casts_by_fly

its a neat boat. Though at that price I bet some would prefer a 120 pdl as the base so you have two propulsions. The inbuilt storage of the tactical is neat, though the whole thing is verging on being a plastic boat and not a kayak (fine line, I know). Alas, my autopilot has been gone for two weeks now so I’m no longer in the kayak game.

it looks a lot like an SSR from amtak. https://mudhole.com/products/crb-ssr-light-duty-tip-top-guides-model-xlt

yeah, the new one is just an ipilot link terrova with a cut down shaft. It makes sense to have it and that will do a lot of the things that people have asked of the autopilot. It’s the 55# thrust plus link. i don’t see this as a good pair with the epdl. The extra $1500 adds weight and only gives spotlock/navigate. If you’re buying new, then you get the regular pdl and add the terrova. There isn’t a standard paddle pro which would be an even better choice to minimize cost and get spotlock. But if the aftermarket mounting plate works then a 120 paddle is $1k and the terrova is $1500. That’s spotlock and then some for $2500, and around $3k once you add battery and box, mount, etc. That would be seriously tempting.

And now we know how black and blue can be a match the hatch color. Nice chunker!

Price and weight. I have a bass pro ultralight that has them also. Mine is a cheaper rod and the guides are just fine. They are light weight because instead of inserting a ceramic ring (and the cost of the ring plus the cost of forming the frame) it is more or less just a polished frame that you can do in one step.

Yeah that would do it. The steel of the eye is harder than the stainless eyelet. You need a new tiptop and to stop reeling lures up into the rod tip.

yeah, I'm with jar. I love supernatural as a mainline and fish 6 lb on my trout rod. But I love it for how supple it is. For leader its fine, but that's because I have a spool of it. XT is a good suggestion. Maxima is also a good hard mono.

Yeah, just barely. I was curious so I just took it outside. As best I can tell, this is the 7'2" Cara spinning rod blank with casting components. On a spinning reel I can see it launching a 1/16 oz 25-30 yards or more. With the casting reel I can get 20 yards with it, either sidearm or overhead, but any harder and I think I'd be blowing up the reel too much. The rod will load more, hence my spinning reel comment, but I'm just not there yet with the casting reel. I wouldn't want to go any lighter with a BFS reel on this rod. I think the sweet spot for me and what I want to do is going to be a 1/16-1/8 oz lead plus a light plastic. I also picked up a pair of strike king bitsy dawgs that I'm confident it will launch into tomorrow.

The boiling isn't the problem. Without electric I still have gas and can light the stove with a match. But where am I getting the water? In the summer we can get a bucket of water from the pool to flush toilets, and a quick dip to rinse off is a kinda bath. But you're not drinking pool water.

well, make a hole and someone will fill it: https://oldtownwatercraft.johnsonoutdoors.com/us/shop/freshwater-trolling-motors/kayak-terrova Also, they launched a new set of 'pro' models which have the bow predrilled for the kayak terrova.

Despite being NJ, we are on the border of living in the sticks. Rewind 30 years ago and this was the sticks. And the power grid is ancient. If a squirrel farts too hard someone looses power in the township. It's a running joke, but it's not inaccurate. Every wind storm with winds over 20 MPH sustained or gusts over 30 there are outages. When the storm rolled through in summer 2020 we were without power for 5 days. We had talked about it before, but that was the point where my wife demanded it. We've not had an incident like that since then, but we lost most of our freezer and fridge at the time. Our friends in town got their power back on day 3 so we went and stayed with them and brought whatever food was still okay. But it was a lot of loss. We have natural gas to the house, so we plumbed for that. We could have gone generac, cummins, or another that I'm forgetting. We went cummins because that's what the service tech recommended. He said they are less maintenence overall and less critical in their maintenence. I think it's a 27KW and the prices 4 years ago were similar to what ScottF put up. I think we were at $15k all in including the transfer switch and install. We have a well, so if you want water to do anything (like flush a toilet or take a shower) you need electricity. We work from home a lot, so no power = no work. In the winter, no power = no heat for us (the tiny living room fireplace wouldn't cut it). And the initial purchase price is for a 15-30 year investment item.

Nights like tonight are why they grabbed Luka. LeBron is out, no matter.

Where are you getting a curado bfs for $125? I did contemplate it. I decided to go for the aldebaran for an extra $100. I don’t love the plastic-y feel of the slx and putting it in the deck next to a set of bantams and metaniums I would have just wanted to upgrade again in the future. YMMV

Just got it in today and made some quick driveway casts. First impressions are that it is what I thought it would be. It's a cara through and through for fit and finish. It feels right at home with the rest of them. Its very tip light, both swing weight and power. Its definitely a fast action, maybe an extra fast. With a light to modest pull (a little over the max casting weight) it flexes to about 5th guide or so. That's 20" on a 86" rod or less than 25%. The tip is very very light. Just an hour ago I was fishing my poison adrena UL/M which is an extra fast action and has maybe the lightest tip on a bass rod I've ever seen. This rod is a close second. Comparing it to the 7'1" Phenix Feather ML, the Phenix is a touch lighter in total weight (3.45 vs 3.3 oz) but the phenix has a little heavier tip and a little more moderate action. The Phenix has more power in the top 25% of the rod, but the Falcon has more in the bottom 50%. I tied on a 1/8oz ball head jig and a 3" twister. Total weight 3/16 oz. With an aldebaran BFS, 10 lb 832, and a long fluoro leader (there was a little noise as the knot passed through which I'll have to sort out) I was throwing 20 yards with an easy side arm or overhead cast. If I wanted to push it I could get 25 yards without blowing up the reel most of the time. There is an element of practice with it for sure but it definitely is smooth to cast. I'm going to get some on the water time in first before I make any sweeping judgements. But based on first impressions I think this rod is what I thought it would be and is going to do the things I want it to do.

I kinda wish we had them around here. When I was growing up my family would take a week in the summer and go north for a cottage vacation and a week of fishing. It started as canada but when the fishing trailed off we swapped to the St Lawrence (and a year at black lake). I remember fishing for bass and seeing big longnose cruising. One time for S&G my dad tied on a mega spook (clear) and worked it back across its nose. It swiped and he handed me the rod. I bet my mom still has the picture of me holding it up back at the dock. It was 48" including the nose. Fun creatures.

supposedly. There is a toggle for 'show points with wave forecast'. I've never used it so can't tell you how to turn it on but I use windfinder most every day. I've found that the wind forecast is pretty good most of the time when you account for any land mass features that might redirect it. Here at the house we are on the face of a hill across a LOOONG valley so the wind is usually amps up a little as it crosses the valley and comes up the hill. Some of my hunting spots are down in valleys and the hills usually direct the wind along the valley and rarely across it. On the water its usually pretty close though. here you go. https://www.windfinder.com/forecast/wares_wharf_rappahannock_river

https://www.windfinder.com/#9/38.7344/-76.6571/spot

you'd need two switches for two batteries. Otherwise you'd be hooking them together via the switch. There might be switches that have two switches built in to the same switch, but I haven't looked.

I'll start at ice out and continue into archery hunting season. September and October will see me choosing between bowhunting and fishing. From the last two weeks of October though, that's prime deer season and I'm usually done fishing for the year. That said, I may take a year off bowhunting. With the new boat I can see where fishing in November will be more pleasurable than in the kayak and I'd like to round out my 'catch a bass in X month' list.

The design on the met is for waterproofness and strength. It’s a great design. There’s no reason to be opening it on the water. Set it somewhere in the 3 or 4 blocks range and fine tune with the dial on the outside.

sounds like daiwa reels speak to you better than shimano. Glad you like them.

no, that’s makes sense that the fish are feeding in a similar range. They are following the bait and there is a certain set of conditions that is triggering them. Could be temp, clarity, plankton making the bait twitchy or just the particular bait that is in that depth range is what they want to feed on.

that was my purely speculative guess without digging. I just did a quick google search and a livewell pump seems to be around 3 amps. On an 8 hour day continuous that’s 24 ah but you’re not going to run continuous. If you’re on a 1 minute on, 5 off timer that’s 4 ah total. That’s more than I had in my head but still not a ton. Led lights are negligible and you only have them on in the dark. The bilge shouldn’t be running unless it’s raining all day. It will be a similar draw to the livewell but won’t be running as much (I hope!).

yeah, for $200 it’s pretty much a no brainer. you’d have to look up your other equipment but I can’t imagine you’d need more than 5 ah since they aren’t constantly running.

look on amazon if you aren’t already. There is the basic 100ah for $209 and the Bluetooth version for $30 more.