mriversinco

I had an eye break on one of mine, Okuma asked me to cut the tip off and send them the rod and they replaced it with a new rod for the cost of shipping. I think it was 5 bucks or something.

I had trouble with vanish also and went to vicious and have had great luck. I've used the various seaguar and that works well too but the vicious is much cheaper. You can easily pound up a little but for my spoons I found I didn't want to increase too much or it affected the motion of the bait.

Good point about the charter bill Jim. I know I could go out a ton of times over the year on a charter simply for the amount of money I drop into the boat, but it's that darn feeling of accomplishment when you get some good buddies into a mess of fish. Gotta love the feeling of going out with 4 guys and bringing home a dozen nice kings.

I love how every time (me included) people post looking for a boa, others put up those hewescrafts. Nice boats... yes, but they're way out of most weekend fisherman's price range. Don't get me wrong, they sure look awesome but starting at their prices and the sky is the limit for the additional stuff they are only in the picture for people looking for new boats. To help the op, I'd say there's a ton of boats from 5k on up that would work very well.

When I was looking, I made the decision to get a 24' aluminum boat because I figured my truck could pull a 20-22' glass boat, or a 24' metal boat without taxing the truck too much. I thought the bigger boat was better at cost of ride in the waves. For you, it's entirely your decision on that but I'd start looking around and getting ideas. The more boats you can go see, the better you can make a decision. Start with craigslist in your area and go check them out to start getting informed.

Feel free to pm me if you want actual ideas of brands and make/models since it's tough to post everything on a site.

On my dad's boat we had one and he used it every time. Kind of interesting to see him go to town on a fish, but nowadays I don't even have one on the boat.

I have both big jon's and berts. They're both great but I do love the one hand ability of the berts.

Those look really nice.

Nice pics and great looking young dog!

Plug - dream weaver green with ladder back

Spoon - BLL patriot

FF - big white paddle and Big Weenie proctologist

Meat - didn't fish

Thanks for the report Dan.

Gotta love that breakfast in a blind!!!

Gotta be perch, can't remember the last time I had to sort salmon....

On my boat, I run wire on at least one rod every time and often 2. When side by side with braid I get about 50% more fish on the wire. Don't know why, but it seems to out fish the other setups so I'm not going back to no wire. I would say to try one setup and see how it does but be prepared to put some more wire together.

Wow, I love the looks of those Tiara's!!!

Hey Steve,

On my boat I replaced a section of the floor with marine grade ply and added another coat of epoxy as well as coated the crap out of the access hole cutout, then put marine grade vinyl over the top. Was thinking about glassing it but was worried about where the glass would meet the aluminum hull and the different movements of the floor versus the hull. Maybe others have done it and it doesn't crack but I didn't want to risk it so I left it as a movement joint and with vinyl over it.

Agree with the above mention of Holland. I go almost exclusively there because of the fish cleaning station and I'm sure it brings in plenty of money to the town.

Those look good Jon.

100% agree with the nets being silly out of Muskegon. In fact, it used to be my main port but I go to Holland almost all the time now because I don't even want to mess with them. I've been out of Muskegon twice all year. Maybe if enough people did that it would send a message to whomever controls things.

Welcome Ryan.

+1 on EdB. By the time the boat is that old, it depends much more on how well it was kept up versus how well it was originally built.

Wow, that's a regular old fire brigade for a while. Nice job.

Nice job Mark.

Looks really good, nice job!

Nice job Ben.

Wow, that is some really cool stuff!!!