1mainiac

As stated find the thermalcline hitting the bottom 52 to 55 deg and bounce your lures off the bottom. Not cannon balls lures. There are a few spots off Muskegon I can pick them up in summer. Often nice fish 8 to 12 lbs always the same method of catching them dropping a Ace Hi plug on the bottom in a turn usually in 65 to 70ft where I make my turnaround north of Muskegon on a 300 copper. Always the inside rod. A few guys on here know where I am talking about. Flasher fly has also taken a few in the same area same method. Started out as a mistake on a turn has proven to catch fish.

Frank it is no different in the RV business we have people all the time show up to buy travel trailers with their new car which can't pull a box of crackers home. Then they want the biggest trailer they can find. We sold one a few weeks back where the trailer empty was 50 lbs below the max towing of the car. At least the guy agreed if it did not tow well he was going to trade the car in for something that would tow better. It is hard to believe they make a trailer hitch for the Chevy Volt LOL.

The Hewescraft like the C-Dory are utilitarian boats, for what we do I would not get the extended cabin on either boat unless your getting a 25 or bigger. The extended transom gets you a better ride and give the engines more leverage on the hull. On some it also gives you a place for a cooler and to step out and net a fish. There is plenty of storage on them in AK these type boats are used to haul supplies hunt and fish they are not pleasure boats like most of what we see down here. Where my uncle lives there have only been roads for a few years and you still cannot drive to the mainland. So leaving the island is by float plane or boat. When Alaska changed much of the fishing laws he sold his 56ft trawler and bought the C-Dory. He still commercial fishes the C-Dory for Salmon and does very well as the law changes work better for a smaller boat for him.

Seriously look at the C Dory It is a fishing machine. It is not a fast boat but it will always get you there and back with a good ride.

Here is my pick http://www.boattrader.com/listing/1989-C-Dory-22-Cruiser-101821475 My uncle has fished one of these off Alaska for the last 10 years or so. Easy on gas very fish able he has a commercial license 100 ton sold his big boat and bought this. He has dragged thousands of Salmon home with it.

Can't go wrong with Don on the Tangled Mess great friend and great fisherman. My personal opinion is get some guys to come fish on your boat. Your welcome to come up and fish on mine if you want however what works on my boat may not work on yours. Like it or not every boat fishes a bit different riggers don't read the same line counters vary. Strange as it seems 2.5 on my boat may be different than 2.5 on yours. So the key is learning how to catch fish on your boat with your gear. I got back into salmon fishing 8 years ago when my wife dragged me back here. A lot had changed since the 80's when I quit So I started with a open checkbook on a old boat spent a lot of money on stuff I seldom use because other guys were bragging about how great this or that lure was so I bought them. Wallet is much thinner now and I have over 700 spoons on my boat guess what I use around 20 of them on a avg season. I have close to 100 plugs and fish 6 or 7 of them. Not because there is anything wrong with the other stuff I have just zeroed in on what works best for me on my boat. What I suggest is you setup a couple of programs and fish them by changing your boat speed and patterns till you dial them in.

I grew up on a farm so I am used to sleeping with noise the SPX5R sounds like a litter of pigs squeaking and squealing LOL. It will bug you some days but when you fighting fish at the back of the boat and don't have to keep yelling at the driver it is pretty nice LOL. It actually works pretty good with the bags out as they allow me to keep the motor pushing a bit harder and the bags help keep it in line.

No matter what if I had the money my boat would have Hyd steering and a GHP10.

We need to restore all of our natural flows this will create jobs and fix what we have messed up it will also put a end to more invasive species entering our system by ships at least.

I can't find the info in it but there is a sliding release system that you can stack on your downrigger cable. You could add as many as you wanted It has a planer and comes up when released so you can reset it. The idea is you could just send the cannon ball down one time and fish all day with the release coming up to be reset. I had one long ago but can't remember the name of the company. It was kinda neat and did work however you could not load your rods up or it would just come up. It also did not trip from the rod so you had to reel it all the way up to change lures. I have no idea what I ever did with mine I might have left them on the old manual riggers I had them on.

Pretty much all copper for me now here is one tip I am going to change to remove the level winds or buy reels without them. Even though line counter reel use the level wind for the counter you can remove the level wind and save a lot of grief 80% of our copper problems last 2 years come from same thing Copper line or a swivel sticking in the level wind and bird nesting the reel. Now you will hear guys saying how they have no problem and I am one of them but as for people I fish with not always the case. One minor mistake and your down a rod till you can de tangle it. But remove the level wind and once the copper is in the guides you can let it rip rather than slowly feeding it out by hand till you get enough out for it to pull against a clicker or light drag. Some setups have less problems than others but they all can have issues.

Fishing out of Muskegon I seldom go very deep until June or July. 10 to 30ft for some Browns and fall back Steelhead. A little deeper will often find kings mixed in with them.

Appearance Products in GR does Marine vinyl. They can also make custom seat covers pretty much anything you need. I get a lot of RV awning Fabric pieces as well which would do a decent job just not a lot of color choices LOL.

My experience with Penn Yan boats has been good however avoid the jet powered version if you intend on fishing it. Most of the ones I have fished off have had very little dead rise which can make them rough in choppy water. They are well built and most people seem to love them I also would try and avoid the tunnel drive boats but some people love them as well. Since you did not say which model you are looking at it is hard to give a honest opinion as there are several I would say go for it and several I would say think about it or pass on it. I would take a 288 Predator with the twin tunnel drives But would pass on a Sabre with a tunnel drive so it really comes down to which boat.

Here is what I am thinking we all have BW and Blood Run as sponsors and I think Fish Hawk is also going to sponsor each of our tourney's so if everyone uses the scores from the BW tourney and the Blood Run Tourney and the Fish Hawk perhaps we could use the 3 event total for a league Championship and work on a prize for it. The real issue is distance and no fair place to have a one event shootout. But if we all use the same scoring system and can agree on at least 3 events I think that would be a fair challenge which would not give one lucky boat the champion ship. What we tried to do with the WMFL was meet in the middle we move south they move north and we have a shootout our best 3 boats vs their best 3 boats. It never managed to happen. But if we can agree on one early season one mid season and one late season event to use scores from we may have something workable.

I never expected everyone to fish 7 events but hey Don and me are not right in the head and we are probably gonna be fishing most weekends anyhow so why not run the tourney's. For us we have guys who do well early in the year and guys who do well late so scoring 5 events really lets you know wo the best team is and having 7 events means guys can miss one or even 2 without being knocked out of the championship. The first year we weighed 10 fish and by the 3rd event there were only 3 or 4 boats that still had a chance at the championship. The format we run keeps everyone in the race till the end. I have looked at a couple other possible options for a championship series points system like what the 333 does but that would favor smaller boat turnouts rather than actual box scores.

Finally even if we get this sorted out it is not like we are talking about big prizes or money. It will be a small prize pack and bragging rights and that is it with planning we could do much better next season. But we have to start somewhere.

I have had mine down to 2.0 with the bags out but I seldom go that slow. The Raymarine rep you talked to does not know his own product line very well. The only Amberjacks I know with AP's all have Hyd Steering.opens the box to many choices as your boat stands the choices are very limited and are still likely to cost as much as converting the steering and buying a Garmin GHP10.

One other thing I do a lot is hit the brakes and let them drop then resume speed. I have had people wonder why I have the bags out when trolling at 3mph and that is the reason because if I am at 3.0 and I tap the brakes and get Salmon I might slow down but if I start picking up Steelhead I may pull the bags. My biggest Steelhead came on a 300 copper with a Ace Hi Yellow Tail running over 4mph GPS it was over 17 lbs. I had the 300 down in case there were some kings around. Not real sure how deep a 300 runs at that speed with a plug but that big Steelhead fought like a king until he hit the surface then it was nuts for a bit.

I only have a few LOL 75ft x2 ,100ft x2 ,115 x1 ,125 x2 150 x2 175 x1 , 200 x2 , 250 x1 , 300 x2 , 450 x2. OK 17 rods all 45lb Blood Run. The only lead core left on my boat is a 2 color and a 5 color. I don't think either of them got wet last year.

All of the above when setting the high diver remember it has to pull itself out from the boat. SO once it is running set the drag and let it creep out. Since for me they are a Steelhead and shallow water only use they never see more than 100 to 150ft out. I won't even take them out of the cabin if I am running a 300 copper as they meet way too often. My language and personality go south about that time as well LOL.

The last Aluminum boat transom I did was built with rough sawed Oak That was glued and doweled together. We used a planer to get to close to 1 and 1/2 thickness before gluing. If you wanted it pretty you could rent a floor sander and run it over the whole thing after you get it glued together. I also agree with not spending the extra money on Marine plywood.

Well we only count the best 5 out of the seven so if every group has at least 5 events we can use total score for the 5 events. I really would not like it to be a one event contest since we both know that will favor one port. If we wanted we could even do a best 3 or 4 events total. You guys have better early fishing than us but our fall fishing starts before yours does so it is all open but we need to at least have similar scoring systems. I really can't come up with a handicap system like bowling. So it has to be straight across points total for multiple events. Last year I had a 140 point 6 fish box with big fish of the year in it and came in 6th in that event. So every port is going to have some strong boxes a bunch of strong scores will separate the good from the lucky. As for the 7 events Only a couple of us will fish all 7 if we are even able to get all 7 in weather wise.

As for the league battle it has been planned 2 years in a row and but has not yet been fished as weather did not work for us the first year and there was no WMFL teams last year so we moved ours back to Muskegon. When I say no WMFL team I mean they had not fished a tourney so there was no top boats to compare. The other issue would be picking a neutral port.

That would be cool however the distance between all 3 ports is a limiting factor. Also Each port fishes different at times during the season. When the WMFL went back to it's old points per fish status we adopted that with them increasing rod limit and going to a 6 fish weigh in which meant it had to be a team fishing tournament. The idea is like bowling or any other league format sport you have to have the same scoring system to be able to compare results. There are several sponsors that have expressed interest in having a multiple port contest but the only way to do it is have the same scoring system for all ports.

Yes it would be true and you may be stuck trolling on the same motor in your boat as most of the Amberjacks I know of only had power assist on one engine. There is however a way to install a second pump on the other motor which would let you troll on either. The System on my boat does a pretty good job however it still runs nearly non stop keeping the boat in line on anything other than flat water. But if you can steer the boat straight so can the AP. Hyd steering is the best option as it removes all play in the steering system and will lock on and hold a course. I looked at the GHP 12 with a Octipus remote drive but could not get it to fit my budget and wanted a AP now so I ended up with the exact system I avoided buying for 3 years. The nice part is it actually does a decent job and was very nice to have last season.

it works pretty good on my site even tough no one uses my site LOL

Easy works right Ken LOL

I will be at the swap meet maybe I will sell something this year LOL. Wife would love it if just once I came back with less than I left with.