1mainiac

Took the wife out to fish this evening Wave report was wrong as usual the report said calm to 1 ft. When I left it was 2 to 4 with some 3 to 5's mixed in. So we never made it past 40 ft before she was ready to come back in. Oh well her day not gonna have fun with her complaining about the weather so turned back in. Marked some decent size fish inside the arms so did harbor patrol for a little over a hour and wife caught her first fish of the year a 25 in pike so she was happy. I had her drive around Muskegon Lake for a bit to get comfortable with driving the boat again and she drove it all the way to the launch but made me dock it. Almost no boats out and very little radio traffic but still no skunks this year. Hopefully weather is better next weekend at Port Sheldon.

I never liked my pancakes so I don't have em any more out deep it is 15 lb balls off the back and 12 lb on the side riggers cause they won't take the 15 lb balls.

Sadly looking at the state of the nation I am afraid perception has allraedy become the new reality.

On my 18ft Starcraft Holiday I ran 4 riggers 2 divers and 6 inline boards with very few problems. As far as the lines went if you could keep the boat running straight 12 lines was doable however 4 big guys in the boat made it wallow like a pig and anything beyond 1 to 2 ft waves made you pray and consider whether or not you were sane and sober being out there. The biggest issue is can your hull safely carry all the weight of people and gear we used to have to pack everything we could in the bow to keep the self bailer above the water line which is not the safest way to boat on Lake MI.

Well keep in mind with one of Mikes stickers you will no longer look like a rookie.

I have been looking at it for a few eeks but put new 7 strand on my reels last fall. So not sure I want to take off wire that has never even been fished to try out something new.

Yep same as all my Ham radio logging programs have GMT offset built in 02:42 right now 08 May 09. Cause the day also changes before ours does.

Ok so we are GMT -4 hours Chicago is GMT - 5 hours, During winter months we are GMT - 5 hours since GMT never changes.

If you want the crimp tool most good sporting goods shops have them for making wire leaders they look like electrical crimpers I have a set on my boat.

Look up the Klincher setup for the Moor Sub Troll same setup will work on a Depth Raider and lots less issues. It is how I am setting mine up this year I only lost one probe in 3 years but at the price of probes 1 is too many.

They are not burner reels but will get fish in every time. Another rod to consider is the Diawa Firewolf I have a 8ft 6in medium light action spooled with 14lb and it is a blast to catch fish with. You don't have to spend a ton to get good results but you do have to keep everything balanced out and getting the rod reel and line to all match and work well together. Trolling is done with boat control all the rod and reel do is put the bait in the right spot and reel in the fish.

http://www.fishusa.com/Daiwa-Wilderness-Trolling-Rods_p.html I have several of these and like them for downrigger and general trolling plus they are easy on the wallet. http://www.northwoodsoutlet.com/oscommerce/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=4_38_130&products_id=1094 Scroll down to the magna 15DX is a hard reel to beat for trolling holds a lot of line and has a line counter so you can repeat what works.

While I have a low opinion of Pinnacle rods that rod and reel setup should pull a diver ok up to about 150 back and then you will begin having trouble tripping it with mono. There has to be something set wrong on the diver as they all go down when set right. I fished divers with mono my first year back as I only had 4 rods so all were setup with mono and I switched them around for differant setups. Where do you fish out of that would help a lot in gettting you headed in theright direction?

Nice Boat Nick after a week of cleaning and getting mine ready to fish we got blood all over it today God was that nice to see!!! Will look forward to seeing you out fishing soon.

Thanks guys the current in 40 to 50 ft where I was finding fish was running offshore when we were running north it was blowing the Starboard lines under the boat. When the current is pushing your starboard Diver set on 2 into your port rigger even though we were on fish we had to change direction not sure if it was changing the direction or the time that shut the fishing down but after we turned south west which straighted out my lines and gave me time to straighten out the mess we got our last fish for the day. There were some people out between 90 and 110 talking about getting some Steelhead in the top 30ft but called it a day and ran in about a half hour after Don left.

nice job great chatting with you guys on the radio I think we should have towed to South Haven based on the boxes coming in down there LOL

"linelord"

Nice job

First trip out for the season one of my batteries was acting flaky so took a spare in case and slept in. Put in at 8:30 and headed out no rush just a nice cruise out hit 40 ft turned north and dropped in some gear got a 11 lb 5 oz king on a lure I don't even know the name of I think it is a older Dreamweaver spoon. Could not get gear to run well headed north so tried south west had a diver tangled with my port rigger and was trying to get set back up when a 5 color went off in 57 ft with another nice 11lb 13 oz king. Had a couple of knock offs and one bumping on my port diver but was gone when the rod cleared the holder I know that was a fish of some kind so will call it 2 for 3 spent rest of morning dragging bottom trying to wake one or 2 more up but no luck. Talked to Mike GLF when he launched his boat but fishing was pretty much done so is just as well he passed on the boat ride to join us. Don Fishsniffer was south of me most of morning and I beleive ended with 1 nice fish before he drove up to try where I was at and then headed in. Boat ran great got the skunk smell out of the box for the season exellent boat dunking day. here is mine the second fish of the day. And Steve with his the first fish of the day

I will be getting my boat wet in the morning for the first time. I am having problems with my on board charger or else I may have a bad battery so am charging up a spare battery to take along just in case it is the battery that is bad. Should have brought home my battery analazer from work but will just haul a spare to be safe. Mostly just a shake down cruise but some fish would be nice as well.

And my wife wouldn't go out on the boat with me tonight or I could have gotten some better pics. Very Cool Mike

Guys I have not forgotten anyone honestly I did get more response than expected and I am going to try and fish with all that responded. It took a little longer than palned to get the boat out of storage but I am finishing a few things up this weekend and getting it wet. There are 3 weekends coming up so I am going to try and mix things up a bit and see what everyones sched is like for the GLF and WMFL tournies this month. Mikes get outing and tourny at Fishermans landing sounds like a great place for everyone to get together at one time and see what all our heads come up with for a summer scheduale. I am going to send out a few PMs and see what everyone has planned for the next few weekends.

Longer rope you need around a 5 to 1 scope which is 5 ft of rode for every ft of water. So 60 FOW would want 300ft of line.

The fish are all waiting for me to get my boat out we have a deal they hide till my boat is ready. I am going out this weekend to blow the cobwebs out of the boat and since all I ever get much of this time of year is greaseballs I waited till they were legal this year. Last year I had landed 30 fish by this time and only had 2 or 3 I could keep all the rest went back in.

How in depth do you want to get Don? There are many variables depending on cone angle and freq that come into play. 50khz is a longer wavelength freq which means it will travel further per cycle roughly 600 meters per cycle where 200khz is faster and shorter roughly 150 meters per cycle. At the same cone angle 50khz will read deeper into the water but 200khz will have 4 times as many returns so more detail. Most current fishfinders use a wide cone angle on the low freq which will give you a bigger picture of the bottom and often pick up your cannonballs better but again less detail. And use a narrow cone angle on the 200khz to give you better detail and hold the bottom better at speed. My Lowrance uses 200khz for fish id and 50khz for the fish alarm this is often annoying as it picks up the cannon balls in fish alarm and rings all day long. Personally I think I would prefer the 200khz to be wider but I am thinking that is now called side imaging or at least a variation of it. For most of the water I fish in I would rather have a wide 200khz for fishing and a narrow 200khz for running in and out as we seldom see deep enough water to need 50khz in narrow mode like ocean going ships use and we all pretty much run much faster then those ships as well. As such I seldom use the 50khz on my finder once in a while I will run it in dual mode to look a little wider but I use 200khz 90% of the time and have never put it in auto mode.