redboat

Oh, HECK - they gotta have HOOKS???

Well thank you for the help, not bein' able to read and all I would have never thought of looking through all the articles on this site first before making that silly post in Japanese in the first place.

I am really serious. They work better than any other spinner bait that I have ever used. Have you tried them CJBasswacker? If not send me your mailing address and I will send you a few. They don't cost much and it will be on the house. Its the white spinner and the blk/char spinner at the bottom of the pic. Hey, I've got a couple of those...Never caught anytihing on 'em, though. I HAVE in fact caught crappie and stripers, even a bass or two, on "in line" (aka Rooster Tail) spinners. I shoulda been more clear in the original post: I was referring to the big ol' "safety pin" jig spinner baits, with one or two blades.

Totally! Well, mostly...Well, more or less...I can't really hum that well...

Here we go again, bass season in full swing. I've been dusting off all my spinner baits, rerigging the trailer hooks, getting the Unk Josh's rinds ready. Problem is - I've never caught anything on a spinnerbait. I once lived on Lake Hamilton in Arkansas. Spinnerbaits are fun; I'd go throw them for an hour or two whenever I was down to the lake (which was in my back yard). Threw 'em from banks, from bass boats, from jon boats. Slow rolled 'em, fast burned 'em. Used flourocarbon, braid, mono. I'd estimate I've owned about 500 spinnerbaits over the years, tandem blade, single blade. Colorado blades. Willow blades. All colors. All combinations. I'd say I've made probably 10,000 casts of spinnerbaits. Never got a hit, never caught a fish. I've probably seen other anglers throw 20,000 more. Never saw any of THEM catch anything either. So my question is: Has anyone actually ever caught a fish on a spinnerbait, or are they just for catching fishermen at Bass Pro? Should I pitch all my spinnerbaits in the lake and feed the Unk Josh's to the neighbor's dog and stick to cranks and plastics? Or is there some magic solution, like, I need to stand on my head while pointing the rod tip at the full moon and hum the theme song from "Bonanza" while slow rolling a chartreuse and pink spinner bait with three willow and two colorado blades past lilly pads? Need less to say spinners are not a confidence bait for me!

I bought it last year. Hasn't done me any good at all. What it is, is a two part calculation of what bait the bass will go for given certain conditions (rising/falling barometer, water temp, type of forage, cover, water clarity) and where they are (shallow, suspended, etc). Using these factors you look up where the bass are and what bait to use. Needless to say the "factors" are difficult to impossible to determine; most of the time you're just guessing. It kept telling me the bass were suspended and I should use a chartruse spinner. I've never caught anything on a chartruse spinner or any other color spinner for that matter (perhaps I'm not hooking them to the proper fence shocker?) but I tried anyway. No luck. So to summarize: Last year I experimented with the Bass Matrix for about two months, caught zero fish when using it, did OK when not. I'd say save your money or buy a magic 8-ball - its about as accurate! By the way, its not sold at bassresource.com.

Lowrance claims they do not.

Dodge 2500, Cummings diesel. I get about 17 around town, 15 to 16 pulling the boat. Had it about a year and a half, so far no problems. My nephew has the same type truck. He recently put in a 5 step controller, maxes out around 400 HP. If he runs it on "safe tow" he gets about 20 MPG. Before that he said he was getting around 13.

Congrats! Try what I did: Found a wife who's even more into fishing than I am. We recently upgraded to a Triton 196 - my wife was the one who really wanted it. And after all that she doesn't even want to drive it! Do I have the perfect wife or what!

Before bass fishing I was into offroading. Optima batteries are the "hot" battery with the offroading crowd, because of the jarring an offroad vehicle is subjected to as well as high temps under the hood and occasional high loads as when winching. They outperform other batteries in this type application hands down. A bass boat is another animal, in some ways similar to an offroad Jeep or truck, in other ways not. I doubt if temps in the bilge are nearly as high as in a Jeep climbing a hill at 2 mph, and I've not seen a bass boat with a 300 amp winch mounted on it. The jarring is debatable, should be less in a bass boat but all the same I've hit some hard waves which throw the boat around. I don't know how Optimas would perform in a bass boat, but I'd like to hear from someone who's tried 'em.

Try this, hopefully I can 'splain it sufficiently. You'll probably need to remove the battery from the boat: 1) Fill all cells with water if they're low. Distilled is best. 2) FULLY charge the battery. (Don't set it on the concrete floor of your garage when you charge it). 3) Remove the caps. Using a voltmeter set on "DC" put the negative lead on the negative battery post. Put the positive lead into the first cell ( the one closest to the negative post) lightly touching the plates. Record the voltage. 4) Now put the negative lead into the first cell, the positive lead into the next cell. Record that voltage. 5) Continue until you're on the last cell (negative lead) and the positive lead is on the positive terminal. Now, the add the FIRST reading and the LAST reading (one will be high, the other low). Divide by two. That number and all the other numbers from the cell to cell tests should be within .2 volts of each other. If you have a shorted cell it'll read really low, like your cells will all be 2.2 volts but cell number three will be 1.4, or some such. If the numbers add up and there's no significant variation the battery's OK and doesn't need to be replaced. This is a much more dependable test than the specific gravity test, which doesn't tell you anything other than the battery's charged. A cell which has shorted plates will have a lower voltage than the others; the battery should be replaced. Or... Say you have a shorted cell, you can try this trick which sometimes works: Dump all the old cells out somewhere (I like my neighbor's yard, yuk yuk). CAREFULLY refill the cells several times with clean water and dump it. After you've gotten all the acid out put a couple of spoons of baking soda in each cell, then refill with water. After it quits foaming dump the cells again, rinse, repeat. You may need to do the baking soda thing a couple of times - sometimes that'll clean the sediment out and "unshort" a bad cell. Now go to the local auto parts store and buy a box of battery acid (its liquid but they sell it in a box, like fine wine). Turn the battery upside down and let it dry overnight, refill with battery acid, recharge, then repeat the cell to cell test. This only works about half the time but baking soda and battery acid are cheap, it won't cost you nearly as much to try to "rejuvinate" a dead trolling motor battery as it'll cost you to buy a new one! Let me know if this works for you.

I priced both. Check out ebay - the Hot Spots chip wound up costing me about $75 versus about $150 as I recall for the Navionics. Also a salesman at Cabellas told me the Navionics survey left out large portions of some lakes due to droughts and the lake levels being low. The Hot Spots is working fine for me, have had it out on Grapevine, Ray Roberts, and Fork. RR and Fork have extra fishing detail, was able to locate and follow a creek channel at RR which had lots of suspended fish. At Fork I was able to verify that I was in the lanes although I'd not advise navigating by GPS alone.

I was speaking from personal experience - building and racing cars has been a hobby of mine for a number of years. The absolute hands down best vehicle I ever owned was a Datsun 240Z. I made the mistake of selling it; a few years later I bought a 280Z. It was - lets say, "ok". Sold that one, years later bought a 300ZX Turbo, which was hands down one of the three WORST vehicles I ever owned (the other two being a Toyota and a Fiat). Based on that alone I'd say "Japanese quailty" took a nose dive from 1972 on. I've also owned a couple of Toyotas, another Nissan, and a MG. Have helped friends work on numerous foriegn cars and trucks. Add to that several Ford, GM, and Chrysler products. As for the "Mitsibushi engine" - My Dodge has a Cummings diesel, of course! Mitsibushi hasn't made a decent engine since the one they put in the Zero (which was a Howard Hughes design). By the way, I also thought the "Jap" reference was a bit racist. The PC term is "rice burner" (yeah, I've owned a few bikes too).

Good thread, guys. One thing I didn't see mentioned - I may have overlooked it, if so I apologize - you've got to keep the batteries topped off with water. This is especially important if you use an onboard charger because if you let the battery water level fall it'll get hot when you charge it, causing even more water loss, making it get hotter next time and so on until you finally fry the battery. This happened to me when I put a charger on my last boat. It was a real pain watering the batteries, hard to see the water level, so after replacing the TM battery I installed a battery filling system. It connects the cells in all the batteries, you fill it using a squeeze bulb. Stops when the cells are topped off so you can't overfill it. I use distilled water. I recently put this system on my new boat, a Triton with 2 TM and 1 cranking battery. I had 'em put a three bank charger on it, despite the dealer assuring me I'd "never ever" need to charge the cranking battery. Couple of other comments: 1) If you're going to use a charger for the cranking battery its best to replace it with a deep cycle battery. Cranking batteries aren't designed to be discharged then recharged like the trolling motor batteries. You lose a few cold start amps but thats easy to fix - get a bigger battery. 2) All batteries have internal resistance; therefore, its normal for a fully charged battery in good condition to show a voltage drop when its loaded. You'll see this same thing on your car if you turn the lights on when the motor's not running - turn the ignition on and look at the voltmeter; you'll see it drop to 12 volts or less. I put a charge meter on my old boat. I could run the TM for a minute or two, then hit the meter button - it'd show about half charged. If I let it sit for a minute or two then read the voltmeter again it'd be right back up.

I guess we got off what we drive and onto free trade. So, here's my two cents worth: Yes, Toyota operates US plants and provide Americans jobs; however, many of the parts are still (and will probably always be) made in Japan. Now I don't have a problem with this except for two things: Number one, US auto companies can't open plants in Japan, because the Japanese government doesn't allow this; and number two, American cars don't sell in Japan not due to poor quality but because Japan slaps huge tariffs on American products and forces American cars to comply with unrealistic inspection standards. If the US government adopted the Japanese system tomorrow the number of Toyotas sold in the US would be zero, except for the diehards who'd be willing to pay $200,000 for a basic Camry. American companies and American workers produce the best quality products in the world; given a level playing field there's nobody who can compete with America. Unfortunately our government allows (even encourages) unfairness. As for "reliability" - having worked on American, European, and Japanese autos and trucks for several years I assure you the "foreign reliability" myth is just that, a myth. They break down as often as American autos and in most cases are more difficult and more expensive to fix. Personally I'll take my good ol' US Dodge Ram any day over anything Toyota makes or will ever make. Of course it was made in Mexico, so I suppose its a good ol' Mexican truck! Ole!

That 700 and the 640 series Nitro's were built on a much narrower hull than the NX882. Yeah, I know - and I've never driven an 882; it may be better than the 700 (which Nitro no longer makes) - but like all Nitro boats its more or less flat on the bottom, not much V in the hull. I could get my 700 into coves which were less than a foot deep, the flat bottom's great for that; but its also not a very seaworthy hull design.

10' aluminum jon boat, 275 Verado. Goes 300 mph. No, seriously - 2006 Triton 196, 200 Optimax.

I just traded in my Nitro "Death Trap 700" on a Triton 196. It was an OK first bass boat, but don't try to take one out in a wind over 5 mph or cross anything like a boat wake. I suggest you test drive the boat before you buy it. Not certain if all Nitros suffer from the instability problems the 700 LX does but if so you'd be better off finding out before you buy it!

Great posts, lotsa information about crigs - thanks! Interesting story about crigs - I attended one of Bass Pro's bass schools Feb before last. In one session the pro (Shaw Grigsby?) asked everyone to raise their hand if they'd ever fished a crig. Almost everyone's hand went up - about 200 people in the room. He then asked, "Ok, how many of you have actually caught anything using a crig?" I counted the hands - 20 out of 200.