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Reel World Fishing Team

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  1. As Amberjack said, D and R carries the Dive Bombs. As far as what you choose to pull them out with, if you us a mast and the big boards you can really only send out one type of setup out or else you will end up with tangles. With the Church boards you can have various lengths of cores or copper out and easily put them back into place in the spread. The proper way to run them is to put the shortest length of core the farthest out, then when you reset them you just let them fall back behind the other boards and come back up in place. With big boards they typically run all the same presentation per side and as one bait gets a hit you just slide the rest farther down and put the bait back into the line up as the one closest to the boat. I do not run dive bombs myself, but the concept is good. I would however caution against trying to run say a half core with a dive bomb out over a full core. I think they may tangle and cause a mess. I hope that helps. Also D and R is about the lowest price you will find the Church boards at unless you pick them up at a show.
  2. I hear you bolt man, my boat only came out of the barn yesterday and I have a bunch of stuff I want/need to do before she's launched for the season. One good thing though from what I see is that the lake is still around 36 degrees where I fish and I don't get to excited until it's in the lower 40's. Then I'll start to panic.
  3. I have to say I'm a little biased on this one. I have known Jeff Miller who is the owner of Traxstech for a long time and I have to say many of the innovations he has come up with are pure genius. Among them if you look closely at the locking pin on the Traxstech holder, you will notice that it is stainless and it is tapered. The tapering is to make the lock pin actually wear in instead of wearing out. The shot blasted finish is made to withstand scratching and keeps everything looking good forever. The nice shiny Berts stuff is great when it is new, until it gets water marks on it and scratches. The new planner board trees from Traxstech are awesome and far more functional then the fixed postioned holders from Berts. On some boats with very limited space they were even able to run a dipsy off the bottom holder and boards on the top ones last summer. I’ve used them all and I will only buy Traxstech for now on.
  4. Good Job. How were the ramps and depth of water on the river? Which side did you go out on?
  5. Prof Hi. A couple things, first welcome to GLF. It's a great site and one you will learn a great deal from. Don't be afraid to ask any questions. Do you plan to fish in Ludington? It's about the closest port for you in relation to Big Rapids. If you do plan on fishing Ludington, shoot me an e-mail at [email protected] and I can give you current information. Our boat stays there all year and I plan to launch it on the 25th of April this year. We stay at the city marina which is the closest marina to the boat launch in the harbor. Spring fishing can be sporadic in Ludington and it really depends on the weather more than anything. If you look up the satellite images of the lake surface temp and find water above 40 degrees, you can catch fish there. Last year on the first weekend in May it was like August out there. We found a 6 degree temp break in 100’ of water and everything was going. Riggers, dipsy’s with rotators, core’s, copper, you name it, it was going. Every time we passed thru the break we would hook up 2 or 3 at a time. The next week all that water was gone and we were hunting for fish, but still getting a few. May and June is rather quiet for boat traffic which is nice, and if conditions are to rough, you can still fish in the harbor and do well.
  6. I totally agree with what EDB said about the survey. If you can, try to find a SAMS surveyor. SAMS stands for Society of Accredited Marine Surveyors. One thing that is invaluable with the survey is to be there when they do it. You will learn so much about what to look for in future boats you might want to purchase, and things you can do to the boat you plan on purchasing as preventive maintenance. In your case it may be to late depending on the offer was written. Also are you planning to fish that boat out of Ludington if you get it? Good luck and hope everything goes smooth.
  7. On our boat, if the main line has a spoon, it will have a slider on it, even on the light line stealth rigger. For line I use whatever is on the main line. We run both fixed and free sliders and all sliders are 72". For the fixed, I do find the Alberta clippers to be our best choice. Be carefull with the Alberta clippers because they eventually will wear a grove in the plastic and it will damage your line if not replaced. A couple things I have learned about sliders. We use two different sized swivels on the slider. On the spoon end the normal swivel will be attached and for the swivel attached to the main line I use a larger swivel so it will pass over the swivel on the main line and on to the spoon. Another thing, I always set the rigger about 6 feet down then put the free slider on and in the water. Take a look at the spoon to make sure it's running correctly, then send the rigger to it's set depth while keeping a good amount of tension on the line. This will lock the slider on the line and pull it down with the ball, then it will fluter up some. Last thing. We have very few rules on my boat (I think anyways) but one big one for rigger rods is that you do not remove the rod from the holder until you feel the fish on. Reel the crap out of that rod first to catch up with slider fish and never set the hook. The hooks are sharp already and all you do is make the hole bigger and give the fish 6 feet of slack by setting the hook. For slider spoons. This is one place I will run a lot of stingers and yeck spoons. I also like the SS Dreamweavers and last season I ran some of the new Warrior flutter spoons. I use a lot of gold and orange and green dolphins on sliders. We take way to many fish on these not to have them out everytime possible.
  8. I have to say I agree with what everyone had to say, but I would like to highlight a couple things. First, as Hit Man said, "find the fish". I would add that I may start out that close for a little, but I get itchy fast and will either run offshore a little or roll out before long. Second Dirtys dogs response to Mike about their great day was that they caught all their fish on one rod, a full core in 40 to 44 FOW on the same spoon. I find that to be very common early in the year to have very specific lures and rods taking the majority of the fish. You never know exactly what they want or where, but when you find it they tend to keep going and going.
  9. First question, is it a single screw? How would you decribe what you are looking to spend? Cheap a possible, Midrange but still functional, or the skys the limit, cost is no factor. One thing with rigging boats, they get awfull expensize real quick.

    I do like the Sportcrafts and have come close to getting one several times. What year is yours also?

  10. If conditions are good, I would much rather put in a long day trip then an evening trip or two trips a day. We usually roll out about 5:30 to 6:00 in the morning and come in around 1 to 3 in the afternoon. If its crowded we may go earlier and at times we may fish an evening trip or two depending on the crew and what their capable of. We catch many fish late morning and mid-day, especially if the fishing has been good in the evenings and not good in the mornings. I can't count the number of times we have had 1 of 2 fish at 10 or even 11:30 and end up with 10 or more by 3:00 in the afternoon. Last thing if your going to fish tournaments fishing at night, early mornings, and evenings are not going to teach you how to catch fish in the middle of the day. You have to go out and learn.
  11. I use a variety of Daiwa 47 series line counters and older standard non line counter Daiwa reels for most everything. If I were to buy new reels I would look hard at the new Sealine 47LC's I know a lot of guys like penn 320's for riggers but they also say how easy they are to rebuild at the same time. The Daiwa's I use I have rebuilt several after years and years of use, but the only reel I had a problem with out of the box was a Penn 330. That was replaced and that pair of 330's are now getting close to 10 years old and they are great. Another reel I would consider is the Okuma Convector series reels. I bought two 55's last season for copper and really like them. I would stay away from the lower grade one though if it were me. Shimano's? The're great reels. However I can't justify them myself and I fish over 300 hours a season. I have a hard time convincing myself I need them that bad. For rod's I now have switched to only three kinds. I have 6 Okuma 8' medium downrigger rods. I only have 3 riggers and three are dedicated for 20# and 3 are dedicated for 25# that I only run spinnys on. I also have 2 Daiwa 7'6" medium light riggers that I run with 12# when the sun comes up and they bite slows. Great fight when thing are slow and you have time to enjoy it and long leads and light line down deep take late morning kings. For dipsys, all segments of core's, and 4 copper rods I use the 9' Okuma Medium's Classic Pros. Tough and inexpensive. They work great, I tried several types and over and over everyone, especially kids and women liked those 9' for fighting fish with the extra hardware on the line. Go with what works. Man I'm ready to fish
  12. I am personally glad to hear that Tim and Yogurt Flies are still around. Several of the Yogurt Flies are the best flies we run, and they have been since we started using them two season ago. Very high quality product. I stop in a D and R often and didn't see Tim working there anymore so I was begining to wonder if he was still around. Luckly after I started using them we bought a S-load of the ones that were the best so we had enough to get through last season. Good to know where we can get more. Good Luck Tim
  13. Ludington was decent. Just my wife and I fished with the dogs and caught 9 both Saturday and Sunday. Mostly 2 year old kings with a couple 4 year olds, couple steelhead, a coho and 2 lakers.
  14. As a newer member on this message board I was wonder how many people on this site fish in Ludington and when do you normally go there?
  15. I only have one fish currently mounted. It is a male King caught in 1998 out of Ludington that was just under 30 pounds and just over 40 inches. A buddy of mine had just had a fish done with a replica mount and that was what I did with mine. The mount looks great and that's the only way I would do a fish. I would have put that walleye back and mounted with a replica. That being said I didn't put this king back. We took him back to the dock, took photos and a bunch of different measurments and then cleaned him. This was better IMO because the other fish that have been caught off my boat that were mounted normally were frozen than carried home and then mounted, never to be used. I have photos and measurments of a 17 pound steelhead to get mounted someday, but I hope to catch a bigger one.
  16. I have been doing this for 25 years and I currently have 22 rods rigged. 20 of those are Okuma Classic Pros and 2 are Daiwa 7'6 Med for my 12# rigger rods. For dipsys, cores, lead balls and copper I use the 9' Medium Heavy Okuma and for riggers I use the 8' Medium Okuma. If you get ahold of a retailer such as Fishdog.com or Tackle Haven they will sell these to you for about $20 each if your buying several.
  17. I'm itchin to go but the boat isn't out of the barn yet. We go straight to Ludington for the season and to be honest I don't see the Salmon showing up until the end of May. I was planning on pulling it out two weeks ago but I'm glad I didn't since we've had another 14 inches of snow since then. Now it should come out Wednesday.
  18. One question is what kind of GPS/Chartplotter do you have, and how many? I like to install redundecy in all my important equipment and long story short do to limited dash space I went with a Raymarine A65 combo unit last year and love it. The Raymarine A60 is a very good combo unit as well that should be just as good and can be bought for around a grand. This is the first FF I didn't need to adjust manually to get it to perform how I want it. It has it's own computer to run the the FF. I don't think you really need color, but it's nice. Power is the more important part. I don't have all the facts comparing one to the other but you can figure this out your self looking into data. I have had both transducers and with the new one I went with a transom mount to get the surface temp and speed. One company I had good purchasing experiance with was www.ultimatepassage.com out of Ohio. I'm not going to bash any company with my own opinons on what to get or not to get, but for me the list is short one of Furuno, Garmin and or course Raymarine.
  19. I am rigging up a couple Okuma CV55L this season with 300' of 45# copper. Since I'm using two of the same reels I will put on 40' of 20# mono leader on first, 300' of copper, 50' of 25# big game,(The big game is to attach the church board) 150 yards of 50# spiderwire steath then as much 25#backing as the reel will hold. Every thing on the top will be the same so all I need to do is count the number of passes of the level wind to determine how much 25# backing I get on the reel. I then will take the line off the first reel and wind it on the second reel followed by loading the first reel back up with backing (Number of passes the first time) 150# spiderwire steath, 25# for the board, copper and leader.
  20. Here is a product I used in the past. It did a decent job and was easy to apply. http://www.marinetex.com/PRODUCT%20PAGE_files/All%20EasyOn/EasyOn%20Bottom.htm One thing about bottoms though. Prepare to clean before you pull it out of the water if it's been in for a while. I used a acid type cleaner called on and off and sprayed it on with a small pump type weed killer tank.
  21. 1st Yes I have seen wind burners with riggers several times. 2nd Don't freak out just yet on the gas prices. Our weak dollar has people sending their investments into commodys such as gas and look for it to go even higher like to 125 a barrel before it tanks, pun intended. We are using less fuel and they are on the verge of a huge surplus. When that happens fuel should level out lower then where were at now. I know the price's is not going to stop me, and I burn a ton of fuel. Like 40 gallons in day sometimes. Share a ride with someone and share the expense.
  22. I agree with what Rayman96 said that this is a do-able project to do. However it will take a lot ot time and a bunch of money. Although I'm sure the next thing I say will get me banded from all fishing related websites but IMHO I wouldn't even use "marine grade" plywood. I'm not sure of the cost differance Now but that last Time I bought it the Marine Grade was around 40 a sheet and the high grade finish plywood was 40% cheaper. I know I am a stickler on doing things right the first time and that you should solve the problem that caused the water problem in the first place, but we're talking about a boat thats only 20 years old and if the so called marine grade plywood they used the first time lasted less than that then it wasn;t right to begin with. If you do it the way I describe and then seal with paint and sealent you will get many years out of the wood. Also weight was mentioned. I repair the areas that are already soft and go with a recover and only 1/2 plywood to keep the weight down. It can't weigh as much as the radar arches people are installing.
  23. A buddy of mine bought an old boat years ago that needed a floor. Instead of going through the extra work of removing the floor and fitting a new one. They removed the hardware of the old floor, installed new wood over the top and painted the wood. It looked decent and saved a lot of money and a lot of time/headaches. I don't recall if they added somthing for grip in the paint but you could do this also. If you have a small area that is very soft you could just replace that section then cover the whole thing with another layer of wood.
  24. I found the site on the internet being discussed on another site. I lurked a few times then met Mike H today at D and R sports and was impressed with the information he was giving to people shopping at their show. I learned a few tricks to try in just short time of talking with him.
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