Sly Selea

Little Manistee

You stand up in that thing?

Alma, you say? Pizza Sam's, YUM!

Welcome aboard, Dave. I've enjoyed reading your work on your previous site/publication. Hard to believe you're no longer affiliated with them. Good for us, bad for them, imo.

Not sure where your located, but Tackle Haven in Benton Harbor has them. They have a web site, as well.

Just back in from a fruitless search for fish, any fish, off St Joe. I was so desperate I started looking for dead floaters on the way back in. Couldn't even find any of them. On the plus side, I got lots of practice running my long copper down the chute, and everything went smoothly. I definitely wasn't letting it out far enough. Thanks everyone for all the good advice.

Welcome to the site, Kelly. You can learn a lot here for sure. I just started fishing on the big lake in May and couldn't catch a cold. Thanks to these guys I no longer go out expecting to get skunked. Not sure where your located, but I can't recommend enough taking some of the offers people post looking for riders. You can't beat the learning experience you get hands on from an experienced fisherman.

I did one better. I hitched a ride out of Holland with TJ Twill and Mark (Casey II) and got a double up.....more skoolin' and a limit catch. Holland is interesting. Deeper depths are much closer to shore than in St Joe, and man there are a lot of boats fishing up there.

I guess I'll be sleeping in tomorrow.

It was good to meet you. I was confused about this proV a little. You pass it off as kinda a river boat. There aren't many boats that go perch boats that look safer than this proV. Decently high walls & a wave protector in the back. Has the ability to take a wave on the front. I wouldn't be hesitant to take it salmon fishing. Sure the searunner & oceanpro are more designed for that purpose but hell. There are regulars who use bass boats that are rigged for salmon out fishing and they go out in 200+ FOW. Now salmon fishing in a bass boat... I wouldn't feel too comfortable but this proV i would feel fine.

That's the same thing I thought when I talked to him too, Dan. Looked like a heck of a seaworthy boat. Ya gotta give him props for his honesty, though. It's not often you have a dealer try to talk you out of a sale, lol.

Thanks for all the good ideas. HD, it's always copper into diver, never happened when I release the diver. I also keep my diver rod low, nearly parallel to the water. It's only happened when I'm letting the copper back out after reeling it in. I think Dave may be on to something when he advises me to keep more tension on the line rather than free spooling. It's probably dropping like a rock, and then when I pull it to one side to set the rod it catches the dipsy line as the copper line comes backs up. I'll have to take more care when I'm letting it out 'cause I run 2 to 4 downriggers, too, so the space gets a little tight. I'll probably try speeding up, too. Thanks again.

I'm having a little trouble avoiding tangles when resetting a copper line off the back of the boat. I've watched experienced fisherman from the forum do it when I fished with them, and they made it look easy. I let the copper line out down the chute, for example the 300, attach the board, and let the board free spool back to appropriate distance as soon as I drop it in the water, then pull it over to it's rod holder on the side of the boat.

Off the side of the boat, from back to front, I run a diver, then 2 planer boards with copper. These are set in Berts rod holders, not trees. I do it in that order just because that's the way I've seen it done, no other reason.

If I'm running a 124 diver at say a 2 setting the diver is around 60 feet deep. If I let out a 300 copper I think it's getting the same approximate depth, although I've had the copper/diver tangle with both 240 and 300 copper lengths. I hate to go back to doing it like I did when I was a noob (two whole month ago) and pull the diver before letting out the copper, cause that's a huge pain in the patooty. I just can't figure out how to get the longer copper over the diver line when setting it down the chute.

I'm also afraid if I try setting the longer copper off the side of the boat, if it's my inside board, I'll still have an issue with copper/diver tangles before I can get the board on and pull it out to the side away from the diver. I haven't had this problem until recently when I started going out deeper and running longer copper. Any suggestions on what I'm doing wrong? Thanks

How accurate you think that is? Although, the way the bite his dropped down here it would explain a lot. Trying to decide between sleeping in tomorrow and getting skunked again.

So how would a noob go about learning to run meat? Are there previous posts about technique, procedure, etc?

Just last week I replaced my small swim platform with a full length one on the back of the boat so I could leave the cooler on it and let the blood drain while fishing.

Sweet teak platform, but it seems to have cursed me. The bite has gone to heck since then.

It might be too warm but I love my Mustang Survival coat and bibs. Amazing quality. Plus, it acts as a flotation device and increases your cold water survival time if you wind up in the drink, which is a huge increase in peace of mind when fishing in cold water.

Yeah, I'll be there. Is there a secret handshake?

Trying to make plans for Sunday morning. NOAA website has suddenly lowered anticipated wave height for Sunday morning to 1 foot or less. Based on the 6 foot rollers crashing over the pier right now, that seems pretty optimistic. How accurate do you think that forecast is?

what else to sell you?

how about a custom built car port for the boat ?

we can have you boat garage up before the sno flies

at a price thats hard to beat

Actually, that kinda interests me too. Do you build them as far as St Joe?

Heck yes.

Hey Larry, it was nice meeting you at the launch. We didn't fare so well. Had 2 big kings in the box by 6:15, lost a third big one beside the boat when we got a double on. At 6:30 we were heading back in when the the noob we took out with us was chumming the water bad from sea sickness. He didn't even make it an hour. Dissapointing day, but at least we got something. The waves were kind of bad in my little boat, looks like it will be later tomorrow.

I have the same problem on about the first 10 feet of wire and I use those ridiculously expensive SPRO swivels. Is a small amount of curling normal? I'm getting quite a mini - slinky collection.

some follow up questions: When running multiple divers off a side, is it vital or just easier to use different length rods? Also, I assume it's like running multiple boards off a side, where the longest, deepest diver runs nearest the boat, and the shallower running ones go toward the outside? Also, do you run the deepest diver rod in the front (nearest the back of the boat) and the shallower ones in the back holder, behind the deeper rod?

When I was slightly greener (2 months ago) and hadn't upgraded any equipment, I was using standard trolling rods for the copper I put on horribly undersized reels. They worked, but were kind of a pain feeding the line thru the eyelets because of the knots. Rods designed for copper have much larger eyelets and feed the line thru much easier. One of the best upgrades I've made so far to my equipment, makes it much more user friendly. I picked up inexpensive Okuma GLC rods for around $32.00 each. They have the copper color band on the rod. Upgrade when you can, IMO.

http://www.fishdoubletrouble.com/DoubleTrouble/copper-line-depth-chart.htm

I have heard from a reliable source that this chart may be giving listings that are deeper than actual depths.