Paulywood

Sign up Team Paulywood. We're taking a shot at the title. Look out Phil!

The saltwater version is a dual frequency. Freshwater is dual beam. I got mine at marinewiz.com. I just looked around until I found the best deal. Good luck.

I have tried to troll them in Higgins for browns and rainbows and it was a complete failure. They are not very speed tolerant. I will probably try them again but will make sure and tune them first. Maybe it will help. They do have a great action on them.

This is the exact setup that I will be looking for when I buy my new boat(hopefully next year). I love the versatility of the walkarounds and the t-top. As soon as the wedding is over I'll be saving my pennies for my new boat.

I bought a Garmin last year and was really happy w/ it. It's a 340C. One thing that I noticed was that I could see it alot better in the sun and from different angles. It was a lot better than my old Raymarine L750. I don't know if it's due to the color or just better technology. I went with seperate FF and chartplotter. The GPS is also a a Garmin, the screen is the same size and you can actually link them to display the FF on the GPS screen. I went w/ 2 because if something happend to one of them, I would still have the other. I paid $400 for each of them. I got them from marinewiz.com. The only electronics that I would look at are Garmin, Furuno, and Raymarine. I almost bought a Furuno but it cost just as much for the sonar as I paid for both of my units. I have heard of people having to many problems with Lowrance and their customer service. I dropped my chartplotter last year and broke it, sent it to Garmin and they sent me a brand new one, all in the same week. Great service.

What about a T-Top. Not fully enclosed but a permanent top to keep people out of the elements, but the breeze is till in your face. Then you can get canvas unclosures if the weather is real bad. Just a thought.

I was going to suggest going to either braid or bead chains, I'm not a big fan of the dacron. Let me know when you get the bead chain setups Matt, I'm interested.

I heard there were 21 steelies caught off the pier in Whitehall last friday. All males.

There are 2 different types of bottom paint, a sealer and anti-fouling. The sealer is a must in my opinion. Gel coat is porous and the fiberglass in your boat will absorb water and over the course of a season it can add a lot of weight to the boat. Anti-fouling is optional, it does help keep the crud off the boat but doesn't stop it. I have been told that there is a big difference between the cheaper brands and the top of the line stuff. It's best not to skimp.

It was pretty accurate. You just clipped it on the dipsey line and it would slide down to the diver.

Here's a Brown my dad caught out of Ludington a few years ago.

Here you go, not a great picture. She looks skinnier than she really is because of the angle.

The river temp was 37 degrees today with a little stain. We went 1-2 with a greedy spawned out hen that had 2 spawn bags already in her throat. She was looking pretty rough so we kept her. The fish we lost was a chromer that came off due to crew error. Beatiful day on the river and Kevin did a great job. My brother and I had a lot of fun. I have a picture of the fish that I'll post tomorrow. I'm still celebrating the big Spartan win tonight and I've had to many beers to post a picture. Great day, steelie fishing and a State win!

Unfortunately I think that Cabela's discontinued them. I had one and it worked very well, until it got tangled and the line broke. I think that I saw something similar in a magazine recently but don't remember where. If I come across it I will post the info.

Caznik runs the West Michigan Fishing League off this site. We fish once a month. In his you weigh in your 5 biggest fish. You get 10 pts. per fish and 1 point per pound. The St. Joe league does it a litle different. There you can weigh in your best 1 man DNR limit. Over here that's 3 of one species and of any other species in combination. Example: 3 kings, 1 coho, 1 steelhead. They also have rod limits, 6 for the WMFL and 9 for St. Joe. This helps even it out for all of the boats.

The article is on page 48, they mention the Dreamweaver&Big Jon Tourney in the second column. It says to contact Rich Caznik to sign up. Oh well, still good publicity. I'll give you a call if we fish. I haven't heard back from Kevin on if we're going for sure or not. I think that he had boat problems last weekend.

Rich, I might be fishing the K-Zoo saturday morning. We're fishing with Kevin (Far Beyond Driven). If we do I'll give you a call. I see you're tournament got a little press in this month's GL Angler. But they called you Rich Caznik. Maybe you'll get your last couple of boats. Nick

I try to do all of my netting right out the back. I have a doghouse and have the guy on the rod stand on 1 side and the netter on the other. I try to keep the back of my boat open as much as possible, don't run anything down the middle. I have had to net fish on the side before, but it scares me. It's real easy for a fish to take off sideways and get into the dipsey on the side. I fish with a lot of inexperienced people and always try to help them out when they are driving the boat. Try to keep the fish centered in the middle of the boat. When there are just 2 of us sometimes I will just net the fish myself. Depends on how big the fish is.

I use a clear Opti snubber behind the dipsey.

There is a size in between the Peanut and a regular King fly. I think it's just called a coho fly. Black/purple is a pretty standard coho color. I think that the theory is the gaudier the better.

I had 2 guys in the top 10:D, and 2 in the bottom 3:mad: Oh well, we'll be back next week.

Just thought of something else. With the wire you will get burrs on the guides and the twilli. These burrs could slice right through braid. Once you have used a rod for wire, I wouldn't run anything else on that rod.

Frank, last year in the final WMFL event we were banging fish with 300-325 ft. of wire out on our divers. So don't say never. I run 1000' of Malin 7 strand on a Daiwa Sealine 47 LC. I use twilli tips on a Daiwa Heartland rod. My first year I had a cheap Eagle Claw roller rod and lost 3 dipsey/flasher/fly setups when the wire got hung up in the tip. So I would either spend the $120 on a Shimano Talora roller rod or the $38 on a Heartland and twilli. I would never buy another cheap roller rod. If you wanted to save a little cash you could probably put 600' of wire on a smaller(27 size) reel. I would be worried that if a fish ever got to the backer the knot would slice through the braid. It would suck to lose $30 worth of gear in order to save $15. I also figure that with the 1000' I could cut off quite a bit if it got kinked. I check my wire for kinks after every trip. It's a blast catching fish on wire. Also make sure that the wire is spooled on very tight. A lot of guys spool it on and then drop it overboard on their first trip with a 1# ball on the end. They let it all out and then spool it to get it tight. I have an 80 acre field behind my house so I just attached it to a 1# weight and walked out 1000' in the field. Then "fought" the "fish" all the way back to the house. My girlfriend said I looked dumb but it was spooled on nice and tight.

I can't complain, so far Jeff Gordon is my worst driver. Rich had better watch out, his boy got busted for cheating. Rich might end up in last:D

Here is how I select dipsey colors: Clear on the left. Green on the right. People debate on wether or not color matters. I just set up one color dipsey for each side. I'm not sure if the color of the diver matters, some people swear by black, others like glow. I just try to keep it simple.