Scott F

The teflon on bullets is there to protect the gun barrel from the bullets. It does not add anything to the armor piercing ability. The size of the hole is made by the hook. For the hole to be smaller, the hook has to be thinner. Again, teflon won't allow the hole to be smaller than the size of the wire hook.

Somebody probably found a warehouse full of unsold teflon hooks from the 90's and repackaged them to sell today

My retrieve is I cast out, reel to get the bait to dive, then stop. I'll wait, jerk the bait twice, reel up the slack, pause, jerk twice, reel up the slack, and do it again. The pause will be anywhere from half a second to a full minute. Usually I start with about a 2 second pause. I'll change, the length of the pause depending on what they react to. Colder water will usually mean longer pauses. I seldom if ever fish jerkbaits with a steady retrieve. This is with suspending jerkbaits. I believe the trigger is the pause. When the bait is jerked and it dances wildly then stops right in a fishes face and holds there, they just can't resist an easy meal.

Braid. The floating line acts as a strike indicator. When a fish picks up the bait, the line laying on the surface will twitch, even on a slack line. It's how I detect strikes most of the time.

I don't remember anybody ever saying bass were line shy until the people who make fluorocarbon line told us they were. I've been using steel leaders when fishing in waters where pike swim for 50 years. Still catching bass. Don't listen to me or anybody else. Fish the way you want. Use leaders if you want. If it's not working for you, adjust.

I see Cabelas has the 73sv (pre-chirp) model on sale right now for $500. Are you taking advantage of that? I got one for a similar price last spring, it's a great unit. I have seen videos of the panoptix in use and it sure looks like it could be very useful, but at $1,500 just for the transducer, it's too far out of my price range to even consider it. The only drawback I see, aside from the price, is that like a video camera, it's hard to fish and watch the screen at the same time. If the price comes down substantially, like it has with a lot of this technology, I might think about adding it to my unit.

The Illinois Smallmouth Alliance has their annual banquet, The Bronzeback Blowout coming up on Saturday, March 4, 2017. We have just confirmed that 2000 Bassmaster Angler of the Year, Timmy Horton will be the featured speaker at the event. Besides, Timmy, there will be dinner, raffles, silent auctions for guided trips and 200 diehard smallmouth fishermen trading fishing stories. The event is held at the American Legion Hall, 301 W. Butterfield Rd., Elmhurst, IL from 3 to 9 pm. Tickets, that must be purchased in advance, are $30. If interested you can PM me and I'll tell you how to get tickets.

Uh, since it's wire, I use wire cutters.

If you aren't catching fish using leaders, you may be using leaders that are too heavy. With jerkbaits and even senkos, I make light leaders with 20lb test tieable wire. I've been using it for years. I still get plenty of bass and pike without loosing lures or fish.

Even if you find less expensive lures, you won't be any happier having those get bit off too. Start using steel leaders.

What is causing you to lose the baits?

Won't the Humminbird allow you to create your own maps in real time without having to upload it to another web site, then put it back on your depthfinder?

I also see that if I use one of my old (useless) map chips, I can get it for only $100.

All the gps makers have a disclaimer that says not to use the unit as your primary means of navigation. Like most people, I did not pay attention to the fine print. If anybody else has used the Navionics chip for their Lowrance, I'd like to hear about your experiences and the quality of the maps. If it's as good as the online version, I'd probably buy one before I junk my Lowrance in favor of another Garmin

What did you use up this past season? Where do you fish?

All braid, all the time. Why? Because I don't like lines that stretch.

Bad maps can be dangerous. I was running on a lake I'd never been on before. The map chip on the Lowrance showed shallow water ahead of me but the rock I hit with my prop was not on the map. The Echomap series of Garmin units which are more money, have excellent maps built in, 6,000 high definition maps plus another 11,000. No map chip purchases required. Plus you can create your own high def maps in real time just by driving back and forth on your lake if no map or only a low def map exists. Their 4 inch unit with maps as I'm sure you saw, start at $400. I got an EchoMap 73sv (7 inch screen) last spring on sale for $450 to replace my Lowrance unit.

I have last year's version of the Hook, the Elite 5. My only problem was the maps that came built in were just horrible. I purchased 2 other lake map chips that I hoped would be an improvement but they were just the same low def, inaccurate maps I already had. I can't find any info on the Lake Pro Cartography. I hope for your sake they are an improvement over the maps that are included on the Hook.

They usually do. Even if it doesn't, you can just use a hose clamp to attach the bracket that comes with the unit to your TM.

I hope you have a lot of vacation time coming. You will need it.

Spending more time fishing next year is going to be my first priority.. it's going to be easier next year than this past year. I worked for the first 6 months of this year and was laid up after back surgery that made me cancel most of my summer and early fall fishing. Today, I officially retired from my job and 2 days ago, I bought another boat designed for my style of river fishing. My goal for next year is to learn where the big smallies hide out on the Wisconsin River now that I have the right tool for the job.

Considering this is an entry level depthfinder, It is amazing how much technology comes with a unit in this price range compared with just a few years ago. The only real differences between this and units costing 10X as much is the size of the screen and the lack of maps. Besides that, it has everything you need. Color screen with good resolution, it has regular and down view sonar, shows the depth, temperature, the speed you are moving, shows the track you have moved along and can mark waypoints that you can return to. With the GPS not having a map that shows you where you are on the lake or where to look for deep or shallow water, it's about the only "con" I can think of. I think you will be very happy with this unit.

I haven't fished schooling largemouth too often, but when mixed sized smallmouth are hanging out together, the little fish are much more aggressive and will grab my bait before the bigger fish every time. When I have been on schools of largemouth they were nearly all the same sized fish.

It's a fiberglass composite. Apparently, there is Kevlar added in for extra strength and durability to withstand the rock and gravel of rivers. The boat is kind of a hybrid drift boat/skiff/canoe. It weighs about 250 pounds, and will only draft 4 inches of water fully loaded,

I haven't picked it up yet, but I just purchased a 2014, Towee Rivermaster. 16' long, 51" beam. I've been fishing rivers for the last few years, floating in my personal pontoon which I really enjoy. The problem was that in a day, a 6-7 mile float is about as long as you can do and the rivers I'd like to fish don't always have put-in and take out spots that are close enough together to make these floats possible. The shallow, rocky rivers prohibit me from taking my Ranger. A boat with a jet would be the answer. A friend was selling his 3 year old Towee which was designed for shallow rocky rivers. It's small enough to easily fit in my garage, and cheap enough for me to afford. The picture below is not the boat I bought. Mine has a Terrova trolling motor and I will be adding a 35hp Tohatsu jet outboard later this winter. Looking forward to the spring when I can get it out on the water.