jbmaine

Back and foot issues mandate I sit to fish 95% of the time. My wife has hand issues and can only fish for short periods of time. We ended up buying a multi species boat so we can both be more comfortable on the water.

My number one favorite is the KVD strike king swim'n caffeine shad in 4". Last two years I've caught more bass on that then anything else. I like KVD magic color.

hi all, My wife and I were watching TV last night. Around 9:30 the house goes dark, power went out. Called the outage hot line and was told estimated time for the power to come back on was midnight. So we turn a lantern on, play a game of cribbage, then go to bed. Our cat woke me up at 3:45 AM trying to crawl under the covers. House was cold, power still out. Called the outage line again, was told estimated time for repairs and power back on was now around 7 AM. By now I'm awake, so I get dressed and head out to hook up the portable generator. It's pitch black outside, 39 degrees and raining. I pull the generator out. head out to the shed to get the gas can, slip on the wet grass, wrench my back ( again), but finally get some power going. First thing I do is turn the coffee on, gotta have my coffee! I usually don't move in the morning without my cup of coffee. Later this morning we get the power back on and things settled back to normal. However, my routine was thrown off and I've spent the day kinda scatter brained , not being able to get into anything I had planned to do. I know in the big scheme of things this was a miniscule blip on the radar, but I'm finding as I get older, any change in my normal routine throws me for a loop. kinda like one day last year. I had bought a new bait, but forgot to put it in the boat. We were out fishing when I remembered it was still on a shelf at home. Threw me off all day. As I write this I realize two things I am really, really, started in the old fart club. And I like the word Discombobulated, It's a cool word. OK mini rant over thanks for listening Jim

Good luck on your purchase. The track system makes mounting accessories very easy. You may want to see if you can get your dealer to throw in a few as part of the package. One thing to remember, whatever you end up getting, A 16 ft boat on big water can get iffy real fast. keep an eye on the wind, weather forecast. Also the TM, sonars add $$$ to the cost.

turtle get's my vote.

We have the Lund Fury XL and love it. If you want, send me a message with a phone # and I'll answer all your questions and give you my thoughts between the two. Jim

Thank you, I've thought about it. I left work rather suddenly and felt bad I left them in the lurch. Not to toot my own horn, but I was the " go to" guy on several jobs we did. I got a couple of phone calls from guys at work basically calling to say " I got assigned to do this job you always did, I've been playing around with it for a couple of days and I'm stumped. HOW THE HECK DID YOU DO THIS!". I spent several hours on the phone walking them thru it, but I offered to come in for a few hours to help them get going. However, as I was on disability, I was told my presence would be a liability for the company. I've sold some of my tools to a gentleman who runs a community hobby machine shop. He has asked me to come teach a couple of classes. Travel time is an issue for me but I'm thinking about it.

A-Jay, Thank you for your service. It's nice to see you putting your search and rescue experience to good use, searching for and rescuing all these giant bass you keep showing us.?

For those that are retired, do you miss what you did? In my case I was a mold maker, tool and die maker, machinist, for around forty years. During that time I had worked for several companies, the last for seven years. My exit out of the work force was not as I would have liked. Some years ago I had back issues and ended up having surgery. Then I had foot issues and had surgery for that . My back ( for the most part) is manageable, but my foot was not. About a year and a half ago the pain started to come back, until finally I went to see the doctor. I was deemed unable to work ( I was on my feet all day) and work sent me home on temporary disability. Over the next few months I saw several doctors and tried several treatments, but nothing worked. It was finally determined I was permanently disabled, and my work days are over. So, here I am, retired at 64 ( two years ahead of schedule ). For the most part my wife and I love it ( she is also has disabilities and can't work). If I stay off my feet and don't drive too far the pain is doable. And of course we love fishing during the week. Money wise we are just OK, but we'll make it. However, I find I miss some things about my job. I certainly don't miss getting up to the alarm every morning, or the stupid business decisions I saw being done. But I miss using my skill and talent, all my years of experience. A normal day for me was machining precision parts and holding a tolerance of plus or minus .0001 of an inch. It was fun and I enjoyed doing it. So, do you miss what you did, or did you retire and never look back. Thanks Jim

Some will say welds will crack, some will say rivets will leak. Both can be true if their not built right. You can get both riveted, welded boats that have no problems. I think the key to getting a trouble free boat is getting one from a " higher end" manufacturer. You may pay more, but a lot of the extra you are paying for is for the quality of build. My local boat dealer ( whom I trust) is a Lund dealer ( riveted boat ). I'm on my second Lund and couldn't be happier. However if my local dealer sold high quality welded boats instead of Lunds , I'd probably own a welded boat.

I used to ice fish, but mostly for trout and salmon. Never went after smallies.

Back to the original post, it sounds like he is a BIG fisherman in a little pond. You are a decent fisherman it in a lot of waters. Personally I would just enjoy my success for myself and not let other people get to you.

So, there is a guy that lives next to a pond. One day there is a knock on the door. There are two less than " bright" looking young men at the door, and they say " we came to ice fish on the pond, but forget to bring anything to cut a hole in the ice with. Do you have anything we could borrow?" The guy says " I have an old axe you could borrow, but I'll need it back."" Of course" the young men said " we'll get it back to you". So off they go with the axe. The day goes on and it's starting to get dark. The guy is beginning to think his axe is gone for good, when there is a knock on the door. The two young men are there and say" here is your axe back, thank you very much". The guy says " no problem, did you catch anything?" " Well to tell you the truth, it took us so long to chop a hole in the ice big enough to put the boat in, we never did get to fish"?

The winter blues are coming this way for sure. When I was younger I enjoyed ice fishing, but now I'm more like this,LOL

Thanks for all the kind replies everyone, we appreciate it. Jim

same here

I use the same unit you have and have seen similar things on the screen. My thought is the arches with the most red in them are probably fish, the rest debris. Whenever I have seen screens with images like that the water column was full of bits of weeds.

Hi all, As our fishing year is over, I thought I would give a review of our new boat experience. As some of you know, disabilities caused me to retire a couple of years ahead of schedule, so my wife and I took a good hard look at our "fishing" future and decided our old boat ( a lund 14' WC Delux tiller steer ) was just no longer suitable for us to comfortably fish out of ( my wife is also disabled), and so we went looking to get a new boat. Boat-- We looked for a while at used boats, but could not find anything that suited us, so we went new. We ended up with a Lund 1625 Fury XL Sport. This is the one with a full windshield. This is not a bass boat but rather a multi species boat, however, this style was the most comfortable for us. Why Lund? Quality of build, layout, storage, but a lot of our decision was based on our local dealer. They took care of us on our first boat and have done well by us on this one. Setup- We ordered this boat with everything we thought would make us more comfortable, air ride seats, tilt steering wheel, but the best thing we got was the full sun top. We can't say enough good things about it. My wife is sensitive to the sun and can only fish for a few minutes at a time ( she has hand issues) so this was a blessing. She can sit in the shade and read or fish off the back of the boat as she chooses. No more wind burn, sun burn, getting wet in the rain, cooler in the summer, warmer in the cold weather, we love it. Motor-- We have a 50 HP Merc on this boat. With both of us and the boat fully loaded we can hit around 30MPH. As most of the lakes we fish are less than 1600 acres this is plenty fast enough for us. I really like the fact we can fish all day and only burn 1-2 gallons of gas. Trolling motor-- We went with the Ulterra. What can I say, we are spoiled. To head to a spot, deploy the TM and hit spot lock with out leaving your seat. Tell it to head in a direction while you fish, what's not to like. sonar-- We went with Garmin echo map chirp in the bow and console. Are they better than other brands, I have no idea, but they work well for us. Conclusion-- this boat is not for everyone, but in our situation it met or exceeded all our expectations. It is comfortable for all day on the water, rides well, easy to tow with our ford edge ( with a tow package) and has plenty of storage. The front casting deck is small but works very well for me. I can fish, reach tackle, tools, net, anything I need without standing up ( most of the time I have to fish sitting down). Did it make us better fishermen? No, but it allowed us to fish longer and more often, and using the I Pilot and spot lock we covered much more area. Our old boat didn't have a TM, and I could only pull up an anchor so many times, so we only fished the most " fishy" places. I Pilot and spot lock opened up the whole lake for us. Here's a few pics showing the boat. The last pic is the largest bass we caught this year. I caught it going thru an area ( using I Pilot) I never would have fished in our old boat. Thanks for looking Jim

I can only comment on what I catch most of my bass on ( both LM & SM ) so my list is. 1) senkos and swim Senkos , weighted and un weighted. 2) soft plastic paddle tails , I like swimming caffeine shad 3) ned rig ( Z-man TRD) 4) tubes , I like coffee tubes 5) spinnerbaits

Thanks, I appreciate it.

I know they are, but the paddle tail was doing so well we never tried them.

Up here in Maine those conditions, this summer, triggered a spinnerbait bite for us. Every time we had overcast, drizzly days, throwing a chartreuse spinnerbait over submerged weeds resulted in multiple LM.

Hi all, We finally called it for this year, the boat is headed for storage for the winter, so I thought it was time to give a big thank you to everyone for all the great info, advise, and input we got this year, and to share how we did. We have always fished waters that had LM & SM, but until this year we had only " dabbled" in catching SM, however this year we made the conscious decision to concentrate on smallies. Spring-- Pre spawn-- We found several areas where smallies were cruising around and did OK. Mostly caught them on paddle tails and swim Senkos. Spawn-- If we saw a big one on a bed we'd try for it, but honestly we spent most of our time fishing off the beds and just enjoy seeing the hundreds of bedding fish, knowing how healthy the lake is. Post spawn-- Pretty much the same as the pre spawn with the same baits. Summer-- We found several areas that consistently held deep water smallies ( 20 feet or deeper) and did pretty good with a ned rig. Fall-- technically fall is not over in this area, but the dropping temps. and other priorities made it necessary for us to " call it" for the year. However our last few trips out we managed to connect with a few smallies tanking up for the winter, so no complaints. Again, using a paddle tail " yo yoing" it up and down thru the water column did the trick. So thank you everyone, we usually didn't catch high numbers, nor did we catch any "trophy" size fish, but with all the advise, and help we got from members of the forum we very rarely got skunked, and are getting much better at predicting and understanding what SM fishing is all about. Here are three pictures. This is really cool because we got a new boat this year, and the first pic is the "first fish in the boat'. the middle pic is one out of deep water, and the last pic is the " last fish in the boat" this year.

Usually when dealing with insurance companies I get very frustrated and ticked off, however I got a laugh over this one. I got a call saying I had a prescription ready to be picked up but the cost was much more than normal. I asked why and was told it looked like my insurance had been deactivated, and they suggested I call my insurance company to find out what was going on. This is where I usually start getting ticked, but this time it was just down right funny. I called the insurance company ( they cover my health care and prescription plan) and explained what had happened. I was told I was still covered and they had to call the company they use to administer the prescription plan, and would I stay on the phone with them incase I needed to provide more info. I said sure. This is what I heard. hello , I'm calling about XXXXX. he was told his prescription plan was no longer active, but according to our records it should still be active. that's right What's right? it's no longer active Why? We never received the ##### update on his plan from you. let me check..... according to our records we sent that to you three times last month. Well according to OUR records we never received it! Well WE sent it! Well WE didn't get it! SEND IT AGAIN! WE ALREADY SENT IT THREE TIMES! YOU KNOW WHAT! I THINK YOU SHOULD TALK TO MY SUPERVISER! YA, WELL YOU SHOULD TALK TO MINE!!!!!!!!!! At this point one of them remembered I was still on the line. Sir, are you still there? My reply was " you do know the prescription I am calling about is my high blood pressure medication, and this isn't helping. Maybe you could use some?" They both apologized and said they would look into it. Later that day I got a call saying everything was straightened out. Usually I'm the one getting ticked off at insurance companies. It was real funny seeing them getting ticked off at each other. I wish I could say I made this up, but sadly it's all true.

That would do it. Your grandkids are going to have so much fun.