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It looks like the next rig I'll be trying out!

I haven't got to try them yet, but if they're anything like the rest of the Eco Pro lineup, they'll be good.

I love the St. Croix ML/XF for drop shotting. I currently have the LTB version but the Avid X would be great too.

I would switch over to braid and I don't drop below 50 for my forggin/flippin/punching applications.

I'll keep my $200 and just tie a knot. Between that and their line cutter, you have to be rich just to attach a bait to your line!

Very true, but a regular old school compass does not keep my map straight on my graph. If I choose to orient the map in the course up option so everything is positioned relative to how I'm looking off the front of the boat, it's great when I'm moving consistently, but when I stop to fish or hold on a spot, the map begins to re-orient as I begin to drift. With the north up setting, that's great if my bow is pointed straight north, but if not then you begin to play the guessing game on how many degrees my target is this way or that way. If you're fishing something like a huge long ledge, it's not much of an issue. However, not all structure is that big. For instance, the other day I was fishing a series of small humps about the size of a boat. I'm not framiliar enough with these spots yet to have landmark points to line up their exact location to line up my cast. With the wind blowing in the 15-20 mph range and gusting to more my map was in constant state of re-orientation making it tough to find. Once I got my angles down it wasn't bad, but I wasted a ton of time getting to that point.

My favorites are a frog, punching, swim baits, various texas rigged soft plastics, as well as a spinnerbait or swim jig around the edges and occasionally a square bill if the taper allows it.

If I start in on a new lake, I almost always start shallow, because it's my strength. In my neck of the woods though, there's always a population of bass shallow. We have a lot of weedy natural lakes and the grass is by far the most abundant cover. Fishing shallow first will usually give you an idea of the population of bass in a lake as well.

No it's definitely not going to break the rod. It'll work for smaller crankbaits that fit into the weight rating found on the rod. It's not ideal, but you can make it work for now. You'll want to loosen your drag to help compensate for the extra fast action though.

#1 I would like a heading sensor to come with my graph as well. #2 I would like fishing specific icons to come with my highly specialized piece of equipment that's built for fishing. I don't know about the new Humminbirds, but the 98's and 99's just have blue dots and if you don't name them god only knows what you marked. Lowrance has had the same set of icon's since the 90's. Over half of them are icons you'll never use while fishing. They have yet to add an icon for stumps, or timber. They don't have one for a brush pile or anything like that. If I'm spending 2k or more on a locator for my boat, I don't need a dang street sign icon, or a car, or the other 25-30 icons that have no reason to be there. #3. I'd love to not be nickle and dimed for ever single accessory, as well as have an affordable unit to begin with. I understand the whole supply and demand thing, but I know I'd be much more willing to upgrade more often if it didn't cost SO much. They've got us by the balls on that one though and they know it unfortunately. #4 I'd like to be able to adjust the size of the font on the contour charts. I understand it stays the same size when you zoom to show accuracy, but there are times it's god awful hard to read, and zoom does you no good.

Last Friday, I had the whole day off work instead of the usual half day, so I headed out to do some prefishing for a tournament I've got coming up. My offshore game quite honestly a little weak, so I've been trying to work on that as well. I had a good opportunity to do both, so I took advantage. The weather was pretty much bipolar and couldn't decide what it wanted to do. One minute it was so hot I wanted to take my shirt off, 5 minutes later I was ready to dig for a sweatshirt, a few minutes later I was pulling out the rain gear. It kept cycling through that way for quite a while before it finally just got kind of chilly and windy. There was a decent square bill bite going on up by the bank but after catching a few, I would do my best to fight the urge to have a blast and move back out deeper. I'd puts for a while and then go back shallow and catch a few. I lost a few good fish out on some humps and was starting to get a little discouraged. My luck finally turned around a little when I was pulling a football head across a stump covered hump. There wasn't much as far as a hit, but it just felt different, so I let her have it and felt that amazing feeling as the rod loads up, but what your hooked into doesn't move much. You know you have a good one on and the anticipation builds while you battle and try to get a the first glimpse. It ended up being an 18 3/4" largemouth which looked like a straight up monster after doing a considerable amount of dink dropping! After being on that high, and riding it for a while, it took a little dip when I lost another solid fish boat-side that would have been close to 18". Unfortunately the down slide didn't stop there. About a half hour later, I found out I did some damage my squarebill rod earlier when it got caught under my tie down cleat. I though I got lucky because it kind of popped out, I didn't hear a crack, and it wasn't visibly damaged. Unfortunately the next hook set I had with it very neatly snapped in two between the first eye and the reel. The sad thing was it was on a little 12 incher, so I couldn't even have the story that I hooked into one so big it snapped my rod! By the end of the 6 1/2 hours of fishing, the total count was 18 largemouth and 2 walleyes. It was challenging to keep going on the off shore stuff despite knowing the quality of fish that live out there. Had I ground it out with the squarebill, there's no doubt I could have had anywhere between a 30-60 fish outing, but I wouldn't have been working to get better.It definitely was a roller coaster of an outing, but I'd do it again in a heartbeat...as long as I could go without breaking anything! Those are going to be the 4 most expensive walleye fillets I've ever eaten lol.

Take a look at the Big Bite Bait Cane Thumpers. I haven't used the smaller model yet, but the bigger version is tied on one of my rods almost year round. They have a nice swimming action and with a belly weighted hook will last for multiple fish.

He wants a little too much at the moment. I think a deal is reachable if you're planning on keeping it for a while though. Boat is in pristine condition. Electronics are outdated, and in need of additional money to update, but aside from that it looks great. Personally I probably wouldn't buy a 17 footer with a dual console just because it takes up a lot of space, and usually cuts into the rod locker. An 18 on up I like the additional console. If it works for you then you're golden and it'd make a great boat. The only thing I'd check on is the motor and make sure the saltwater series doesn't have the longer shaft. That could be a drawback if it does. It doesn't look like it in the pics, but it's worth looking into. The 115 isn't drastically under powered, and should push it into the mid 40's. Most of the boat's in the VS and VX series had this designation. Depending on the year, it was sometimes put on the boat, and other times left off (like this one). In both of these series, a VS model was the single console version, the DVS/DVX was the dual console model. I believe they used that designation all the way up until the Z series with removable console. The cap of the boat was no longer made from a different mold, since the passenger console is just bolted in.

Being that you were coming from an aluminum prop to begin with, it's kind of like comparing apples to oranges. They're both fruit but they are completely different. Being that the aluminum prop was in bad shape just adds to the differences. First with the basics, the bigger the pitch the faster the top end (to an extent), but the more torque it requires to get it moving, so your whole shot isn't going to be as quick as you get a larger and larger diameter prop. A smaller pitch prop is going to get you out of the hole quicker, but not have the top end. Your stainless prop should have more grip than your aluminum, and that should allow you to trim more than you could with your aluminum prop. I'd take your boat out again and try to find optimal trim for your rig and prop. Keep your eye on gps speed and slowly keep bumping it up. Your speed should increase to a point, and then either not gain anymore, or actually slow down if you keep going. You want to see where your RPM's are at that point. Keep in mind you probably want your boat loaded how you fish with it most often. If you fish with 2 people, add the second person. Recheck your speed and RPM's. Once you know that, you can take it to a prop shop and have them tune it the way you want. Usually you'll have a performance goal in mind whether it's hole shot, top end, or best handling. Once you give them your information they can tweak it a bit to work. As far as the RPM deal, I wouldn't run it over if I could help it. If you want best top end performance and you normally fish with 2 people, they're going to tweak it to be close to the top of the max with two people. If you run it with one then, you'll have to back out of it a little when you're running solo so you don't over-rev.

x3 These things are handier than a pocket on a t-shirt. Stop by walmart and grab one for like $3. Just dump the oil in until it reaches the mark of how many gallons you are going to put in, dump it in, and fill the tank. Completely fool proof, no guessing if you're between marks on the oil container. Well worth tracking one down.

Definitely give it more chances! Frogs can be dynamite, and are one of my favorite ways to fish! haha yeah just a few times. That's rare for my frogs though since we have so many toothy critters up here they don't usually last that long. They get shredded a few times to the point you can't glue them together anymore if you get them back at all. There's a lot of hooksets that just lead to seeing braid flying back at you. I think you're on the right track. When they are like that, you're close there's just something not quite right. It might be the weather has them finicky as I think they were in my case, but there are other times a change in something will get them to commit. A change in color, size, shape, style of retrieve, it all plays a role. The other thing you might want to try is a different brand of frog. They may have changed them since I've tried them, but I'm not a big fan of the SK frogs as their bodies seem a little too hard for my liking. The Booyah Pad Crasher's are really soft, which I believe helps in having a hookup ratio. Best of luck to you, I hope you crush them today!!

Welcome to BR!

Those two rods overlap pretty well. You'll be looking for something that's a medium heavy power with a fast action. What is your budget for your rod, and are spinnerbaits and jigs the two main bait's you're going to use this rod for?

Sorry to hear about your grandfather. Losing people is a rough thing to do. I'm praying for you and your family. Take comfort in knowing he is no longer struggling, and that he'll be up there looking down on you while you're out fishing.

Sounds like you fixed your problem. The brakes were probably the hold up. With too many on you won't get jack squat for distance. The DBS system on that reel is designed for the centrifugal brakes to do the most under high spool rpm's so at the beginning of the cast. The magnetic breaking is to feather the end of the cast. Knowing how it works should help you as you dial it back to gain distance. You can start cutting back on the brakes until you start getting a little over-run. Take note as to where it's happening during the cast. You can train your thumb to overcome that, or adjust the brakes accoringly

Things have been slow at work recently and because of that, I managed to get half a day off on Tuesday. Heavy storms were predicted overnight, but it looked like they were going to move in a little early. Nevertheless, when I have an opportunity to fish, I'm going to take it haha. I headed out to hit up a lake I've got a tournament coming up on in a few weeks. When I got there it was mostly sunny and decided to start on some shallow isolated pad clumps. Things were slow at first. I couldn't get them to hit anything around some of the pads until i started in with ol' kermy. The slight breeze died out, and for whatever reason though, they didn't want to commit. They'd come up and attack it, take it down and you'd set the hook and there was no resistance. It was almost as if they were only grabbing it by the tail. After missing 7 that way I was frustrated so I went out and started fishing some deeper points and hooked into a decent fish. When I pulled up on a hump, I the weather changed again, the wind picked up a little and it had clouded over. You could see the storms building and could hear thunder rumbling in the background. I headed back closer to the ramp so I didn't get caught in anything sever, and started fishing in some heavy matted grass. I think I made a whole 3 casts before the first one blew up on it and I had it on for a bit before it pulled off. 0 for 8...yeesh that's a great way to start haha but I stuck with it and boy am I glad I did. In the next hour and a half I caught 18 fish on the frog and only lost 2. 2 of those 18 were almost an exact pair of twins both came in at 17". They both came off the same little spot, and I think they both went after my frog the first time I threw there because one came completely out of the water and jumped over it and there was the blowup on my frog at almost the exact same instant. Sometimes being persistent...cough cough stubborn, pays off and it was exactly one of those times. I had a blast before the storm rolled in and forced me to go home a happy man.

You'll definitely need a pump rebuild kit then or a new valve. Neither is expensive and can be found on the flowrite website. You might also want to consider upgrading the spray head to one of the new style flowrite ones that mixes air with the water to provide better aeration, or an underwater venturi valve that does the same thing similar to a hot tub jet. If you're looking to keep it simple, I'd just replace it with the above water version. If you're looking to fish tournaments, consider adding the pump out version instead to fill your weigh bags. I don't know which model boat you have, but I'd probably get rid of the front livewell. It'll give you more storage, or you can use it as a cooler. As for your pump not working, it could be the switch, fuse, or the pump could be burnt out. You'll want to look and see if it's the cartridge style pump. I don't know if those were available in 91 yet or not, but if it is one, you can just buy the insert and wire that up if it turns out to be the pump, it's twist in twist out. It shouldn't take very long to get the job done if you're just redoing what they have done. The hardest part is reaching it all, but estimated time would be 3-4 hours You must have an aluminum model correct? There wouldn't be deck removal involved in a fiberglass boat as it's all glassed in.

I would beef it up a bit and go with a heavy power rod with 50 lb braid. Length is up to you, but I'd try to stay around 7'. It may seem like overkill, but there are times that extra power comes in handy. It should also double as a good punching rod then as well.

The MH won't be ideal by any means, but it will be a whole lot better than the 6' medium. You did the right thing by spooling up the braid!

Ranger keeps their pretty simple and straightforward. They use flowrite valves. When I had my 86 320V The rear wouldn't hold water that well, so I thought I was going to have to order a new valve, but flowrite still sells a rebuild kit. Design has remained pretty much unchanged over the years. It's all pretty easy to do. What is it you're wanting to change about the system?