desmobob

I have the same experience with my Garmin on the southern part of Lake Champlain. In my case, the charts and location are dead-on most places, but going under the railroad trestle outside of Whitehall, NY and running up East Bay (lower part of the Poultney River), it shows me as being up on the bank! I've used the mapping feature to try and correct those areas of the maps, but it sure takes away any confidence I had in the maps as far as navigation and safety goes...

Those little crappie-sized crank baits look like fun for ultralight rigs, so I bought some a few years ago. I found that it can sometimes be frustrating to unhook and release fish from those tiny trebles. I prefer single-hook presentations for crappies but have caught my largest ones on normal-sized crank baits...

I'm thinking you should be able to adjust your sonar to be able to see your jigging lure. When I'm ice fishing, I sometimes use very small panfish jigs... sometimes really tiny. I can always adjust my portable sonar to see them, whether it's my old-school Marcum flasher or new Garmin Striker Plus. It seems like it should be very easy to see a larger jigging lure like one used for bass fishing. But I guess if your transducer is mounted at the stern and you're jigging from the bow, that might not be the case...

Andy was a great role model... how could you go wrong? ?

The only complaint I have about my Mustang M.I.T. (which I wear all the time while in the boat) is that it didn't have a D-ring to attach my kill switch lanyard to.

Welcome from someone who spends a lot of time at Huletts Landing. ?

I'm thinking if you gave a kid one of those today, you'd risk his life, or you'd get arrested for some crazy charge... Growing up, I think I had every kind of slingshot, squirt gun, cap gun, dart gun, BB gun and pellet gun known to man. ? One of my all-time favorite Christmas gifts was from my oldest sister and her new husband who was just out of the marine corps. It was a huge assortment of green army men with jeeps, tanks, rolls of concertina wire, machine gun emplacements, trucks, etc. It was the biggest and most complete set of those little army men and accessories I've ever seen before or since. Probably cost five or ten bucks but it was a lot of fun and a lifetime memory.

Would any guy here admit to playing with dolls back then? I was pretty happy with my talking G.I. Joe and cool accessories like a jeep that towed a howitzer that fired plastic rounds and would cause an included spring-loaded defensive wall to explode when hit. Playing "war" was a common pastime and my buddy and I had some pretty cool toy guns. I had an M16 that made a great machine gun sound... you pulled back the charging handle several times to wind an internal spring that powered the noise-making device. My buddies M16 was powered by batteries and had different settings to make several battlefield noises. But back then, batteries were carbon cells that had a very short lifespan and would corrode and ruin anything they were left inside for too long when dead.

It's not a bike without a bell... ? I have a small bell on both my current bikes (Bianchi Axis and Motobecane Le Champion).

The shifter on my Manta Ray was a big stick-shift mounted on the top frame tube. The bike had 24" instead of 20" wheels. Mine was the same as the bike on the right: (photo from bikehistory.org) My dad was not the least bit mechanically inclined. After several years of suffering with an out-of-whack derailleur and poorly adjusted caliper brakes, I chose an old-school single-speed 26" Schwinn as my next bike.

Mine was a Schwinn Manta Ray. We all wanted one of those nice Schwinn bikes that Mr. Green Jeans would wheel out and show off during the Captain Kangaroo show...

That's one little memory I would have forgotten. ? Pulling out the flat tab "button" and then pushing it back in to set the station.

Be very careful how and where you attach things to yourself with something as strong as paracord.

Nice fish! I think this year's spring vacation to the Cape for stripers was one of my worst in 27 years... I don't think I caught a fish over 26" long in two weeks of fishing.

Our local channel cats seem to clamp down hard and not let go. It's quite unnerving if you haven't experienced it or forget that it's going to happen. I use a Boga Grip on them. Either way, it's handy to have a good grip (either you on them or them on you) because getting barbed hooks out of their tough mouth can be challenging.

I keep mine in a gear pocket under my leaning post cushion. I make sure I put the lanyard around my wrist when I pull it out of the pocket to use it. It stays on the boat. If I was using it on foot, I think the first thing I'd try is the coiled lanyard, with a big enough clip (added to it, if necessary) so that it can quickly/easily be removed with one hand if desired. My buddy used a big float on his for kayak fishing. The Boga Grip is a very nice tool, and too expensive to lose!

Smallmouth and/or Rock Bass + Rapala Floating Minnow = double hook-ups. ?

Same for my buddy and I fishing for stripers around Cape Cod. Those little hot rod Whalers can handle pretty much whatever you dare to put them through. He overdid it one time and pulled into Barnstable Harbor holding the wheel and wood helm section in his hands after a very rough ride in.

I still have a couple of them; one new in the package. Never used 'em for bass... Back in the day, they were the bomb for casting for salmonids off the Little Sodus Bay breakwater in Fair Haven on L. Ontario.

Nothing wrong with those hard-fighters! All smallies are good; some are just better than others... ?

A few decent bass today on a shaky head and 5.5" Grande Airtail worm (Daiwa Alphas SV105/Kistler KLX).

I'm a retired mailman and I'm used to starting every day with a look at the weather report. Lately, I'm convinced the weather websites purposely report bad weather several days out so you keep checking back -- more website hits. I don't worry about melting in the rain but my boat is carpeted and has unsealed compartments that I keep loaded with gear. Getting caught out in the rain means a troublesome and time-consuming unpacking and drying out process. I'm starting to plan my fishing outings by looking at the radar pictures and mostly ignoring the forecasts.

Ever read "Collapse" by Pulitzer Prize winner Jared Diamond? Long-term change in rainfall amounts have negatively affected peoples in the past...

The buoyancy and durability make Z-Man TRD baits a value purchase for me. I just have to remember to store them in their own packaging and out of the sun. Not that big of a deal...

I buy ZinkerZ and cut them in half to save money vs. buying TRDs. The last pack of ZinkerZ I opened, which had been in a mesh tackle bag hanging on my leaning post, looked fine but they were all fused together and felt like foam. There was no saving them. So much for saving money! ?