1mainiac

close to half or more of the flies on my boat are my own and even the store bought ones have my hook and leader on them for the most part.

I like the Diawa rods I am not a big fan of their reels but not because there is anything wrong with them. For rigger rods I tend to run 8ft 6in medium light and medium rods for the action. My fav rigger rods are Diawa Firewolf ML 8ft 6in rods which is about the same as the Heartland rod but was a few bucks cheaper. For a inexpensive rod to run core it is hard to beat the Diawa Wilderness rods. For wire and copper Shimano or Okuma depending on your budget. I was hoping Diawa would come out with a copper rod this year but I have not seen one yet.

Big Jon captains pack run about 7 amps so the rigger should run around 16 hours continous off that battery. You should be fine.

Andrew the results you are posting are no supprise relax a bit after noon fishing is not here yet. early to mid morning should be a better bite in close 12 to 20ft of water body baits and spoons. and work the mud lines around the peirheads for walleye and fallbacks with the chance at a Brown or salmon mixed in. I have not even started to prep the boat yet to fish have just been doing some minor changes and some layout changes. Soon very soon it will be time.

Classified section is free to supporting members and every now and then Mike lets it run for free to anyone. Best thing if you want to sell stuff is become a supporting member it is much cheaper than having to pay for ad's and you can list as much as you want then.

We gave up landlines over 10 years ago cell bill is now over 100 a month landline starting to look pretty good. The cell is nice a a conveince but honestly I often look at the bills and wonder what we would do if we saved all the extra money from Cable Internet and cell phones every month. Thats a easy 200 a month we could spend fishing and having people not be able to get ahold of me some days would be a plus LOL.

Sampo Swivels with Duo Lock snaps

Lots of gray areas here due to lack of enforcement. Legally no Swearing, Identify yourself at the start of a transmission, End of a transmission and at least 1 time every 10 min during a transmission. On a Marine radio you identify yourself by vessel name for normal chat and vessel name, discription and location for emergency or priorty calls. If you were to have a emergency the proper call would be for my boat. MAYDAY MAYDAY MAYDAY THIS 1 MAINIAC 1MAINIAC 1MAINIAC WE ARE A 26FT FOUR WINNS BLUE WITH WHITE TOP LOCATED NW OF MUSKEGON IN 120FT OF WATER WE ARE SINKING AND NEED ASSISTANCE MAYDAY MAYDAY MAYDAY pause and wait for a response at least 10 to 15 seconds and repeat. That call would be made on ch16. The funny thing is in a emergency there is a protocall but no rules you can use any means to summon help this is how people get away with having huge amplifiers on CB as they simply say it is for emergencies only and then they have to be caught useing it illegally to bust them. This may help as well however even if you learn all the rules you will seldom run into anyone who uses them LOL. http://www.navcen.uscg.gov/marcomms/boater.htm

gps and down speed are all that matters none of the speed wheels are very accurate. In 1 to 3 ft waves my old unit read up to 2 mph when anchored just from the waves passing under us.

Even though I am a Ford fan untill they get the mileage back up the Dmax is the truck right now. Unless you get a older Ford my 7.3 will likely out live me but the ride is not as nice as a Chevy. But i don't buy a truck for a nice ride it is a plus but I buy a truck to work to death and hard to work the older Fords to death the D Max is the best setup GM ever put in a pickup with the Alison trans it is pretty hard to beat today.

Got you down Tyler I have the room on my boat but want everyone to have the same chances. So rather than just have the sponsors ride with Don or me I came up with this idea so hopefully no one will have a problem with it.

I have 2 boats signed up for sponsor rides so far 7Mary3 and PulpFishin as of right now we don't have a comfirmation on a sponsor for the first event yet but are still working on it. My original plan was to have them ride with Don or me but did not want anyone to think we were giving ourselves a unfair advantage and thought it might be more fun for all involved if we let everyone have a chance at getting a ride along. By doing it this way it will be completely random and hopefully a good chance for guys to learn a thing or 2 on their own boat.

Nearly all AP will hold a good course they are smart enough to learn your boat and adapt to current condidtions. You only need a NMEA GPS if you want to use it to plot a course or provide waypoints all AP's hava a compass as part of the system. If it is cable steered your I/O should be able to be setup with a A/P depending on how much steering effort it takes to turn the wheel. If you have Hyd steering even better if you have a older Mercruiser no power steering and want to switch it to hyd steering send me a PM I have a steering cyl I don't need. Personally I have held off on a AP for 3 years with the hopes of getting a hyd system on my boat.

Very cool Nick I will be wanting to go for a ride with you and check it out because if it works it would be much cheaper than my current plan and maybe I could do it this year.

Well just a few weeks till the first event which is the Silver Streak Open and we are working out the details. Don and me have decided on a slight change in how we give out sponsor prizes all prize money will be paid down to roughly 25% of the field pay out will still be 100% of entry fees we are not keeping anything except the membership fee to cover our expenses. As it currently stands we need 40 boats to break even so this is not about us making anything never has been this was about running a fun event. In keeping with that plan we are taking all of the sponsor provided prizes for each event and will draw boat numbers for each prize every boat will have one entry and we will draw numbers till all sponsor prizes are given out. This gives everyone a couple ways to win something you can fish for dough or draw for prizes. Or even have a chance at both. Now for something else I have been working on which is still up in the air a bit as to who will show. I have asked all of our various sponsors to try and make a event if they can you will now see all of our events also have sponsor names. Here is the deal several of our sponsors are unable to fish by rule or due to not having a boat in the area. So here is my plan I would like a list of boats who can make room for a sponsor on their boat for each event some of this will be fairly last minute as scheduals can change. So we need good contact info for those who sign up for this. However what I am planning is simple if I have a sponsor able to make a event who cannot provide a boat or by rule can't fish we will draw boat names and put them on a boat as a observer who can fish and help you out as a team member with no restrictions. This means you could have a Pro Staff member on your boat helping you fish they can act as a full team member. So if you would like to have a chance to fish with a Pro and have some room on your boat for a event let us know and make sure we can contact you once we have a list of available seats we will draw names anytime we can get a sponsor here to ride along. One other advantage to having the sponsors at events is there is always a chance they could bring extra goodies along with them. I should have a complete list of sponsor prizes for each event sorted and ready by next week but as it currently stands we have a lot of cool stuff to pass out.

The trick to free sliders above Spinnies is putting a short leader between the flasher and your snap I have done it with good success. I add a 6ft leader after the snap swivel and put on a flasher fly then as long as your slider leader is not longer than your leader to the flasher you have no problems. Usually I run fixed sliders when doing this and keep it just a few feet above the ball. It is not something I do very often but will break it out when combat fishing I also have done it on my divers though I don't think I have ever caught a fish on one above a diver.

most guys I know who use buckets run them roughly the same as I used to remove the handle throw it away punch a hole in the bottom of the bucket and run the rope thru it take a peice of plywood and make a circle smaller then the bottom of the bucket run the rope thru it as well tie a knot in the rope behind this to use as a stopper. Personally I would glue the board to the bottom of the bucket but it does not matter. Have enough rope in front of the bucket to reach the cleat of your choice in front and enough after the knot to stay in the boat for bucket retreival. Now your options I always cut the top of the bucket at a angle and put a rope guide on the short side of the bucket this kept the bucket cocked and gave it some planing action away from the boat so it would not bang on the boat. Done correctly it will ride out and not bang the boat.

I feel your pain Nick but this is why I have not been in a big rush to buy a low end AP. Personally the final answer is to go to Hyd steering and if need be live with just that for a year as that at least allows me to let go of the wheel knowing it won't turn on it's own. I still need to sell off a few things to get the money for Hyd Steering as this years budget is still very tight and unless my job becomes full time my fishing is going to be limited to a few trips here and there and some tournies. I am not looking forward to filling the gas tank on the boat at all.

Untill I market my design bags are the way to go I should finish this design and find a market for it.

The leader material is tougher I only use it for making Flies and short leaders like my sliders and between the diver and flasher. I use P Line Flouroclear for long leaders.

Sat was bad but Fri afternoon was worse we only got 1 small Coho Fri afternoon good thing Scott brought lots of free food or we would have starved LOL. We managed 4 fish Sat but we covered a lot of water to do it We started a little north worked out front a while then work south then we ran down to the Cook plant and worked back north. It was tough fishing for everyone.

Very nice pics Jay

Just got back in a little bit ago not even sure where we placed ended up with 4 fish a 7lb King and 4 Coho's so I guess 55.04 points wherever that put us. Had a great time but fishing was slow we spent most of the early morning in deeper water working the edges of the mud hoping to find a few nice kings then trolled to the junk cars. That was not working so we pulled gear and ran south to the Cook power plant and trolled north picked up most of our fish on a north troll south of the A Frames. We got to test drive my new Z Boards we were very impressed in all conditions they pulled great. 300ft from the boat they were ahead of Mark's Church boards in fact they pulled so well we had several issues with them being in front of inside gear and causing us to tangle lines. I am pretty sure Mark will agree they are so far some of the best boards we have ever pulled as far as getting your spread wide and working.

Overcast can prolong the feeding period however even on overcast days the light angle is high meaning it penatrates deeper into the water. The light angle and color spectrum it provides is the biggest key. Think like a theif you don't want the light shining on you but you want some light on your target so you can see it. Ideally as the sun comes up or goes down you have a period where only the top 20 to 30 ft of water gets light this gives the entire food chain a dinner bell. Many times when we are out fishing in the evening we will miss our mark and be in what should be dead water and yet still pull several fish this is because of the dinner bell going off and since we were there the fish came to us. My evening fishing pattern is simple find the bait fish early mark them then I head offshore for Steelhead with the plan of being back near the baitfish at sunset. When I am on target the results are amazing several times we have had every rod on the boat fire within a matter of minutes. One night we went 7 for 10 in about 45min had 5 on at one point could not reset lines it was just a fire drill we were dumping the fish on the floor and pileing the rods forward still hooked to the fish while we fought other fish for 3 guys in a 18ft boat it was cool. Nothing better than deck loading kings with a boat that looks like a bomb went off in a bait shop LOL.

First it has to do with the fact Salmon like sharks can't sneak up on anything in well lite water. They need some light to see to feed so they are low light preditors based on the idea of using the least amount of energy to feed. To do this they must be able to get close low light conditions allow this. They are also cycloic feeders much like us however they are to me more like 3rd shift workers. I see it this way they wake up in the early evening and have breakfast based on whatever is close to them. As darkness settles in they move into warmer water and begin to herd the bait fish sometime around midnight they have lunch taking whatever they can grab easy. As dawn approaches the light angle lights the upper water column allowing them to see the bait while still hiding in the darker water underneath and they begin supper. Once full they become more neutral and begin to slide off to bed which can be moving out to deeper colder water or just laying on the bottom depending on the water temp. That's my theory anyhow for mid summer fish Spring fish and staging fish however seem to stay in the bait zone all the time and eat any time they have room in their stomach for more food.