Twill23

Sure have. CasseyII(Mark) has done it more than i have, and has all the numbers for pretty much all coppers available. You'd be surprised how far off most people's expectations of depth is with their coppers, to actual running depth. The stuff is EXTREMELY speed dependent.

Still love em, i'd rather have boards off to the side rather than right behind the boat...

Those are awesome clips! There are several different clips that are pretty much the same idea, but if you want to get away from the clips you can tie it just like you do with your wire rods. Two simple overhand knots will do the job.

We ran the 1000' for a field test. We also dropped a Fishhawk TD on it to check depth.. Right around 140ft. It's definitely not a fun fishing tactic...We do now have one 1000 on the boat, and aaron at lakeshore can definitely hook you up with the correct reel for the job. We used it because the kings we were getting were 120-150 down. It just happened to take a monster lake trout. We only ran it for around 10 minutes effectively, because after it took the first fish, in haste to get it back out, the fresh alewife we were running wasn't set on the meat rig correctly. Hope this helps!

Use the smaller boards for the shorter coppers...Reasoning behind this is because they pull back much easier with a fish on them. The big boards love to pull true 100% of the time, and it makes it sort of difficult to get the outside boards behind the inside boards when you have a fish on them.

Nice job Jon!

I'll take em! Love those things! In my honest opinion you can't ask for a better planer board. i mean, they pull 1000 copper for god sakes! lol That's 100% correct as far as fighting fish on boards go. Slow and steady wins the race. If the fish wants to go AT ALL let him go!

Hay Mark, Troll speed should differ daily as far as GPs speed goes. Personally we have absolutely no use for gps speed. Your speed should be tweaked at the ball rather than on the surface(unless of course your fishing a bunch of 2 and 3 color leads for steelhead or really shallow kings..aka surface baits). I haven't been out since Tuesday, but one direction top speed was 3.6 while down was 2.4 and the other dirction it was 1.8 and 2.6. The current changes daily, and there is never a magical speed.

Hmm, When is the board diving? We've pulled up to 1000feet of copper, and pulled BIG fish on that rig, without the board diving. Are you keeping your rod tip very low when your fighting the fish while the board is still in the water?

hahaha. Flames! Haha. I like it.

LOL! For you, i think the 10# or 12# fish weights would be best. The fish weight molds are easy to find at garage sales and what not.... Stop breaking weights off! lol

Hey John, In my opinion, either the fish shaped or the tradition canon ball molds are the best option. Pancake and flat style cannon balls don't preform well while fishing deep, and in strong currents. Right now out of holland current is pushing up to 1.3mph in comparison to surface speed. That can cause havoc for a flat weight, especially fishing as deep as we have been fishing(taking bites as far down as 200). The sheer surface area of the pancake weights will cause the water to push them in more(possibly causing crossed cables) For a boat your sized, the fish shaped cannon ball may be the way to go, especially if you decide you want to bend that tail section to plane then SLIGHTLY away from the boat. They have much less surface area, and you can still bend them to track off to the side if you wish to. Atomik makes an AWESOME cannon ball. The torpedo weight which not only cuts through the water better than any other weight, but has a much smaller surface area for current to push on them. The one down side of these weights is the price... about $75 ea.

Lol,If your shootin, just dont put any hole in the boat! lol

Lol. I do need someone to keep the dam ducks off my swim platform! I work mostly in Pennsylvania west Virginia, little in Michigan doing security for a seismic company.

Actually I'm driving down to Pennsylvania right now. will hopefully be back at the end of July.

Good choice, especially since the current is rippin right now!

Were the weights pancakes or any type of finned weights?

After a poor showing at the Grand Haven Offshore Challenge, we decided to test our theory, that once the water flattened out fishing again would be great. We were 100% correct. Monday morning we left the dock on Mark's boat(CasseyII), after just motoring through some spots we had considered during the tournament, we ran out to 150fow about 3miles south of Port Sheldon. We set up going NW, and taking bites the whole way to 200fow. 120down on a Poofster Paddle and Fly was very good. Our hookup ratio was horrible, going 3-10 at one point. Finally 11am rolled around(which has been our best bite for several weeks now) and things started to fire. 140 down on the chute with a white fishscale paddle was great. Pulling several kings 15-18lbs. Also the white coho dot spinnie was good, taking the big king of the trip tipping the scales at Lake Shore Outfitters at 21.4lbs. 450 copper with a 3oz dive bomb and a Fat nancy spinnie also took fish. We had NO spoon bites, and finished the day with our 10 fish, with 6 being over 12 pounds. Monday evening we left the dock on Mark's boat again, joined by his lovely wife Amy, Aaron from Lakeshore, and his fiancee Jess. Aaron, knowing how deep our fish were, decided to bring along the 1000copper rig. Although we first though of it as kind of a joke, we decided to toss it out there. We put a 10in spinnie on it, and a fresh alewife. The rig wasnt out 10 minutes when it fired..... 18# lake trout! Of course we made Aaron reel the thing in! We ended the short night with 7 kings too. All on the exact same things we did in the morning. Tuesday we decided to chase after some of the metal heads we had heard about in shallower water. Around 1pm we made our way into 110 FOW and immediately began taking steelhead. 5 and 7 colors were on fire. Unfortantely we never had a bite on a silver streak. They were tearing up the stinger spoon coyote. We also took kings on riggers at 51 and 61 on Pink panties and Mixed Veggie SS. We ended up going 7-toomanytocount on the steelhead, and also landing 3 kings. Here are some pics from the last couple days.

Lots of inland fish have those growths. REALLY common in pike. They're old scars that didn't heal correctly. Cut that piece of meat out, and the rest is OK.

The fish hawk is an EXTREMELY easy install. Just a normal transducer mount, and running the wire. Other than that, there isn't much to it.

Here's your pic Steve,

I'm considering picking one of these up, and just wanted a few opinions on the system. My boat comes in at under the recommended maximum of 16,500lbs. Unfortunately, I'm stuck with cable steering and outside of spendng at least $3200 to convert and choose a different AP system, this seems to be my best option. Opinions from those who are familiar with the unit??

It sure was a good time, and hope to do it again next year! I do have a new found respect for all 6th grade teachers. Lol

If your fishing around decent amounts of bait, fish will also head strike a spoon to stun it. Normally they get hooked poorly when they do this. Also i agree with ken, your troll direction plays a part in how the fish strike.

Fish 5-17 with Paulywood and Harperman on my boat. We were lucky enough to boat, i believe 18 total fish, but taking over 30 bites. Best water was 116 just inside the bait at 120. Best baits were happy meal and a green spinny/fly. Thursday evening we fished Mark's boat(CasseyII). Jimbobber and here fishy fishy joined us. We went 9-21 all kings, including one brute. 95 fow was best. Fished seemed to be really scattered from top to bottom, as almost everything took bites from top to bottom. Friday we ran south. We took 20 fish in 65-100. Again fish were really scattered. Everything from top to bottom took fish. Happymeal and uv blue dolphin were by far our best baits. Saturday we fished the steelheaders tourney. We managed to pull out a first place finish. We weighed almost 56lbs with 5 fish. We caught a total of 13 after we lost our first 5!!! We ran down just south of saugatuk. 75fow with happymeals on riggers were great. Also we had bites on our high divers with spoons. I cant for the life remember the name of the spoon. Again 150 coppers with uv blue dolphin. Hopefully Mark will see this and post a few pics!