1mainiac

Thanks guys out 13 times and zero skunks this is first time I only got one fish been avg between 5 and 8 per trip but only 2 on Sat night and one last night my butt was dragging at work today.

Water is warming up no fish to find heard no one out of Muskegon bragging about catching fish. Got a 4 lb King on a full core with a Blue Dolphin spoon in 105 FOW thats it no more to report covered alot of water for one little fish. But on the bright side my brother was up from KY and I let him have the rod so he caught the only fish. Hey I told him if he came up he would catch a Salmon so I kept my word. Down temps were decent but surface water is climbing fast spots that were 54 last night are 63 now also a fairly strong current out in 130FOW running NW water was 46 deg 40 down bait ball I found last night was long gone. Tough fishing.

The Klincher is made of high density Plastic and will not conduct electricity so you put the loop in to connect the wire to the snap. The Depth Raider sends its signal up the downrigger cable so has to be electrictly connected to the cable. Also since it is a low voltage signal the connection should be insulated hence the water proof tape and the coated downrigger cable.

With my wire setups I guess about 2 to 1 with a mag dive set on 1.5 no ring. Shallower is a little less than that but in general I figure about 120 out to hit 60 and on my regular setup I figure 120 out hits around 40 dn.

Pretty easy to set up mount the unit and hook up 12vdc to it run the antenna lead to the rigger. Mount the antenna pick up on the rigger boom and run the downrigger cable thru the antenna pickup. The antenna pick up location will vary depending on your downrigger on my riggers I mount it between the pulleys so it does not get affected by cable movement. Get a Klincher terminator and remove the snap rivet and replace with a small stainless bolt. here is a copy of a pic on how to set it up.

My brother called and canceled this morn so going out again this evening. Will give a report when I get back in.

Great night on the water lake was flat so was the fishing. We got a 11lb Steelhead on a 5 color DBL Orange crush 20 min after we set lines. Then washed lures for a couple hours and lost one on a diver and resumed washing lures. Marked a lot of baitfish and a few huge schools of what I assume were Whitefish on the bottom. Turned around and headed back in at 135ft water was warming up as we went out no clear temp breaks just pockets of colder water on top did not have my boat so no probe. Surface temps ran from 53 in 70ft to 58 in 135 ft took another big Steelhead in 75FOW same rod and lure. Just after sunset had a hit on a rigger that took the slider and left with it he never slowed down just took line till he broke off and left with the lure. And then we turned east and drove in 2 for 4.

Heading out in about a hour thanks for the report will add mine later also am planning on fishing in the morn.

I am in it now and want to say Thanks to Joel who waived the late entry fee because my son is flying in from Afganistan to fish it with me. He has wanted to fish a tournament with me for years but has always been deployed. The last time he was home in the summer was on a non tournament weekend. So it looks like I get a week to fish with my son and my grand daughter. Really can't afford to do it but every now and then you have to say WTF and go for it, this is one I am not going to miss.

Specs say 31in draft but with all the gear and 3 or 4 guys is closer to 38in just tired of having to idle with my drive up to protect my prop and still turning up mud. And my kid just called this evening and wants to fish the Muskegon tourney and best of all he is buying the entry fee.

Mine is probably in Chicago by now was last seen headed SW in close to 300ft of water out of Port Sheldon.

No problem Mark I thought it was a great idea and since this is really not about winning any real money cause no matter how you do the math there is no way to make much if any money doing this. I really doubt anyone in any tournament really makes much money even winning the TT events by the time you figure in what you have invested. I guess I can say that I won a GLFTT event maybe add that to my signature line LOL but heck I dropped more than I won into the boat gas tank and it did not even burp LOL. So for me this is about fun and friends my problem is I dislike Port Sheldon since it has polished my lower unit a few times my wife refuses to fish there. It seems like there were more boats fishing in it last year but I don't remember for sure in any event I am going to stick to deeper water.

Low voltage would be my guess without using my meter to do some research. To put it in simplest terms your trolling motor or nearly any electrical load is using watts more watts more power. Watts is volts times amps so as voltage decreases ampreage increases or power is reduced. The end result is heat is produced unless you have a really huge battery bank the 8 hour troll likely damaged your battery system. I ran my 18ft Starcraft in on my Minn Kota a few years back when my lower unit seized up it took over 6 hours to get back to the dock using 2 group 27 deep cycle batteries and a 55lb thrust Minn Kota. Both batteries were destroyed they would still charge up to correct voltage but when I ran my battery analzer on them they tested at around 15 amp hours each instead of the 115 amp hour they are rated for. Thankfully they were under warranty. Depending on a few factors your trolling battery is dead at around 10.5 volts and needs to be recharged your trolling motor will only slow down at this voltage and will continue to run down to nearly zero volts reduceing power as it goes down. Take the amp hour rating of your battery and divide it by the amp draw of your motor and that will tell you what the max run time is in hours IE a average group 24 is around 95 to 105 amp hour battery and if your trolling motor is using 20 amps you have about 5 hours of useable time if you use a rough conversion I have used for years a 55lb thrust motor is about 1hp give or take this is a little over 700 watts at full power which on a fully charged battery at 13.2v is 53 amps or about 2 hours run time. The battery will continue to put out voltage and the motor will continue to run but you are now occuring damage to the system.

Terry I have been thinking of the same thing I would like to get a few guys to do some night fishing during the week. Mike discussed it last year just not sure if we could get a group together and work out the rules. I was thinking of just a side bet deal biggest fish wins 5 or 10 bucks a boat weigh in at 11 pm. Or even skip the money entirely and just see who can bring in the best box not sure yet need more input.

Guys it really is not just the money I did not want to fish Port Sheldon in my boat at all I don't like the place. It is too shallow for my boat all the paint that is missing from my lower unit was lost fishing there. In both events we have discussed DQ ing ourselves and just fishing. When Nick mentioned going to 9 lines at the last event I figured what the heck one more trip won't kill me and might be more fun with the extra lines. I just can't see risking my lower unit and prop to fish in a fun event. Just like last year when Sixshooter took over to finish up and said he was going to move it out of Fishermans Landing I told him to drop me from the list then he left it at Fishermans and I fished them. I got into this last year because it was a charity event and sounded cool to have some fun. I have met some great people but I still hate fishing out of Sheldon and if your boatwas as close to dragging bottom as mine was you would likely feel the same.

Well I don't have a engineering degree but my gut feeling is no one reason for the smaller tubes is they reduce the flow thru each tube allowing for more heat transfer. Even the huge heat exchangers we used on big ships have small tubes in them.

Captains Pack are good up to 12 lb balls

Once you see one apart you will be amazed how simple it is but the funky tools needed to get it apart are way overpriced. Basiclly the shifter is a plunger with a pin that connects to the sliding gear it has a spring behind it which pushs it into forward gear. There is a cam and pawl that pushs it back to go into neutral and further back to go in reverse. Go out and see if your prop will move forward and back there should be nearly no movement if it moves you rear carrier is loose or damaged. If it does not move odds are you have a worn shifter pin and galled up gears. Actually you likely need new gears anyway if they have been grinding.

They are not very hard to work on Joel but the special tools that you need to do it are expensive. Only a few bolts to drop the lower unit off pull it and start the engine breifly to make sure the grinding is in the lower end. I have had several apart but don't have all the tools I have a friend who does it for a living maybe we could get together and check it out. I can tell you that the labor won't be to much but if it is what I think the parts will be a couple hundred bucks or more. I spent 270 on parts rebuilding mine on a 80hp Merc.

I am not fishing for the money but can still do the math I love to fish and I am fairly competetive so can have fun at a small tourney. I really don't think anyone in this can't run more than 6 rods I haven't seen anyone in a rowboat yet. I personally love to run 12 rods and stay busy cause even when the fish are not biting you are constantly making changes to your spread but with 6 lines you don't get very many choices to figure out what will work. And you can't really dbl up on anything without giving up on something else first. So if I can't win any money and it is not much fun why enter?

I don't do much trig but I am living proof you can spend most of your life wasted and still have a few brains even if the last IQ test did only come out in the mid 130's. But hey only about 20 points below the 154 I tested in High School but I can assure you I had a blast burning out those brain cells.

My decision is only slightly based on the lack of rule change we were already discussing not going back to Sheldon after the last event. When the discussion of going to a 9 rod event came up I decided to give it one more try. I even talked to friend with a 17ft boat about fishing on his boat and he was not interested in fishing with 6 lines. I don't care for how close the bottom is to my drive as I have removed a lot of paint off it in just a few trips there. I can setup 20 rod holders and have 23 rods on board so running over 40 miles total to fish 6 rods the last time had us discussing giving up on the tourney and running a full spread and if not for the fact based on radio reports we were well in the lead at 9:30 in the morn we might have done it. If I had kept my mouth shut we probably would have won cause we were the only boat on fish and out that deep. We were sorting fish and upgrading before anyone else had their 5.

Hey Mike looks like you got your 3 any chance of getting them to make a good deal on a 4th and have a paying field tester cause i would be interested if they don't cost too much for a poor fisherman who is down on his luck.

Pretty close Don would be dead on if the cable went straight thru the water but if you ever get a chance to see it underwater is is more like a french curve going down to the ball. And my sceintific calc is not waterproof. However I have used your method before and it is pretty darn close esp in shallower water without much temp change. If we could only find a way to get that darn water to stop changing density with temp life would be so much simpler that and them darn currents that leave us with differant segments of line moving differant speeds thru changing water density. This is your fault Don you used hypotonuse in a sentence and now I am getting all technical. back to just fishing i hope they start biting again soon.

I don't use the front 10ft very much only fish out of the back 16ft LOL