casts_by_fly

It is definitely a cool concept. There are a lot of watersports products out now that use the micro motors you see here. Its a similar motor to torqueedo and others. There are hydrofoils, motorized surf boards, kayak propulsion, paddleboard propulsion, etc. The technology has come a long way and lithium batteries have allowed everything to be downsized. This is a neat application for it. That said, there are some big limiting factors here. Weeds would kill it for me. A rudder mounted version isn't accessible on the water to clean them off. Neither is the transducer mount version, plus that eliminates your ability to mount a transducer there. And the price is pretty crazy. $1800 for the motor and proprietary battery. Its a cool concept and really well done, but I just don't see the market for it.

no, definitely not an idiot. Just doesn’t read instructions and is too set in his ways to see if there is a better solution. keep playing with it until you really dial it in. It’s a great setup. However, if you decide to get another Abu (or anyone else reading this), the ivcb-4 system is very different. Same concept with the plastic wheels but the 4 can’t turn off any wheels. I think they are then set lighter since they are always on. I find I have to keep my mgx on max all the time regardless of lure, line, or rod.

i just went the other way around. I have a bunch of revos and the STX gen 4 is the same as your Ike. When I just got a zillion I read everything I could find to figure out how to adjust the brakes internally… I also had to educate my dad on his chronarchs. He never realized there were internal flippers either, except his were all four ‘on’. Anytime I picked up his rod to cast he always warned me about his brakes being very loose… for me, the ivcb-6 brake in the STX/Ike is a awesome setup. I normally turn ‘on’ two of them and use the dial on the outside to fine tune. Once you play with it a little you can do some incredible things with them.

Good point. I thought he already had the 23 ah. In that case, I'd do like you said and be done with it. Its one battery to charge. The 60 AH amped battery at $379 would probably be where I'd go. Its overkill for needs, but its a solid battery and would ensure that if you're running max power all day you have a full day of fishing available.

You've pretty much hit the nail on the head and now understand why the autopilot was created. In life, you can pretty much make anything work. People started with basic paddle kayaks, then pedals came out. Then people realized you could add motors. Handy people mocked things up with what they had. And then, an industry was born. All of the options you talk about can be done and every one has a drawback. Like you said, by the time you add it up, you might as well go whole hog. You either stick with a good PDL or you go whole hog and do a full trolling motor based boat. Couple things to help you down the path. Once you're on the water, having an autopilot is awesome. It is a fishing machine. If you fish offshore, then spotlock is great. If you beat the bank then cruise control and navigation is perfect. You know when you hook a fish in your boat and he pulls you just as much as you pull him and you end up in the cover you're fishing? A quick spotlock fixes that (I know you can pedal backwards too). Speed is not the bag of a kayak. If speed is your priority, then you need to get a bigwater PDL or similar water cutting kayak and not a barge like the autopilot. The bigwater with pedals will do 5.5-6 mph. The autopilot tops out at 4. That's all due to hull design. You're pretty close on your amperage calculations. On full speed the autopilot (45 lb thrust) draws 45 amps I think and does 4 mph. For the 2 miles you want to go, that's a 30 minute run and you're going to burn 25 amp-hours. On a 100 ah lithium that's roughly a quarter charge (you have 90% of the stated capacity nominally). And you'll have that getting back, so you've burned 55-60% of your battery in motoring. The remaining 25-30% of usable charge is plenty to fish around and spot lock in place. Spot lock takes nothing unless you're in current. If you were motoring and then using your pedals for fishing then you'd be in the same boat. If you go with a motor, a 100AH lithium is your starting point. I have an 80 and can get by because I fish a lot of smaller water and I have a battery meter to keep an eye on. I wish I had just gone 100 and I'd never worry. If you go autopilot, just get the 136. Its 4 lb heavier but you get 12" in front cockpit and 6" in the back well. Its marginally faster by 0.1-0.3 mph from what I hear, but I can't confirm that. The only functional downside is the size. Its a big boat and a heavy boat. Its closer to a boat than a kayak at times. I can mostly use boat ramps to launch from the bed of the truck, so I only have to lift it in and out semi empty (battery and seat in the boat, motor and gear already removed and in the truck). Even still, its 150 lb that I'm moving If you're loading it with the motor and your fishing gear, it's a 200 lb boat to move on a kayak cart. That's a lot.

The biggest lake in NJ is 2600 acres. There are two more right at 2000 acres, though one of them is a big oval bowl that's 150' deep and most of the lake is deeper than 40' (so far less than 2300 acres fishable for bass) and the other doesn't have a public ramp. From there you get down to 1200 acres and that lake is 15' low right now, so its more like 800 acres. The sweet spot for lakes around here is the 200-400 acre range. Also, of all the lakes there are only a couple that don't have HP restrictions. Many are electric only.

some of you guys had me questioning my sanity on this one so I had to grab a rod. Pinkie and ring finger on either side of the trigger (pinky behind, ring in front, but both touching the trigger), middle finger and index finger even with the front of the reel (middle under the blank and index on top), thumb wraps over the top of the reel. Its pretty close to CC's picture above but I can't see the underside. If I'm fishing bottom contact my index finger is under the line and even holding it up a little bit. If I'm fishing a moving bait, I have the tip of my index finger on the blank in front of the seat.

If I put a group 31 into my kayak I'm not sure I could get in myself! I'd be pushing weight capacity on the boat.

give me the highest, finest cork I can get my hands on. I've still got a bag of AAA rings downstairs I think. If you like pits and marks in your grip then you just enjoy them. For me, a pristine smooth piece of unblemished cork is a rare and beautiful thing. Winston flyrods of the 90's and early 2000's had some great cork. Cork is a wood product and I look at it like other wood products. Some woods are supposed to be highly figured and variable in color (birdseye maple, black walnut gunstocks). Some wood products aren't. Cork should be dead smooth, no pits, no voids.

same as above, but I'd go one step further and put a little dielectric grease on the connections when you put them back together. Anything electric and exposed to water and elements has a hard life. A little dielectric marine grease will help keep the water and air off the connections.

What they have all said. I decided to fish swim jigs a lot this year and get better with them. For me, I almost have to have some breeze or chop to have any faith in a spinnerbait. When the wind is still then a swim jig is my choice. We have tons of vegetation here and only the pointiest swim jigs will get through it clean. Spinnerbait blades are useless ones the grass is more than a month old- you’re hung too often. An arkie head or other head just grabs too much grass every cast. A Texas rig would probably work some times too in those situations, but a swim jig has a profile like a bluegill and you can really swim it up and down the column, run it down a grass channel, and then kill it over a hole. Then set the hook before it hits the bottom.

I don’t fish tournaments but we get a lot of them here. I keep an eye on the tournament schedules and won’t fish a lake the day of one if I can help it. It just isn’t worth working around other people if I can help it. that said, if I find myself in that situation then I don’t worry about other people fishing through except for if they are spooking bass (I.e. boat right into the brush to unhang lures, plowing through the grass). The main thing is to find something different that other people arent using. Downsize or upsize. If the guy was throwing power lures, slow down and pick apart what he missed. or, you can pick other water that no one else is fishing. On a 300 acre lake that might be tough but the second best spot becomes the best spot when no one has fished it.

I like to plan for a 10 hour fishing day plus some buffer. For that current draw, I’d want to have a 25-30 ah lithium for each. I run a 30 for my humminbird, but a 20 would have been enough. A 10 ah isn’t enough for a 7+” screen for me. in your case, I’d use the 23 for the head unit and get another similar one for the transducer. Then use the 7 ah for the accessories.

As a for instance, here is a navionics snapshot of one of the big branches/arms of the lake. Pre-spawn, this is a pretty good place to be. The steep banks and south/east facing slope give the bass close proximity to deeper water and shallow water quickly while also being some of the earlier water to warm. The fish slide out of the main lake along the wall and move up as they are ready. After the spawn, there are still plenty of bass that keep to these shallows while some will back out to the deeper water. now, everything in blue is dry. The big white flat finger bit is almost there. So all of the shallow bass will have pulled back to the white water. But after weeks of steadily moving out to keep wet, will they eventually just go to the deepest water nearby (I.e. the bottom of the wall) or will they just keep moving out of this type of finger altogether?

Hi gents, this is a new one for me as I’ve never had a lake dropping like this one is. It’s losing about 4-6” elevation a day at the moment and is down 13’ total. It’s lost 6’ over the past two weeks. Obviously the fish are going to pull back from shoreline cover since it’s dry now. How far and how quickly do they pull back? For the offshore fish that started in 15’ of water, are they going to keep sliding down the points they were on as the water drops? Roam the lake looking for new offshore structure? Im going to treat the lake like a lake I’ve never been to even though I’ve fished it a couple times this year. I want to head over tomorrow maybe and see what it looks like that low to take notes for next spring. At the same time, with the water dropping I’d estimate about a quarter of the surface area is gone and another 10% is less than a foot deep. So the fish are concentrated into 2/3 of the area. Using navionics and setting a color for anything that’s now dry, there are some interesting ledges and points that would have been too deep before that are now fishy looking. However, they would have been a long way from where I would expect bass in normal pool. any of you western guys that are facing heavy droughts have ideas?

ha! Yes, I was talking chain pickerel. I have never heard of walleye being called pickerel. Learn something every day

Youve got a lot of advice on walleye. Let me talk about Pickerel. First, they are not picky. They want any lure or bait that looks like its injured and getting away. Erratic is good. I couldn't tell you how many times they hit a lure as you're about to pull it out of the water. They have the same closing burst as muskies and pike when they are 'just following' and then decide they want something. second, they are not the top predators pretty much anywhere. they often live with muskies and pike in the same lakes. Even in bass lakes I'm not sure they are top dog. As such, they tend to be in 'smaller' areas. Shallower water, thicker weeds, backs of coves, etc. The bigger ones patrol bigger areas (keep in mind 24" is a big one) but the normal 15-20" fish are in the same places you'd find bass so fish for them like largemouths. I catch bunches of them targeting largemouths.

yeah, that’s a pretty good feature. With the zero lines card the storage is more than you could ever use but the built in memory isn’t a lot.

it was more than 10 hours for sure, and it isn’t time based. It’s simply the amount of memory taken up by autochart on the internal memory. I managed to get most of a 300 acre lake mapped plus a bit at other lakes before it was full. but like you said, it’s more like a taster feature without the card. If you think you’re going to be doing more than one lake, just get the card and be done.

i don’t know about beast but I sure do love it. It has the air suspension which rides silky smooth on the highway (plus dropping it down 2” is handy for loading the boat in the bed). The back seat is comfy for 3 adults to sit there, but even better is folding up the seat and folding down the flat floor. It gives me a full flat back floor which is awesome for throwing my fishing stuff when the boat is in the bed. The ram boxes are nice too.

2018 Ram 1500 Limited. I haven't owned a truck in 20 years since we spend 12 in the UK where it was impractical to have one. On moving back that was my stipulation. I absolutely love it and won't be without a truck now.

I've thrown up out of the back of a boat once, but it wasn't from seasickness.... We made the crossing from mainland Ireland to Aran Islands once. The bay is about 10 miles and semi shielded from the north atlantic by the Islands but the wind had been blowing 40 mph for 3 days right through the gap so it was 15' waves they couldn't cross in. We got there on day 4 with 25 mph and 10' waves so they were going for it. Mind you, this is a boat that sits 20 people wide in the interior and 15-20 rows front to back, plus space on front and rear decks. Its a BIG boat (35-40 m) for a ferry with a ton of horsepower under it. We made it about 3 minutes before the waves hit and another 2 minutes before the first vomit started. 3/4 of the people were throwing up. You can't imagine the smell of that cabin. That almost made me throw up, not the sea conditions.

it looks like you might have just enough thread in the hole. I'd start with teflon tape since its a cheap and simple thing to try. You could also try a more coarse thread of the same size and pitch to give a little more bite. Some loc-tite green might also be enough if its just barely slipping. Green is easily removed later.

I'll second the amistad as that's what it was designed for, but I'd say to get the expert or Cara version for the extra sensitivity on a bottom contact rod. I have the expert and fish down to a 3/8 weight and a beaver up to a 7" swimbait with 3/8 oz weighted hook (all in about 2 oz). No problems with sensitivity on the lighter end of things and it handles the heavier weight just fine.

If he likes the Herm and you don't want another Bucoo, then why not a lowrider? Only another $30 and you get cork and upgraded components. The 7' All round fast would be a great choice for what you describe.