything to Marks boat 20 miles away and run back got our first fish at noon ended the day with 3 fish and 52. points not a good start to our big tourney but hey there is always tommorrow and we could make a come back.

Steelhead primarily will be in the top 40 ft or so sometimes deeper but usually a 5 color or less bite and go fast if you can run divers you are not going fast enough. My Steelhead program start middle of next month usually. I will run my riggers down 60 and 50 and the rest is all cores wide and fast depending on how many rods I can run but will pound the top 30ft and up with bright spoons Yellows Oranges and Reds are primary colors. When you are on the bite it can be insane as you can have 5 or more on at a time and often you will see fish jumping behind the boat before you see a rod go. When all them guys are banging into each other and cussing on the radio I at peace in deeper water pounding Steel. Last year on Labor day weekend we were sorting fish in 250ft of water by 9 am every day while the war was on out front was a great weekend.

My 18ft Starcraft is a tank and runs 27 with 4 fat guys and all the gear with a old 80hp Merc, a 115 on a 18 aluminum hull has got to be close to max hp on the hull. It might not beat a bass boat but on flat water it will fly I would guess mid 30's to 40 mph Oh yea and pass without a water test.

Nice job Don got to take my grandkids out the other day 6 yr old and a 8 yr old what a blast.

Personally I run mostly Ace Hi blue splatter back green splatterback yellow tail are my favs I also have a few of the new UV Ace Hi's but no reports on them yet.

3rd event results BOAT NAME BIG TOTAL TOTAL TOTAL FISH FISH WEIGHT POINTS KEEPIN-R-WET 15.65 10 98.7 198.7 CHARLIES ANGEL 12.35 10 76 176 FISHSNIFFER 15.65 9 70.9 160.9 REEL OBSESSED 13.25 10 59.7 159.7 DOUBLE J 14.75 9 60.7 150.7 WIND DRIFT 7.9 8 33.3 113.3 7MARY3 13.7 6 41.1 101.1 INREELTROUBLE 16.7 4 48.1 88.1 1 MAINIAC 11.6 4 31.15 71.15 WAY COOL 13 3 17.85 47.85 DIRTY WHITE BOY 6.3 1 6.3 16.3 HIGH SEAS 0 0 0 0 Congrats to KEEPIN-R-WET for kicking all our butts special thanks to WAY COOL, DIRTY WHITE BOY AND HIGH SEAS for not making me come in last LOL.. Also congrats to INREELTROUBLE for taking big fish. It was a bit lumpy with 1 to 3 ft in close and 2 to 4 out deeper. Sadly for me I could not force myself to drive over the fish that were right out front I also could not force them to bite anything I offered them. by the time we moved out to the fish the bite had died down so a lesson learned don't follow me. All in all a pretty good day on the water every boat got a nice lure or prize package and again guys remember to thank our great sponsors for those prizes cause they really are the ones to thank for this and letting them know you appreceate their support will help when we do this again next year.

Sounds great Rob looking forward to it. Guys we have 13 hours till start time there have been some pretty good boxes brought in this week so it should be a great day. It won't be flat but no sign of any weather to keep us from fishing. See you all in the morning.

In the words of a old friend who whenever asked what he was doing he would reply Knitting a sweater whats it look like I'm doing. After a couple hours of trying to un knit a sweater I'll be shopping tommorrow I can probably save the copper but it will take some serious time which I don't have and the lead core is soup. So I have to pick up 3 spools of core and 1 300 copper. I guess the bait shop will be happy to see me again LOL. I will post some picks in a bit I also have all the picks on my facebook page. We fished with the wind at our backs from 95 to 155 most of the action was 60 to 80 dn and all the fish came on my homemade flies.

We ran north to just south of the nets put the boat on a south troll in 95ft all but one fish came on braid divers set on 1.5 180 back Glow Frog Pro Troll with one of my flies took 2 fish, Chrome scale Pro Troll with another of my flies took 2 fish. UV Pro Troll with one of my glow flies took a fish on a 7 color with a 4oz dive bomb. turned back in 155ft and trolled same line back got last fish on return troll. 4 hours 5 for 8 not bad for letting 2 kids do nearly all the fishing. I should also thank everyone else for staying off the lake last night cause I set the boat up with the wind and never touched the wheel for 3 hours it drove itself.

Big thanks to Jay ( ICEMAN08 ) for helping me take my grandkids fishing it was a adventure they will likely never forget. I know I won't things started out ugly as we lost both 300 coppers and the first fish at the same time since the first fish took the port 300 copper thru the port diver and into the starboard copper. We lost the fish but retreived all the copper and the lures so we put dive bombs on the full cores and on a 7 color the second hit took out the 7 color and a full core and got off so we were down 6 rods and nothing in the box. And people wonder why we have over 20 rods setup on the boat LOL. Any how got the divers rerigged sure am glad I run a full spool of braid my grandson got bored of watching Jay and me try and untangle fishing equipment and went below to take a nap. We were making good progress on the copper mess when the port diver went off so I dumped the copper pile in a bucket and cleared the area and we sat my grand daughter in the chair with the rod and she reeled in about a 8 lb King. We were reseting that when the starboard diver hit could not get Maleik out of the cabin so Skylar got to reel in another fish much nicer around 12 lbs 2 in the box starting to feel better when Jay says the full core is tangled up so I grab it to clean up another mess feels like a tangle nothing but weight but as I reel it in none of the other gear is affected pulled the board and the dive bomb still heavy then a fish hit the surface behind the boat. About the time Jay gets ready to grab the net the port diver goes nuts so I am on my own and hand lined in a 5 lb King. It is starting to get late so I turned the boat around Malaik woke up sick and we got him to come up in the fresh air which helped him feel better and the starboard diver fired again and Maleik gets to fight his first King ever after a long battle with several runs a 14 to 15 lb king slids into the box and my grandson can say the first fish he ever caught was a 14lb King salmon though since he is now a fisherman it will be a 50lber by the time he is my age LOL. Final score Grandpa 1 for 1 Skylar 3 for 3 Maleik 1 for 3 Jay was perfect all night as other than the one I hand lined in he finished the battle for the kids to bring them to the net he also coached the kids and helped them with every fish but the best job he did besides being a great friend was getting the 16lb king to the net as it went totally nuts at the back of the boat running back and forth thru all the gear several times I have no idea how he kept all the turns the fish took straight but after a good 10 min battle the fish was back in the clear behind the boat and he pulled it in and I netted it. Cost of torn up gear yet to be determined, having a friend give up a night of fishing to help your grandkids more than words can say, seeing the look on your grandkids faces when they catch fish allmost as big as them PRICELESS.

Not too late can sign up anytime we meet out front at 6am fish on honor system and you can pay at weigh in. I will be at Grand Trunk boat launch at 5 am if you want to meet before we fish. Chk in via radio on ch 72 at 5:45 am with all the expected boat traffic weigh in will be at Grand Trunk boat launch. Weather boat will be out by 5 am if we expect any weather changes we fish pretty much Pro rules in a fun format. Rules are about the same as most Pro Am events only no Pro class and open radio. DNR 3 man limit on fishing rules weigh up to 10 fish 10 points per fish plus weight. So far every boat has received a lure package in each event this varies as each event has differant sponsors but we have several who sponsored all 5 events we put all sponsor prizes in packages and draw boat names till we run out of boats or prizes. Lots of cool stuff so far can't beleive we have had such low turnout but it is a new tournament hopefully the next 3 will pick up some steam and we will get more boats. Look forward to seeing you guys there Sat morning.