1mainiac
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Posts posted by 1mainiac
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Well as for the new Raymarine SP5X system I paid for one in Mar when I bought my boat. However Raymarine spent the whole summer again talking about it and never actually delivered it. I was actually told by one of their company reps who was at Mariners Center this spring that Raymarine considers us fishermen a small portion of their business so even though they had advance orders for hundreds of them they would not deliver em. So after 3 years of promising a replacement for the Sport Pilot they would not deliver it. I had not heard about the Simrad rotary unit being discontinued but there are several dealers who have them in stock but I don't have enough clearance behind the helm to install one so it don't matter.In late Aug I gave up for the season and got my money back and vowed I would never invest in anything Raymarine builds as they made it clear they could care less about my business I will return the favor and not care about theirs. If your boat is cable steered you have very few options so I am converting mine to Hyd steering this winter. Once you have Hyd steering your options are wide open and only your wallet will limit you. I am assumeing since you have twin Mercruisers with power steering it is cable operated power asist steering which is the most common form of I/O steering on the Great Lakes. Here is a link to the Sea Star page that will give you the base componets you need to convert to Hyd Steering. http://ww2.seastarsteering.com/STERNDRIVE/stern.htm I am only short the Cyl as I found a complete sys used cheap but it has the wrong cyl but if anyone needs a Mercruiser non power steering cyl I have one. Another advantage to Hyd steering is you can add as many helms as you want and the wheel cannot be turned by the drive or any other part of the system. This means when you let go of the wheel it stays put even when the autopilot or other station changes the course.
Tight Lines
Jim
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I still catch fish on lures I used in the 70's they all still work we just stop using em cause we got new ones that also work. My uncle allways said that Salmon will bite anything that don't bite them first he has been a a commercial fisherman in AK since the 60's. He has probably caught millions over the years and still runs a lot of the same setups he ran in the 60's.
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I bought my Depth Raider at the Sport fish show in GR 3 years ago I went back and forth between 3 venders till I got the best price. I just told them flat out I was leaving with one so they should make their best deal I also had shopped the internet heavily. So I had pretty much everyone elses best deal as well and I went on Sun. I did the same thing this spring when I bought a couple of new electric downriggers ended up getting 2 Fishlander gold units for 600.00 with 4ft booms ball cradles and 2 rod holders ea. I will bet by this years show there will be a few shops there begging for some sales. Most of these guys would rather sell it then pack it back up cash is esier to carry then equipment.
Tight Lines
Jim
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I for one prefer to fish at night the bite is great and less boats to fight for the good spots. If I had a dollar for every time I heard someone complain about fishing being slow on their way in while I am heading out to fill the box it would have easily paid this years gas bill. Last summer we limited out 5 nights in a row just after sundown in same area Salmon are agressive night feeders. Also the wind always seems to die at sunset for a while so the waves improve and the fishing gets hot at the same time.
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Jim
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Nice job Jarod brought boat home from shop today gotta finish cleaning it and take it to storage next weekend. Kinda wish I had waited but after getting skunked fishing out front decided to call it a year. Then after I put it in the shop I start getting good reports from guys still fishing from 150 out but heck had to put it away sometime and having a couple nights in the upper 30's 2 weeks ago and having to sit at dock last time out scraping the frost off the window only to get skunked out front was the deciding factor.
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Jim
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OK went to store and picked up a few of the 2in ones and put me together a small plastic kit will head to lake tommorrow afternoon and give em a try. They have some neat colors only got a few for now but may have to get several more if they work as good as planned. I sorted oneof my tackle boxes and found a bunch of differant soft plastics I have either bought or been given over the years so now I am gonna give a bunch of em a try this fall. Maybe can start saving money on live bait which is getting to be a pain to find espeacially getting minnows. Can't say how many times over the last few years I drove over to the bait shop to find they were out of minnows or did not have the ones I wanted everytime some one mentions getting a few decent perch all the bait dissapears.
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Jim
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My thought exactly I am using the 3in SCM13-SMLT and killing Crappie and big gills with them on a beetle spin setup. I am gonna pick up a package of the 2in and give em a try this weekend on a inland lake where I have gotten a few perch while crappie fishing maybe I can coax a few into biting them they hit the wax worms on bobbers but the 3in baits might be too big so I will try some 2in ones. Dang now I gotta go to the bait shop.
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Jim
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I use the smaller ones for crappie and bluegill have also ran them on small beetle spins they work great. Have been wanting to try em on perch have had some mauler gills on the beetle spin setups.
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Ken here is a link to them http://www.lakemichiganangler.com/store/Shark_Cannonball_Downrigger_Weights.htm
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I was told years ago the core is a inheirent part of the rebuilt part as such it is taxed not really sure why the tax can't be refunded but it has to do with the core value not decreaseing. But this is all in MI tax code other states have even wierder codes like paying tax on the value of your trade in or paying tax on all of your property every year no matter how long you own it imagine getting your home appraised every year and including the value of all your stuff as well. My county appraiser in TX decided my 1973 Chrysler tri hull with a dead motor was worth 4500 bucks so I put it in the front yard and gave it away. While our state is definitly screwed up there are worse places to live not many when it comes to stupid gov but a few.
Jim
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I have ran a ton of differant releases and have had some success with all of them I am currently running modified Blacks releases above the probe and have had my best luck with this setup. But even though I have had issues with the setup and made a lot of changes the results have been great. Over all this was not a great year but I can't imagine what it would have been like without the probe.do you guys that have these units usually leave the probe on all the time? The first 2 years with my Depth Raider I ran it all the time this was on my 18ft Starcraft and it worked pretty good I still had some issues with the coated cable as it would peel all the time and i went thru 3 cables in 2 years not to mention cutting back the cable to clean it up several times still was killing the fish so having to deal with it was just a inconvincedo all units probes cause about the same amout of blow back? I can't speak for all of them but mine adds a little to the blowback
the cable has nothing to do with blow back on the units requiring cable? basically if not using a probe do you get any blow back? The coated cable is 2 to 3 times as thick as normal cable yes it adds to the blowback. Kinda like comparing 30lb braid to 60lb mono I still have a lot of blowback with the probe in the box
can you use any release with them? i use walker releases.
Tight Lines
Jim
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will pick mine up this weekend and then a good scrubbing and off to join Mikes boat in storage. but not gonna be in the heated section gonna save the extra money since is allready winterized. Great rates
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I will chk again when I get boat back this weekend but the installer said it would not fit. I never rechecked as why would they not sell it to me if it would fit the money was sitting there all they had to do was install it and take home the cash. I do know it is real tight behind the dash but never actually measured it myself. I only need one more peice to have the HYD steering parts then need to install it.
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yep looked at it but would need to cut a hole thru the bulkhead and box it in so would have a box sticking thru the wall above the toilet. It mounts to the back of the current steering box so it adds more than 10in as you have to have room to work on it and to install it. Beleive me if it would fit I would be telling you if I liked it or not as had money sitting at boat dealership all summer waiting for the autopilot install I paid for. The guy who looked at my boat to install a Simrad ap14R said he needed 14in of clearance to install it I had about 7in to work with.
Thanks
Jim
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What steering system do you have? That is the biggest deciding factor if you have Hyd steering you get lots of choices. If not your choices go way down I am converting my boat to Hyd steering this winter so I can put a autopilot on. I bought a autopilot with my boat this spring but Raymarine never delivered it so after waiting 6 months I told them to (well you can imagine) and got my money back. As such I will never spend a penny on any of their crap so I am looking at other systems I like the Simrad AP14H the price is fair and has good reviews. I also have been looking at the SITEX unit chk this site out they have decent prices. http://www.wmjmarine.com/auto-pilots.html
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Jim
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One thing I did not mention was that I catch way more fish with the probe. I have had it 3 years I more than doubled my catch rate the first year with it. I fished the first 2 years with the same battery it made it partway into this season and was still working when I pulled it but I was getting a low battery message, I never took it out from the day I put it in till I changed it did not keep count but would bet well over 150 fish per battery. Heck the probe is in 55FOW south of Duck lake and I bet the battery is still working. I wish I had done a better job of chking the cable when I changed the battery cause it broke and I lost the probe about a week later. Even though I have had some issues with my probe setup on the I would not give it up it is single handed the best fishing investment I have made. Cause I no longer fish unproductive water blindly like many boats out there can't say how many times I have setup in a large group of boats and ran the probe only to not see good temp so I pull and fish elsewhere often catching fish while listening to them complaining that they are seeing fish but can't get em to bite. If I had to choose between the fishfinder or the probe the probe will win every time cause fishing the right temp and speed beats seeing marks every time.
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Jim
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I have a Depth Raider and mostly like it it does everything advertised and batteries last a long time. Cons with it will also apply to the Cannon as they are pretty much the same and use coated cable. Blow back is my biggest complaint and it get worse the deeper you run at 3mph and 100 dn they look like dipsey's. No way to get them down even 20lb balls blow back. With 15lb pancake weights at 100ft dn it had more blowback than my other rigger with a 10lb weight 125 dn. Next year I will not have the coated cable as if I need to know the temp that deep I will just guess. I also take em off as soon as I know what the temp is down there at least till I can get a way to get them to track and have less blow back. As for the coated cable plan on changing it often as it binds and pinches off the coating on the reels. I am now on my 4th and last coated cable from here on in if it is to deep to work on standard cable so be it. So that is the down side upside is it works real good and you don't lose it on turns and the battery lasts a long time. I have a couple of friends with the Fish Hawk units and they work pretty good but they use a 9v battery nearly every trip out and if you don't store it right the battery will be dead before you even use it. Also some fish finders don't like them as interfer with each other and when fishing deep you can lose them on turns if they get too far from the boat the same applies to blowback you can play with the angle of the sensor unit to help with blowback. But basicly it is like a fish finder it only sees fish under it if the probe gets out of the receive cone the screen goes blank. So a strong current can push it out of the signal cone.
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yes they are in the Salmon family all migritory Trout are in the Salmon family this includes some browns rainbows steelhead atlantic chinook coho sockeye pinks ect however the rule says only 3 of one species not of a class fo fish.
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Great job Terry and crew and people say I troll to fast. I only went up to 3.2 on Sat Down riggers look like diseys at that speed kinda blows the slow down in colder water theory.
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Jim
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I ran braid on one rigger this year. I don't really see the benifit of switching to
braid. I do wish i could get thinner diameter coated cable for my depth raider
it has some serious blow back at times.
ELLIOT I don't know how deep you want to run your Depth Raider but mine will work good to over 100ft with regular cable. I switched back to coated cable this year but the blow back is so bad I doubt that 200ft of cable will get me much below 100ft dn. I am going to take the coating off the first 50 ft or so and I take the probe off if I need to run that rigger deep. I have tried several differant balls with very little success short of going to 25lb balls or putting motors on them to push em forward I am out of ideas. So now the probe spends more time in the box.
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Jim
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Ok my last weekend was not my best we went out Fri night and did harbor patrol as we had the lake pretty much to ourselves and we marked a lot of big fish when we started into the channel . So about a 100 yds into the channel we swung around went back in and setup we made several passes thru the channel also fished outside north and south out to 50ft. Well we got a huge Sheephead called it quits at dark so I would be ready to go out this morn. Got up this morn and my brother could not make it so was just my nephew and me and cold as heck so we waited for the sun to come up and clear the frost off the boat windsheild. We headed out around 9 am ran south to the net and set up headed north in 40ft nothing at 10:30 we pulled lines and ran SW to 120ft and started a NW troll to around 150 then we started a east west pattern and worked between 120 and 180 nadda around 12:30 we started back in. Marked a few decent fish in 40 to 50 ft out front so worked them for a couple hours in and out north and south no takers. Cold water is in but I think the fish ran up allready heard a couple guys out in 270 getting a few fish but did not waste the gas running out. After a full day on the water with only 2 knock offs we trolled back up the channel about 3:30 and called it a day.
Surface temps ranged from 60 deg in front in the mud to 46 in 55ft in clean water. So the last week brought us some real cold water but did not hear one report of a mature fish taken in last 2 days. Well that concludes my season on the big lake had a decent year hope you all did as well. Perhaps we'll meet on the river Steelhead fishing.
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Jim
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Did harbor patrol tonight fo 3 hours lost one, wife caught a huge sheephead well over 20lbs. Will be back out in morn.
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The wind has been blowing out of north all week which push's the top layer south leaving nothing but cold water. The rain has the rivers up this is it everything will be out front either to run up or to feast on the carnage and stage for the next few runs when the Steelhead start up to winter over. God I love it these are days I live for the woods are full of hunters and the water is mine. I will be trolling in 3 hours.
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Jim
Auto Pilot
in Boat Maintenance and Rigging
Posted
Hi Mike dropped my boat off at storage today talked to Brett really nice setup. Took a quick look at your boat you have a mercruiser cable operated power steering system. As such you have 2 options for autopilot one wait till Raymarine finally releases their new system the one I waited all year for and is now schedualed for release in late Nov according to Mariners Center as of today. The second option would be to find one of the Sim Rad AP12 or14 R systems. There is some talk that Sim Rad is going to stop making them so they might be a risk. So as of today you have to choices take a chance on the Sim Rad or wait in line for the Raymarine unit to be released. The only other choice would be to do what I am and that is to convert to Hyd steering then the options increase I spent a couple of hours at Mariner Center today and decided on a Garmin system fo my boat now just gotta save the money to pay for it. I chose the Garmin setup because once we compared cost and features it won hands down and Garmin is not gonna go away anytime soon. The Shadow drive feature was the most deciding feature as you can change course without shutting the pilot down so you you can grab the wheel and make changes without haveing to put the pilot in standby first. And manual course changes will be maintained when you let go of the wheel so if you want to change course you can just grab the wheel rather than trying to reprogram on the fly. Mariner Center will have all the info on this system in a week or so but they can price it out and order them now takes about a week for shipment to arrive. One other thing for you to consider is it is the only system out there that will maintian course in reverse so you can backtroll with it if you want with a little practice and some programing it will back you out of the slip and drive you to your favorite fishing spot and all you would need to do is shift and change speeds. One of the last items I want to do on my boat is to add rear controls then with the remote for the autopilot I will be able to drive the boat from the fishing station. Well good luck.
Tight Lines
Jim