WIGuide

You misunderstood. You definitely want to wet the knot before you cinch it down. Had I "grammared" better and put a comma in there it may have been easier to understand. haha

Personally I use a M/M for my 100-200 size squarebills Lipless in open water will usually be thrown on a MH/M and lipless in/around grass will be thrown on a MH/F

The older gentleman was correct about the knot you should tie. Personally I tie the Palomar knot for everything mono, fluoro, braid and as long as you tie it well (without crossing the lines and wetting your knot) I've never had an issue with it. I'm sure there are others that have had the same experiences with another knot as well, but whichever one you have confidence in will be your best.

I think 5 mph with a trolling motor is going to be a bit of a stretch. If you get a 55 lb thrust 12V you could see 3-4 when fully charged.

Isn't that what I just said? The only thing I was pulling off the Point 1 in the back was the heading, not the location. Location at the front unit still gets read from the internal gps. The heading just allows the locator to not have to use location history to calculate what direction the boat is facing/moving. Maybe I'm wrong, but the the heading is going to be correct no matter where on the boat the sensor is located, unless the front and rear are no longer facing the same direction and if that's the case, the last issue you'd be concerned about is the accuracy of your waypoints.

I used to use a 5.1:1 reel simply because I didn't have another reel to put on my frog rod. I caught fish, and generally landed the bigger fish ok. My problem was with the smaller fish the 14-17" range, you could get them up on top of the thick stuff, but you couldn't keep them moving fast enough. If you did keep them on past the edge of the cover, you were screwed if they started running at you. Since then, I've switched to a 7.1:1 reel and I land a lot more fish because of it. I have none of those issues anymore since switching.

Happy Birthday @Catt! I hope you have a great day!

Welcome to the forums!

For worms and the like, I'll usually throw 1/4, 3/8, and 1/2 oz depending on cover and depth. Sometimes I'll throw a 1/32nd oz weight in front of a senko style bait but I don't go with tungsten for weights that small. Using Tungsten isn't about feel when punching. Tungsten is almost twice as dense as lead is so the weights of the same weight are roughly 1/2 the size of lead. A weight that's half the size will punch through the vegies easier allowing you to use an even lighter weight at times as well have a more realistic presentation once the bait comes through. A lot of punching can be a reaction bite, but you can also catch quite a few fish yo-yoing the bait as well in which case I don't want a 2" hunk of lead out in front of the bait. The final advantage of using tungsten for punching is that it's harder than lead as well. Lead deforms easily and I'm sure you've seen your weight after a long day of bass fishing and noticed there small teeth marks on it. That's due to the basses teeth digging into the weight as it comes through their mouth on your hookset. Because of that it slows the bait down and not all of your hooksetting power is transferred into the hook. Even if that only means 2 less loss fish a day, to me it's worth it.

When you download, the files, right click on them in the download folder and select "extract to" once you do they will be decompressed and usable. You'll want to put those files in a folder so it's only the extracted files. Then copy the folder with extracted files to your sd card. Yes by numbers I mean serial number and if I remember correctly there's another number you have to go into your unit and find to enter. If you do not enter them correctly online in your plotter profile it won't allow the maps to work on your unit.

I love using IG. There's so many lakes up here that either don't have maps at all, or really crappy ones with 5' contours...not that bad if it's a deep lake but some only average 7-10' deep so looking at it with 5' contours makes the lake look like a giant flat. A few tips, make sure you start out with a completely blank sd card. Other files can see to take the locators ability to recognize a map on the card. Secondly I keep lake files on my computer all in one big folder. When I download a new lake, I'll create an empty folder and name it the lake name. Once I download the map, I extract the files into that lake's folder. When I'm ready to go to that lake I copy and paste the lake file onto my sd card. You can load multiple lakes that way as well and the locator will cycle through them at startup asking you if you want to load that particular lake. Whether you save the files on your computer or not, be sure to extract them from the download folder into a file on the sd card. Do not drag them from the download folder and then extract them to the same location. When you're done, the only thing that should be a folder on the sd card with your lakes name, and within that folder there should be the 5 lake files. Also, double check that the numbers you entered for your plotters is correct. If not, you can do everything right and it will still not display.

If you put your Point 1 over your rear transducer, set your console graphs to use that for location and heading and then on your front unit/s use the internal gps for location and point 1 for heading only you could skip a lot of that. No matter which unit you mark from the waypoint will be the most accurate and located where it's supposed to be. The only time that wouldn't be the case is if both units share the same side scan transducer and you're dropping a point off of that.

Side scan/imaging is the real deal. It helps you find productive water a whole lot faster, as long as you actually put the time in to use it. If you don't it'll just be another fancy toy. As far as not really caring if you have gps or not, I would recommend you change your mind on that. The units you're looking at are going to come with gps, but it's ridiculously useful as well. Unless these lakes are so small that everything is within a cast of you, dropping a waypoint on a productive spot or a piece of structure/cover is a great advantage to you.

The Sun Dolphin will do what you want it to. They're stable for such a small boat and heads and tails above a jon boat. It's not going to be the easiest thing to load in a van by yourself. but they're light enough to pull out of the water by yourself. The trihull type hull handles water well for such a small platform. I fished out of one for many years and even though I have moved on to bigger bass boats, if I had the extra money, I'd probably buy another one for some of the really small lakes around here.

In that price range, I'd be looking at a St. Croix Mojo Bass 7'1" MH/F "jig/baits" rod. It's long enough you can still get good distance flippin'/pitching with it, yet short enough you'll be able to cast with some accuracy as well.

They do make a 580P lens as well if that's your concern. I wear the 580G's and understand the concern, but we fly around in bass boats that don't have breaks, in water with many subsurface unseen obstructions.We drive to the lake on road that we share with drunks, texting teens, and other distracted drivers. We stop at gas stations that could be held up by armed robbers at any second. The point I'm trying to make is there are risk in a lot of things we do on a daily basis and we don't give a second thought to. When it comes to getting a direct hit in the lens with a weight on a hookset, that's a pretty freakish accident. If it wasn't we would hear about it happening more with all the glass lenses, and it wouldn't be a breaking story when it happened. You also have to remember the guy that got hit was filming. He's watching what is happening through a view finder and when you do that, it has a tendency to take away from your sense of awareness of what's happening around you. If you tried to plan for every freakish accident from ever happening, you'd probably end up living in an empty box with rounded corners and never venture out into the outside world. It's a dangerous place out there but we all pick what risks we're ok with taking. Personally I'm ok with taking the risk of using glass.

I had never even heard of Luxottica before, but after looking into it a bit I came across a 60 minutes piece on them and wow! I no longer want to associate with them either not that there's that much choice :/

When you're looking at sunglasses you need to remember fitment is huge as to how they perform. You have to be careful buying online if you haven't tried on that particular style, I'd see if you could find them in a store first to try on and make sure there're aren't big gaps between the frames and your face that will let light in on the back side of the lens. Personally I really like my Costa's with the 580G lenses. They have incredible clarity, are very comfortable to wear and they perform very well.

I hate...or should I say envy all you southerners at the moment. @crypt if you add our high temps up for the next 5 days they don't even total 80! I need to move haha

I like fishing for just about anything that swims. Bass are by far my favorite and I spend probably 98% of the time fishing for them, but I enjoy catching everything else as well.

Personally I use 12lb Berkey 100% FC for both of those.

2016 was the year of the jig. It took me a while to to gain confidence in it, but when all was said and done, the majority of my bigger fish I caught this year came on the jig. Since I improved using jigs, I started experimenting more with other baits that I don't use as often and even though I didn't devote a huge amount of time to them, I was far more willing to step out of my comfort zone and experiment. I worked to get better using my electronics and put in quite a bit of time mapping uncharted lakes that I fish on a regular basis. It's definitely a nice feature for me and has paid off. During the summer months I worked on my deeper water structure game and it improved some. It's not where I want it to be yet, but it's improving. Overall, even though 2016 was different, I think it was a pretty darn good year.

I'd check out the St. Croix Mojo Bass 6'10" ML/XF for what you're looking for. You can save 10% at TW right now if you purchase a gift card for yourself and redeem it on the rod.

Switched from spinning to baitcasting as a little kid. Handles were on opposite side, and all mine still are. With practice and persistence, the clumsiness goes away and you get proficient with it.

@12poundbass hit the nail on the head