KJ pluggin

I have to order more glow beads for the upcoming season, not sure if will order from Purple Taco or from troutbeads.com. Has anyone used Trout Beads, if so what do yo think of them?

I cant imagine a 100 year old fish would taste very good. Hopefully she ends up being more than just fertilizer.

For me the ability to leave detailed notes attached to waypoints is one of the things that sets gps software systems apart from other systems out there. And the large screen is nice to.

I have only used 45# copper and have been very happy with it so far. 30# has about the the same sink rate as leadcore so I have not tried any of that weight. (Leadcore is easier to work with and cheaper). If you do go with a 45# copper I would suggest using Howie's super copper seen here. The super copper is nickle plated which makes it more limber and is noticeably easier to work with, I will not buy any other copper. Here is a link to a depth chart that was posted on a different thread.

Looks pretty good! When you drop waypoints does Seaclear allow you to add notes to them?

Over here on the other side of the pond, at least where I fish, most of the charters and private boats are running 4 or 5 rigger. We always ran 4 riggers and up untill this season we were fishing out of a 19' boat. .

Running an 11" Flasher and a fly was my go-to diver rig last year.

I loaded up Sea clear a little while back and it seemed to load alright but the online charts would not load into the program. After messing around trying to get the charts to load I went back on there site and found out that SeaClear is not set up to run on Vista. Maybe it would work if I purchased the DVD with the charts but not sure I want to take that chance. Hope it all works out for you, I can't wait to see what the charts look like when you get them.

So I should have my deepest rigger with a flasher /fly combo??

Many times I will run a spoon on my deepest rigger. I will set it up to run just below and behind a flasher/ fly combo. When a salmon comes up to take a look at your flasher/ fly combo and doesn't like what he sees he will then drift down and away. This should put him right in line to hit you spoon.

Are you all catching fish on dipsy's because of the depth they are set at or because of some other reason. Could I do the same thing with a lead or copper rod with a flaher/fly setup at the same depth?

WOW that is a lot of questions.Thanks a ton Mike

Targeting the same depth with copper or core is not going to do the same thing for you that a dipsy diver will. Copper and leadcore are more of a stealth presentation and are very "quiet" in the water. A dipsey on the other hand is very noisy in the water. Because of how the dipsy is pulling it creates a lot of turbulence in the water. That turbulence will attract fish before they even see your presentation. In many situations you might not be taking hits on your dipsys but they may be working as the primary attractor to bring fish into your spread. In my opinion the dipsy is a must have for your spread. You may just have to do a little experimenting and tweaking to find out where they are most productive in your spread.

On thing you can do when you are trying to trip your dipsys is tighten your drag a bit and give it a short quick jerk. If your drag is set to loose you will just pull line out of the drag when your trying to release the dipsy.

I know it takes more light to see red than other colors, but is saying that red disappears the correct representation of what happens in lower light applications. I would think that red colors would turn to shades of gray as light decreases. Perhaps shades of gray are less obtrusive to fish than visual colors. If anyone has some more info on this I would love to hear it.

If I was to set up your line this is how I would do it. Riggers: I would probably start out with one flasher-fly setup (FF) and a spoon on the other rigger. I would set it up so the spoon ran just behind and below the FF setup. If the fish seem to be hitting the FF combo I would probably switch out the spoon for another FF. If the fish are not hitting the riggers at all I would probably go with spoon on both riggers and run longer leads. Dipsys: On the dipsys I would run FF combos off of each side. When you run your dipsys what kind of line are you running on them? If you are using mono, that could be the reason you are having a hard time getting them to release correctly. The mono will have to much stretch to trip the dipsy if you have to much line out. I would suggest using wire or braid for you dipsy lines. Long lines: For you copper and core you will have to make adjustments as the day goes on to give the fish what they want. As for sliders and stackers I would probably go with fixed sliders. I do not run these very often but there are times when I will put them down. Sometimes less is more. Hope this helps.

Definitely paints a dark picture. I do not envy you guys in the UP who have to deal with this on a regular basis.

What model number releases do you guys use on the offshore boards?

I like using the OR 19 clips on the front and the OR 16's on the back. The 16's are supposed to be for snap weights but they work great for boards as well. Many guys are also using the adjustable OR 18's as well but I have not tried them yet.

Thanks for everyone helping me out!

We found a great place to fish about half way between Strugeon Bay and Bailey's. We had the Lake all to ourselves. If only there were some fish there........

We spent quite a bit of time fishing way on the north end of the bank last year, sometimes up past whitefish point and had pretty good luck. Is the place you found north of cave point?

Thanks for everyone helping me out!

We found a great place to fish about half way between Strugeon Bay and Bailey's. We had the Lake all to ourselves. If only there were some fish there........

We spent quite a bit of time fishing way on the north end of the bank last year, sometimes up past whitefish point and had pretty good luck. Is the place you found north of cave point yet?

Has anyone researched or thought about using a Laptop as a GPS in their boat?? It seems this may have been hashed over before. My boat has a hardtop so it's dryer than most open boats. Below is what I figure would be the cost.

$350 Used 13 inch Rough Service Laptop. Wouldn't need a super horse of a laptop but the rough service would be essential.

$40 GPS receiver

$15 NOAA Charts on DVD

Pros: Big Screen, Lots of inexpensive, Software, Portable Boat to Car etc.

Cons: Will the Laptop hold up? Would need to fab bracket to hold it.

The software for the GPS units is what has my shorts in a knot. If some geek came up with a reasonably priced, tough unit that would run all available software, I'm sure it would sell. I think more competition is needed.

I may still go with the individual Garmins, But I'm sure I'm going to be trying the laptop, somewhere down the road.

I have been thinking about the same thing lately. Just the other day I loaded the demo program from this site. This program doesn't have all the bells and whistles as some of the other programs out there but I thought it was fairly simple to navigate and did most things I wanted it to do. I was also a little concerned about the pounding that the laptop would have to take. If I do end up doing this I would probably try and find a used one really cheap, since this program doesn't require a very powerful laptop a used laptop should not be an issue. Ram also makes laptop mounting brackets that I think would work pretty good. Not sure if I will do it or not but it sure would be nice having a big screen versatile laptop.

fishing the bank during the contest really was not much fun. I'm not a mathematician but Copper + Leadcore + Lots of boats + Auto Pilot Not Working = BAD NEWS!

Yea I hear ya. It can get pretty ridiculous fishing the bank during KD time. I always wondered what it looked like from the perspective of the fish? I usually like to try and stay outside the pack.

If I had to choose I would go with a 2 color and a 10 color. Like Jim said 2 colors work great for SWR's and steelhead. Our full core has our best producing core throughout the summer for us. As far as using your tekota's go, I wouldn't put more than a 5 or 6 color on the 600s. If you wanted to spool up a 8 or a 10 color I would go with a 700.

Very helpful tool thanks. I did get hung up for a while when I was doing calcs for a 300 copper. I kept putting in 300 for the copper instead of 100, I forgot to make the conversion from feet to yards. I felt pretty stupid afterwords.

I noticed in one of your picture captions that you were heading up to Sturgeon Bay, do you get up there often? I am looking forward to seeing some of your reports this summer.

I have the Canon G9. It is not an SLR, but it takes amazing pictures. I think that the person taking the picture makes all of the difference. Understand composition. Any camera can take a good "picture" if the person taking it takes a moment to set it up correctly. We cannot afford a big SLR, because we bought a boat ... so worth it. So my 12 mega-pixel Canon G9 will have to do for now. I wish I had a sweet camera like you guys. Remember ... it is not the camera but the shot. And if it is a picture of your big, huge king ... it does not matter :-)

~The Wifey

Nice pic Ken, I must say though, it looks better when I am out on the big pond washing my glow lures looking for kings!

I hadn't heard about that, ouch bad news for Lowrance.

Thanks to everyone who replied back on this. I will probably add a few of these on the boat next season, most of what I run are Pro-trolls and Hotspots.