1mainiac

Johnson Controls and Exide make probably close to 80% of the batteries you will see. There are several smaller companies that make up the rest. A resting voltage of 10.6 is a dead battery discharging to 10.6 and recharging is considered a cycle most batteries will give you the number of cycles it has based on avg lifespan of the battery. Maintenance free, AGM and Gell Cell batteries have lower cycle spans mostly due to the lack of ability to dissipate heat. This also makes them touchier to recharge as they can't absorb high charge voltages. Because the charge regulation on my old Merc 80hp was not good it would kill a AGM battery every season so I went back to wet cells. AGM's do very well when they are constantly kept charged so if your able to keep them charged they do very well. However if you run them fully down then recharge them they don't hold up as well as a wet cell. Most quality battery chargers have a selector for standard or maintenance free batteries which controls the charge voltage and does not let it do a equalization charge. If you want great life in a wet cell you must feed it distilled water which can be a PITA but it improves the life of the battery.

Well you will get a few opinions and I actually have several but they all come down to you and how you want to deal with them. The first issue is how much battery do you need in AH? Second is how much maintenance do you want to deal with? Next is space for them and charging issues. Since unless you buy a custom battery you will be using 2 12v batteries they must be identical because you will be limited both in use and charging to the quality of the worst one. So you have to calculate your load always use your highest load level for this so lets say you use it on a trolling motor and max is a 20 amp draw 2 group 24 batteries will give you a avg of 100ah so 5 hours run time max. Group 27 batteries might get you 6 and 31's might get you 7 or 8 if you have the room for larger batteries. Some batteries will give you more AH some less but the idea is the same. Personally I prefer standard wet cell batteries but they require regular maintenance and some would rather have the newer style maintenance free batteries. That is a choice you have to make. I realize I am not giving you a direct answer only questions and ideas but I have no idea what any of the factors are in this so to say buy this battery it is the best would be pure BS. You need to know what the battery will run how long it will run it and how much space you have for the batteries.

I have been tying my own for years designed and built my own jigs to tie them on. Using either Bullet heads or tubing. Easy to do and fun to catch fish on gear you built. Material layout bullet head ready for material finished fly

This is what I use http://www.amazon.com/Gerber-09841-Diamond-Knife-Sharpener/dp/B0001WOTHC A couple pulls down the grove and hooks are sharp.

Yep looks like it they can verify it is the right one for you on the phone. There is usually a series number or letter code on the bottom of the reel seat that verifies which exact reel it is. I used to have a set of LC counter reels with bad level winds so I removed the level wind ( I really don't like them ) but fixed the line counters and used them for lead core. What I would do was reset the line counter when I attached the board then I could use the line counter to set the line out and board placement. Even though LC are not accurate with that much line out using it on a 3 board spread with inside board at 100 middle board at 200 and outside board at 300 gives a consistent spread every time. Doing that if your middle board fires when you reset it you just let it back 200 and put it in the rod holder it will go right back where it was.

They are simple and easy to fix what keeps Tuna and others in business is we have become a nation of appliance operators. That and the fact they have parts in stock and can fix it fast. Most have a gear on the end of the worm drive shaft for the level wind that drives the plastic gear on the counter. The ones I have fixed needed a new counter because either the counter jammed for a second or in many cases some one held the reset down while a fish was running, either one will knock a couple teeth off the counter gear and cause it to skip.

Another great year was hoping for better turnout but with the Outdoorsman having it's annual sale and seminars a lot of people went there instead. The pulled pork was great I looked at my stuff Thursday night and decided to just hand out flyers for our tournament and hang out with friends.

I don't fish a spot or a troll so much as I actively hunt for active fish. For me the key is learning where the baitfish are and what their pattern is. I have a probe and seldom use it anymore because I usually have a idea what I want to do. Other than tournaments I am mostly a evening fisherman which gives me all day to find out where they were in the morning and see what the weather will be like. Paying attention to weather patterns for days in advance can also help you eliminate water to not fish in. Ignore the pack of boats often those guys just follow each other around all year. No matter what the fishing conditions are in Muskegon there is always a pack of boats in 80 to 100ft and yes they catch some fish. But they are not pounding out limits of nice fish they are just picking away at them. Do I have preferred starting locations yep 3 in fact and depending on conditions I will likely run to one of them and begin. I also fish around the nets as much or more than most, the action of fish caught in the nets brings in other fish. I seldom follow any pattern very long unless it is working well.

The bag has about 8 D rings sewn around the outlet the control rope runs thru the D rings and clips to itself so pulling on the control rope make the outlet smaller, adding more stopping power. Just like a choke collar on a dog.

While 36in bags are likely small for your boat how big are the openings on the outlet. My son made me a adjustable bag years ago it has a second rope that when pulled closes the outlet which improves speed control. From fully open to fully close d it gave about 1 mph of speed control which on my 18ft would drop me down to under 1mph closed and around 2mph open. The reason I mention this is you may be able to modify your current bags to slow you down more.

My rule of thumb for bags has worked pretty good for me if using 2 get at least 1in per ft of boat. I have 2 30in bags on my 26ft and on a calm day can get to walleye speeds if I wanted to. On a 37ft I would look for 42 or 48in bags. Tie them off on a forward cleat so they put pressure on the bow and let them dig in mine run about a foot under water and fully forward of my fishing gear. To pull the we just hit neutral pull up the back line and toss them over the railing. When setting up in the morning I slow to about 5mph we put all the gear in and then drop the bags and we are down to about 2.4 to 2.5. Going fast helps set the coppers and long stuff out much faster then we toss out the brakes and are ready to fish.

The cost of running a small tournament is not cheap Don and I have spent our own money every year to put on the MSCST tournaments. There is the cost of the Website,the scales, flyers, gas to go to meetings with each other and sponsors, tons of things you can't even put a dollar value on. Then there is the legal advice you need liability issues and such. The hundreds of hours spent dealing with things like sponsors and delivering flyers. That is just for our small tournament in a larger event you have insurance, tents chairs and tables, advertising, more of everything. If had to put a number on it I would bet the 1st 200 bucks per boat is in tourney cost. I looked into insurance for our tourney back in 09 and the best deal I could get for limited coverage was over 45 bucks per boat. That would not cover spectators at weigh in just the boats while fishing and only member boats and damage cause by them. There is more to running a tournament than just a group of guys shaking hands and throwing money in a hat.

I'll take jun 2nd at current rate.

I wonder if the new one will interface with my Lowrance plotter without the convertor. I was bummed to find out one of the reasons I bought it would not work with my current setup. Esp after NEMA was touted as the universal answer so all marine gear could talk under the same language. The when you actually try and do it you need to spend way more money.

Yes I have several pullers but did not use one to remove the wheel. What I did was back the nut off about 5 turns used my slide hammer to hit the shaft while pulling up on the wheel. Popped right off.

If you need a hand putting it in call me I would like to see how much it changed from mine. The only thing I don't like about mine is the motor noise which on rough days is almost non stop.

I would also like to thank Don and Patti for all their work helping put this together. But esp Patti for the cookies at weigh in LOL. Lets also try and remember to support our past sponsors since many of them still support us and we still support them. So I will list our past sponsors as well. Purple Taco Pro Troll Z Boards Papa Bears Restaurant Eyeful Custom rods Church Tackle Okuma Fish on Bait and tackle Tuna's Reel service As well as our friends who have helped with ideas and support. Thanks we will try and make every year better than last year and keep this fun.

Lots of V bulletin sites have similar issues with links I know several that block wiki links and others. The MSCST site blocks a few links and I run it, the blocks are in the spam filters so any links that have had spam reported on them it blocks. It also blocks on IP address email and user names but frankly Don and I were tired of deleting spam and spammers so I raised the security level making the site pretty much read only unless you have a membership setup that has not been deleted or Don or I set one up for you. But the only reason for the site was to inform people about the tournament I set it up with forum software because it is much easier to update then writing pages of code for every update. The first version of it sucked because it took me hours to code pages and then correct mistakes once I published them LOL.

While Salmon can move 30 or more miles overnight the bait fish can't The most common current in West MI in June is slightly north near shore and it diminishes as you move off shore. In Muskegon near shore is out to about 120 to 130fow. In June you have a lot of issues dependent on weather and water temps. 1st the water has not fully setup so fish can be anywhere but is we have a few days with calm winds and clear skies you can bet you had better run deep if you want to catch numbers of fish. If your looking for the bigger fish you have to find the pockets they are hiding in usually more in near shore waters. After sunup on clear days this means more of a laker program go slower and work the bottom 10 to 20 ft of water. Flasher flies work well on this as well as meat rigs. Spoons will also get hit but not as much since these fish are usually suspended near the bottom and resting. So they will grab a easy looking snack but are not gonna chase much. Going out deep will get you into more fish that are younger and more active move fast and work the top 50 to 70ft hard. If you see bigger marks down deep then send something down there as well. I have had a lot of days when I am pulling decent kings 120 to 180 down in 225 to 250fow while also getting a steady catch of Steelhead on top. Running as fast as 4 to 6mph GPS My divers do not like this speed so they go in storage and we work the riggers deep with sliders on them and lots of copper and lead core. As to lead core at this speed forget the short cores a 5 color will only be about 10ft down. I get a lot of big Steelhead out there on 300 copper pulling a Ace Hi Yellow Tail plug. My guess is at that speed a 300 copper may only be down 30ft or so. Even with 15lb weights my riggers will be way back so 180 down on the rigger is likely around 120 I have had them down 350 in 250fow and never hit bottom. But again I am hauling butt we cover a lot of water and when I find a pattern for Steel we kill them a couple years back we took a 4 man limit on Steelhead in under a hour and got 3 kings on the riggers as a bonus. However that was fishing there every day so I knew where the fish were and it was just a matter of running back to the same area and dialing them in.

Most days 60% or more of my spread is copper and I don't get birds nests I just have to clean them up later. You'll be stuck with lower end smaller reels the rest of your life if you can't learn how to fish without a level wind.

Very few high end reels even offer level wind so I just took one of my reels for a 200 copper that had been skipping on the level wind and causing problems 20 min later no more level wind issues. This also increase clearance on the reel because when the level wind would skip the copper would bunch up and hit the level wind making the problem even worse. If this saves me one birds nest a season it will be worth it.

Advantage to no level wind less backlash issues and slightly higher line capacity. Cons you have to keep the line level or it will pile up. If up to me I would not have level wind on my copper reels. The guys who fish with me however prefer it.

The only real advantage to changing transducers would be if you wanted a thru hull or different configuration. I think Airmar makes the transducer for most of the major sonar units anyhow. However when they design and manufacture a unit for a company they do not usually release it themselves under their name as often the company holds rights to them as well. No different than if you made a part for Ford or GM they would hold sales and distribution rights to the product.