jdh's Content - Page 24 - Great Lakes Fisherman - Trout Salmon & Walleye Fishing Forum

Towing Vehicle Advice

jdh posted a topic in General Discussion

I'm looking at a couple options for towing my boats around and trying to consider them from a financial point of view. I have 22 ft Starcraft Islander & a 17 ft Lowe currently. Right now I have a Nissan Frontier which gets the job done for now. I'm putting on about 16k miles a year - with about 3.5k miles towing (mostly 80 mile round trips. The option I was considering was selling the Frontier and buying a used truck for about $5 k and then buying a used sedan for commuting & trips for about $12 k. I would estimate 5k miles a year would be driven on the truck, and the rest in the car. Have you done something similar with having 2 vehicles and how has that worked out for you? I hate putting all the highway miles on the Frontier when I don't need to be driving a truck. Any other thoughts/suggestions?

February 2, 2016
10 replies

Various Trolling Questions

jdh replied to Divemaster's topic in General Discussion

1) Diver Setups - I like my Daiwa Accudepth Plus 47LCB reels. I run both braid and wire off of these. Reels with smoother drags are important for divers. For rods, I've been using Okuma dipsey rods (the ones that sell for about $35). 2) I like black or clear divers, but will run orange & yellow when fishing up higher up in the water column (diver settings on 3 or 3.5 or the smaller divers) 3) I don't use snubbers unless I'm using mag divers. I use 20 lb test flouro leader. Haven't snapped a fish off yet. The snubbers you say stretch too much have several strands of heavy monofilament inside them - I would doubt you're gonna have anything snap the snubbers themselves. 4) For planer boards I run Okuma Pro GLT trolling rods - the specifically the ones made for copper trolling. I run both longer leadcore & copper off of these rods. For short leadcore segments and mono trolling i like the Okuma Pro GLT precision trolling rods in 7'10". 5) I use both copper & leadcore. They both work. I like leadcore for getting down to about 5 to 30 feet, whereas copper for 20 through 80 feet. 6) I run rigger rods like you do with 20 lb test mono. I like the stretch of mono - and have not run braid off the riggers. If I'm fishing spoons only, I've run down to 12 lb test on lighter rods. 7) I don't run leaders for the downrigger rods. 8) Lakers - 5 to 20 feet. Steelhead & browns - generally 50+ for spoons. 9) Spoons... I run all sorts of spoons. My highest used ones are Dreamweaver Super Slims, Silver Streak Mini's, Silver Streak Mags, Moonshine, Stingers. It's easy to buy too many spoons - and then have trouble deciding what to run. 10) I just run orange & reds shallower, greens/yellows below the orange, greens/blues below that. Put out more of whats working if you see a pattern. 11) How would you be using flasher/fly setups? It can be a little crazy figuring this out. It really varies by time of year, the fish you're fishing for, what depths the fish are at... 12) Change speeds until something works. Then replicate. I fish from 1.8 to 4 mph.