WIGuide

It really depends on the day for me. I'm fortunate I get to fish enough that it allows me to pick and choose based on my mood. There's days I'm on the water just to relax and I catch what I catch and there are days I'm out there focused and challenging myself trying for the biggest 5 or biggest bite. Tournament fishing it's definitely about the biggest, but there can be stretches in tournaments that catching a fish regardless of size helps to kind of regain a little confidence and momentum. That's the great part about fishing though, there's no right or wrong and you can pick your own path to enjoyment.

Jigs - Missile Jig's Ike's Mini Flip Shallow Crankbait- Bomber XCS100 Mid-depth Crankbait - Luck-E-Strike Deep Smoothy Deeper Crankbait - Lucky Craft LC DRS T-rig - Missile Baits Destroyer

I live in a part of the state blessed with a mix of water colors, but we do have some very clear lakes around here. I love the 6'10" length. It's short enough I can still be accurate if I'm target casting or trying to fish under my transducer, but long enough I chuck it out there a good ways too. I use nanobraid too which ups the casting distance a bit more.

General utility, I'd probably go with 20lb braid. If you're throwing lighter baits in general though, I'd go with something like 10 lb Sufix Nano Braid. It'll boost your casting distance and still has plenty of strength.

You've got some nice combos there for sure! I think you definitely made the right call on the finesse combo. That 6'8" M/XF is a great finesse rod and very capable of what you're wanting to do with it. The ML/XF is a little better suited for the dropshotting, but I feel the M/XF better suites the rest of what you're wanting to use it for so it's the best choice for you.

As has been stated, it should be wired to the starting battery. Not sure what model your boat is, but if there's a panel with switches on it up front, many will have a power block you can hook them too. If not, I'd run new wires on the opposite side of the boat from the tm wires to wherever your starting battery is.

That's awesome! he's probably caught the bug now!

My absolute favorite has to be the old Xcalibur now Booyah XCS100.

I don't throw very much Strike King plastic, but I do like the baby rodent and the dreamshot. Favorite color in both are candy craw.

There are definitely more people on the water up here. It's not super nightmareish but there's definitely a lot more people out and about than the normal summertime. As far as actual bass fishing pressure though, I think it's about the same. A lot of the added boat traffic is panfishermen and the recreational boaters.

You have a few options for spooling it up that way. First is to have it come directly off the spool, but turn it sideways. Basically you want the line coming off with the same rotation as it's going on. If it's opposite you'll have a ton of line twist. You can also lay the line out as well and keep tension on it. The few times I've done it that way I've tied a ball-bearing swivel on it and clipped that to something and that way the line is't dragging through the dirt as you can pull it tight and lift the whole section.

I don't have a hard and fast rule for number of casts. For me it really depends on the day and what I'm doing, and if I've got them figured out or not. Like for instance, if I'm trying to find a pattern, I'm not looking to catch everything that's there, I just need a bite to clue me in. If I get a bite on a laydown after a 2 or 3 pitches to it, I'll probably slow down, not just on that one, but on others as well. In a tournament I fished earlier this year it was similar, we had found they were on shallow wood already so we slowed down and really picked every piece apart trying to put baits in places others couldn't or wouldn't try. Instead of a pitch or two to the obvious places, it was that plus 5-20 or more depending on the particular laydown. It was slow and methodical but it worked, and there was actually one overhanging tree with limbs in the water that 3 of our keepers came off of.

...black goes to negative and red goes to positive. There should be a very thick set of wires coming from your outboard, a very thin set coming from the dash, and a set from your onboard charger that will all get hooked up to your starting battery. For your tm battery, you'll have the other set of wires from your charger and the medium set that should be from your tm.

Take a look at the self timer features on your phone. It should allow you to prop the phone against something and get the picture you want.

I remember seeing that too! If I remember right they also envisioned that boats would get far lighter so motors would be smaller and less horsepower, but I don't remember what else it had. I think it would be cool to have a tm that would do that. I have a feeling that if anything ever went wrong though $$$ and time would be rough on us.

My go to is the Booyah Pad Crasher. They're hard to beat. They walk really easily, they're super soft, and they're fairly reasonable price wise. There's 1 color Spro I buy because I can't get it in the Pad Crasher, and I do have a few of their King Daddy frogs as well. I've tried a lot of different frogs over the years as well, but keep coming back to the Pad Crasher.

In my opinion, braid isn't the greatest line for either of those techniques as it offers such little slack line sensitivity. If you can get by throwing what you are on a baitcaster, straight fluoro is the better suited in my opinion. If it is on a spinning reel though, I'd try moving up to 20 lb braid. It's still pretty thin, but may help with that main line to leader connection.

Personally, I've never used either motor so you'll have to take my opinion with a grain of salt, but if it were me I'd save for the tour pro. Looking at the design of the XI5's bracket, I've used other trolling motors with similar design and they're a pain if you move very often at all. Instead of pulling the rope and and going, you have to grab the head and tilt the bracket while you do so, which doesn't sound that bad but after doing it multiple times a day it gets to be annoying. Another reason I would pick the Tour Pro is it's actually a cable steer motor and if something were to happen to the electric steer portion of it it can actually still be used without. If something goes out on the XI5 you day is ended. For the extra $500-700 dollars I think the differences are worth the cost.

I'm not exactly surprised in any of this. They were late to the party on any new technology and staying with the 2 stroke instead of moving to 4 wasn't the greatest decision either. Add on top of that the hideous look of the G2 and no wonder there wasn't enough business coming in to keep things going.

Under the seats could be a good options, another location you might consider is against the front wall under the console. I've seen some boats with it mounted there and if the layout is right (doesn't take away too much leg room) it works well.

If you don't have your heart set on Shimano, this would be my pick as well

Most 3 bank chargers will have 3 sets of leads, 1 for each battery. It doesn't matter that the batteries are hooked up with jumpers to create 36 volts because the leads go on the positive and negative of the same battery, so it charges each battery individually. Charge time depends on the amperage the charger puts out. The higher the number the faster the charge. You have to be careful with that though as some companies will list the total amps the charger puts out instead of the amps per bank. Additionally, some of those may not be evenly split. For instance there are some 3 bank chargers designed more towards 24v trolling motor systems that 2 banks would have a higher charge rate, like a 12 amp that delivers 5 amps on 2 banks and 2 amps on the 3rd. That thought is that the 3rd bank would be for your starting battery. Not sure what your current setup is, but a lot of people with a 36v system opt for the 4 bank charger so your starting battery is also getting charged and there's only charger and 1 plug. When you get done for the day, plug it in 1 plug and you're good to go the next time you're ready to use it.

Marine batteries are grouped by size some of the most common are group 24, 27, 29, and 31. The bigger the number the bigger the battery and the more power it can hold. As far as 24 or 36 it depends on the boat itself. Some might not have enough room for 3 batteries, others it's not ideal but you could make it work, and some you can throw them in no problem. Another factor would be how long your average trip would be. I've got a 17 foot Ranger with an 24v 82 lb thrust trolling motor running on two group 29 batteries, and I can run that 10-12 hours fishing without any issues. Your biggest draw though is going to be when you're running it on high moving from place to place.

Knowing the nature of smallmouth, I think it'd be a little harder for southern anglers to come north. I think people down south don't realize just how many largemouth live in the northwoods. Although they don't get gigantic like they do down south, we have tons of very healthy fish. You always hear comments from southern anglers when they come north about how healthy and stocky the fish are, regardless I think most people up here are pretty comfortable fishing for both. I think the biggest reason you don't see more northern guys on the elites is the fact that the qualification process is much more expensive. Using me as an example, I live in north central Wisconsin. The "central" opens don't usually get any closer than Oklahoma or Missouri and from there stretching down to Louisiana, Texas, Mississippi so I'd literally be driving across the country to compete. The eastern opens are all out almost completely on the east coast so again much further to travel. I'd be looking at a ballpark of 8 thousand miles of travel for 4 tournaments. There's added monetary cost involved, but that also adds an additional time cost. Instead of having a day or less of travel to get to an event, I'd have close to 4 days overall and that's in addition to the time I'd have to take off for prefishing and the tournament itself. Although it's not impossible, it's pretty close to it for a lot of people up here.

Currently my top 2 are a St. Croix LTB 6'10" ML/XF paired with a Daiwa RG and a 6'8" M/XF LTB paired with the same reel. I've been thinking about upgrading one of the reels to a Ballistic LT which would make either one pretty much a dream setup!