Koz

The Malone trailer that I have is rated for 65mph. That’s good enough for my needs. The only issue I have now is my Autopilot is a beast to load on dry land even with the batteries, motor, and crate pulled out. But now with the extension it’s easy to back up so I can load and unload at the ramp. Good luck with your build.

Always bring a pack of Senkos. Try wacky rig and T rig.

With a kayak there are always trade offs. Size is a consideration from having something big that may interfere with your fishing to something small that is hard to read, especially as you age. I started with a 5” Lowrance with down imaging and side imaging but it was hard on my old eyes. I bought it cheap from the Lowrance site as it was a reconditioned unit. I next bought a Helix 7 Mega DI SI and on my Seastream kayak it was next to my seat and out of the way. But when I bought an Autopilot it was in the way. In the meantime, I decided to get an FFS unit and bought a Garmin Livescope with a 9” head unit. This definitely got in the way so I made a DIY console mount. If I want to do so on the future I can put it side by side with the Helix. Put some thought into what you might want in two years and buy that one. And make sure it doesn’t get in the way of fishing.

7Ah to 10Ah will be just fine for you. Because you’re on a kayak, I strongly suggest a lithium battery. Whether you’re lugging your kayak around or out on the water, you want to save weight wherever you can.

My go to has been a Berkley Fusion underspin with a Keitech fat swing impact. But now that I just installed Livescope, in a few weeks that answer might be a Damiki rig.

I live on Sinclair and the waters off my docks are usually very clear. But it’s been chocolate milk for over two months now.

Over the years wire and chartreuse/white have been the most productive. But over the past week I have. Hildenbrandt with dark green, gray, and chartreuse that has landed at least one bass every time I have fished.

Must be nice. Our lakes have been packed with sediment and 1”-2” visibility for over two months now. Every bass I have caught so far this year has been pale and most have been skinny.

FINALLY got out on the water for the first time today with my FFS. The only problem was that winds were a steady 15-18mph with gusts of 30+. I stayed close to my house where the fishing is only mediocre this time of year. There was one minor issue with the mount. I had to reposition it slightly to accommodate the Fishing Specialties FFS pole and the frame wedged against the foot pedal rails. That meant I had to use the handheld unit to steer and that made things complicated trying to fish, steer, and position the FFS pole. While spot lock did a good job of holding me in one vicinity, the constant re-orienting itself into the wind, trying to fish, and trying to work the FFS pole was like juggling a bowling ball, a tennis ball, and a jelly bean at the same time. It can be done, but it will take practice to get it down. The good news is that with that DIY mount the head unit was in a great position, easy to read, and easy to work the touch screen. To fix the problem where it's wedged and obstructing the steering pedals is an easy fix. All that I will need to do is sand about 1/16" off of each side post. Now that I'm satisfied with the setup it's time to start tucking wiring with Velcro wraps, and lock down my electronics battery. I made it easy to disconnect the FFS transducer and sonar module. I can also leave the head unit attached to the mount and quickly disconnect that mount. This way, when I travel and stay overnight in a hotel all my electronics can be removed quickly and stored in my room or in my Bronco.

The other week I purchased a Garmin Livescope system along with a 9" Echomap head unit. Compared to my old Helix 7 this new head unit is huge. I prefer to sit and fish, and after mounting it on the rail during install and testing I saw that it could interfere with my fishing. I'm only 5' 6" and shrinking with age, and even with the seat in the high position it would interfere with my fishing. On my old Seastream pedal kayak I could mount the head unit right near the seat, but the track on the Old Town Autopilot doesn't run that close because of storage, cup holders, and forward facing rod holders. That's one of the trade offs with the Old Town. For my purposes, a traditional eye level console right in front of me wouldn't work either because it would still interfere with my fishing. But the big deck of the Autopilot gave me an idea, and I built a prototype console. Instead, I made what I call a Wing Console. I made it out of wood, made a few rabbet cuts with my router, and glued and clamped it together. I used the longer T-bolts to affix it to the rail and bolted the head unit base to the console. I can also shift this head unit over and there is room to mount my Helix 7. It's a little tight with the cables and the motor on the back side, but I can fix that by widening the holes for the T-bolt and sliding the unit a little closer to the seat. If you're constantly fiddling with your unit and changing views this might not be the best solution. But this unit is touch screen and I can pre-configure screens and layouts, so it shouldn't be too much of a problem. The one thing I will probably need to add is a hood for the unit. I'm going to test this for a while, and if I like it I may pay a firm to make one out of aluminum.

Another thing to try would be to put the phone in low power mode and see if the setup still works. Oh - and here’s another rabbit hole item - check out XReal Beam. It creates a 330” spatial display. I’m not sure if that would work on a pitching kayak or boat. I need to dig deeper on this.

I will probably experiment with this by this summer. I need to get an eye exam first because I’m sure that my prescription has changed. I think it might be more difficult with the Lowrance. With Garmin, I already know I can output my FFS and sonar to the Active Captain app. I also know I can output what’s on my iphone screen to AR glasses. So my only question is how well it will perform. Hopefully we both strike gold and update everyone here on BR.

If you live in my area I’m selling my Seastream Angler pedal drive complete with a Lowrance 5 DI/ SI, Railblaza C-Tug cart, Yak Attack Switchblade, and Yak Attack Cellblok. Battery not included, but you can pick up a 10Ah Lifepo cheap. I love that kayak but upgraded to an Old Town Autopilot.

Lowe boats.

You need to ask yourself what you want to use the trolling motor for. if it’s just to get you from point to point and you like to run and gun then the Torqeedo is for you. If you like to sit and pick apart a place, especially deep water, you’ll want the spot lock. However, mounting that heavier trolling motor on the bow has its drawbacks. In rougher or windier weather expect to take water over the bow. And even with the proper mounting plate you may expect some warping or twisting of the bow over time. It’s for all of these reasons that I bought an Old Town Autopilot instead of putting a trolling motor on my Seastream kayak. But note that the composition of your kayak may be better than my old budget pedal drive kayak. Much of battery life depends on how hard you push the battery rather than how far you travel. My Autopilot has speed settings of 1-10, but I rarely go over 8 and my 100 Ah battery lasts all day as I cover 6-9 miles. When I tournament fish I travel with two 100 Ah batteries, one on the kayak and one in the truck. It’s overkill, but better safe than sorry, especially if the weather is rough and I have to push the motor. Since most tournaments allow us to pack up and launch from multiple locations throughout the day I don’t need to keep both batteries onboard. My electronics run off of a separate battery. As for the batteries themselves, I use Weize batteries for the motor although one of my batteries for electronics is a Dakotah. Dakotah batteries have a great reputation, but they cost a ton. I paid only $290 for each of my big Weize batteries.

I found the Georgia Bass Nation Kayak series and will be fishing a few of those events. I may also fish the SEGKBF tournament on Sinclair since I live on Sinclair. I wanted to fish the Clark’s Hill SEGKBF event, but I have an MLF tournament that day.

I fish year round, but that doesn’t mean I catch bass year round. My winter bass fishing game is week. Part of that is I mainly fish off the docks of my house or hotel in the winter. I do some winter fishing on my kayak, but I’m wary of cold water. But if I am out on my kayak in the winter, it’s easier to target schools of crappie than targeting bass.

I don’t like that setup at all. The first thing I don’t like is the bulky headset. I would prefer the ones that are more like sunglasses. Second, the projected display is intrusive. I prefer something like this:

With the AR glasses you set the opacity of the projected screen so it’s not like you have a blind spot. You can also set it to display in only one of the lenses. I think it would be dumb to use them when you’re running the big motor, but I see no big issues when you’re using the trolling motor or Power Poled down. The fact that you can set the opacity to see through the projection means you don’t obstruct your field of view.

I'm going to disagree because you need to take into consideration how better AR glasses work. The first factor is immersion control which can be adjusted to reduce the light through the lenses. When you combine that with brightness, contrast, and traditional settings you won't even notice any peripheral light. As for being immersive, you don't want that at all. The idea is you are aware of your surroundings and not just the display. This is where AR is significantly different than VR. As for polarization, it's not needed. You're not sight fishing - your FFS fishing.

Now that would be funny! Thankfully, they look like this:

Earlier today, @immortl sent me down a rabbit hole when he mentioned a pro angler head connected FFS to augmented reality glasses. I read an article about that pro, Ed Loughran, and the article was very cryptic about he accomplished that: "Loughran cobbled together a series of wires with a set of glasses bought on Amazon and shipped from a Chinese factory, which is as far as he was willing to go in describing them (he doesn’t want to give up secrets to competitors)." So I dug a little deeper. Was he connecting directly to the head unit? That didn't make sense. But then I remembered the Garmin Active Captive app which would let me display FFS or sonar on my iPhone. This is accomplished by setting the head unit to create a WiFi network, connect your phone to that network, and then display the head unit screen on your phone. Easy. Then I searched for iPhone compatible AR glasses, and in my case ones that allowed for prescription lenses or prescription lens inserts. I found glasses by XReal that do just that. Simply connect the glasses to your iPhone with a USB-C cable and that's it. The glasses allow you to control the darkness of the lenses, opacity of the AR display, and more. But as I dug deeper, I found out I was not the only one with this idea. I found a YouTube video of someone doing this while ice fishing with FFS. If you're a serious angler or a pro, this seems like a no brainer to use AR and FFS. You don't have to keep bobbing your head up and down looking at your line and the head unit. You can look straight ahead and see your line and everything around you and the FFS display at the same time. And BTW, the AR display is the equivalent of looking at a 130-inch screen. Think about that for a minute. So instead of spending thousands on a large screen or head unit for your boat, you can buy a smaller FFS unit a lot cheaper and then by AR glasses for $300 - $500. But with the Active Captain app your not limited to just projecting FFS. You can project down imaging, side imaging, maps, and whatever else your Garmin displays. As someone who loves both fishing and technology, I find this incredibly exciting and in the future I might make the investment. But after just dumping a bunch of money on a new 9" Garmin head unit, the new LVS34 Livescope system, and a mounting pole for the transducer I need to cool my jets and put the brakes on spending for a while. So, who's up for some AR fishing?

I **think** it might be relatively easy with Garmin and their Active Captain app and the right pair of glasses. The Garmin head unit can create a WiFi network and you can connect your phone to that network and use the Active Captain app to display Livescope on your phone. If you have AR glasses that connect to your phone you should be able to see Livescope on your glasses. It may have to connect through the AR app first. I’d love to try this, but for me it would cost a lot more than buying a pair of AR glasses because I would need prescription AR glasses. **UPDATE** XReal makes AR glasses that use The USB-C connection to show what is on your phone (i.e. the Active Captain app) on the AR glasses. This WILL work. They also have prescription lenses through partner websites. The glasses are about $450 and the prescription lens inserts are about $200. This might be my Christmas present to myself this year.

Dang you! 😀 I was hoping to stop pouring more money into my kayak!

I’m sure my i initial reaction will be a combination of awe and being overwhelmed. I’m sure that to get the most out of it the learning curve is steep. There’s also a big jump going from the Helix 7 to the EchoMap 9. It’s too bad the weather isn’t cooperating. I don’t mind fishing in the rain, but I don’t want to be out there learning the new electronics in the rain.