casts_by_fly

A group 31 is nominally 100 ah. But the low voltage cutoff for a humminbird is nominally 10.4v which is around the 80% mark on a lead acid. So best case you’ve got 80 ah and practically speaking you don’t want to push it that low. The helix pulls 2.7A each and the mega live is another 2A. So you’re at 7.4A. 10 hours would be 75ah which is your battery spent. If you need it to do other things then you’re out of luck. I wouldn’t hesitate to go with litime either. In fact I just put two in the new boat build. I went 100ah dedicated for two explor units and ml2. It should be enough for a full day, but I’m not doing more than an 8 hour day. It’s also dedicated and if I kill it I’m only out my fish finder.

It’s in the shop getting wired up and mounted. Pickup Saturday. Both motors are on. Today was fish finders. We were going to flush mount the explor 9 in the console but it’s too deep for the space so it’s going on a ram mount (I was 50/50 on that choice anyway). The pirhanna in the dash is coming out and a plate going in (any clever things I could put in its place?). Saturday is gotcha day.

Same for me. The dt6 in the spring is a thing. The color set offered across the lineup hits all of the right spots for me. They don’t rattle, but with our clear water that’s not a problem. And you can scale up or down from 4-20 with basically the same bait. And they work. I throw in the og4 and 6 circuit bill for a square bill.

Why not a rail mounted clamp on option? Mount to the front railing, port of center towards your livescope pole?

Jetties from shore ?

I suspect you’re partially right. I bet it’s well under filled for a start. Probably loosely wound and/or wind knots. I bet there is some casting technique as well and the rod isn’t loading. The rod is designed to throw what he’s throwing so it’s not like this was a mismatched setup. A sloppy cast not loading the rod up plus heavy braid on a tiny reel which is way underfilled and messily wound. All of that together might be enough to do it.

growing up, we lived within sight of the Mon river, south of Pittsburgh. There were a bunch of small streams that fed the river that all had a similar pattern. The second flood in the spring would bring a bunch of fish up into the creek. the first flood was usually in march and everything was still pretty cold. The second big flood (I'm talking 10' over full pool) would flood the creeks, creek bottoms, and everywhere. The water would be in the 50's at that point. You could fish the mouths of the creeks if you wanted, but if you waited a couple days for it to go down, the creeks would be full of fish. All fish. Primarily that means carp, white bass, and smallies but we'd get drum, crappies, catfish, and you name it. They would go as far as 10 miles up the creeks at times. I think it was a combination of factors- the river was heavy flow and muddy, so the creeks were eddies and slower. They were a little warmer. All of that drew the baitfish and so the schools of other fish followed the bait. I don't recall the smallies spawning up in the creek, though many would just become resident there so there must have been some. The lower reaches would be full of fish and then after not very long they would be sparse- a couple holes would hold them but mostly they just flowed back out with the water. That's what makes me believe it was largely baitfish and rest drawing them up in the first place.

That's a fair point, but you need to consider the limitations also. Braid is great around vegetation and open water. It doesn't like being drug across sharp stuff and it will dig into wood at times. I don't think I'd ever use it for chunking live bait, especially for bottom fishing live bait. If you're snagging up a lot as it is now, you may want to consider slightly lighter lures or ones that don't run quite so deep.

For what you're describing, I wouldn't go to braid. Braid is great at a lot of things, but getting in and out of sharp rocks like you'd get on a spillway isn't one of them. Rocks/mussels/sharp edges are the achilles heel of braid. If you're going to do it, then I would plan for a 15' hard fluoro or mono leader since you're bank fishing and the angle across the rocks is fairly low. Within what you asked, 832 is a great casting braid and 15# would be what I'd fish in your circumstance. I fish 10# (832 and 131) on spinning and BFS and 30/50 on baitcasters. But for you'd I'd bump up to 15# for just a little more forgiveness on abrasion. Maybe even 20#. If you were using a 3k sized reel I'd say 20#, but I don't know the capacity of a 2500 BG. I fish yellow 832 in 10# and green in 30/50. Both are pretty visible if you're a line watcher.

Value for money sure. But you can’t hold a met and slx in hand side by side and say that the slx is better.

I’ll have to look tomorrow for pictures. My biggest bag is labeled “glad- rubbish”. Not far behind is “hefty”.

Pulling this one back to the top. I saw tw has them now and thought someone might have gotten theirs by now. Mine is inbound.

The bg is designed as a workhorse type of reel. That 2500 is a bit over 9 oz which is a little heavy for a modern reel of that size, but not long ago that was a common weight for that sized reel. if you like it and want to keep it, then go for it. It should last you many years. If you feel like the combo is unbalanced, then return it for a different reel.

Even a half full spool will cast more than 10’. Certainly it will contribute, but I think there is more going on. I still think a picture would go miles here.

The biggest lake in this state is 2400 acres. The bulk of what I’m fishing are lakes <1200 acres. So I hear the questions you’re asking. The classic ‘first dock up a creek arm off the main lake’ type of pattern may or may not hold up depending how many creek arms you have. If your lake is a single winding lake with no or only one arm then that pattern will be a pattern of one. And that’s the limiting factor on smaller lakes. Finding areas that are ‘the same’ gets harder when there are just fewer areas in total. So instead of the first dock up a creek arm, you have to broaden the criteria a little if you want to try to fish pattern based like that. It might have to be docks on the shaded side of the lake with at least 6’ of water off the end. Or rocky bottoms in 8-15’. You might even have to just pick a water depth range to target.

Less the cranks but for top waters and jerk baits it’s the falcon finesse jig for me. It also throws the smaller cranks fine but I have other rods for that.

Since I basically only order from TW I build wish lists. Then when I get to a point that I need something on the list I move it all to my cart and order.

1- you’re going to struggle in high wind. Even if you’ve got double poles down (which isn’t a normal ffs scenario) you’re still talking about lighter baits/line/rods a lot of the time. And at that wind speed you’re going to be doing everything you can just to move the boat around. 2- we have pike and musky, so same body shape as gar. Play with your setting a little. You should be able to recognize the difference between long skinny fish and shorter chunky fish. Now a 15” crappie? That looks just like a bass. 3- depends on the transducer you have. Mega live 1 doesn’t have enough power to do well much beyond 50’ or so. At that range it’s losing power too much to differentiate shapes and sizes. Not sure which xd you have though. 4- that’s just the fish you have and the techniques you’re using. Could be the time of year and the mood your fish are in. Plenty of bass have been caught deeper than 10’ on ffs. 5- fish laying on the bottom are tougher. You need good target separation. Play with your settings. Dial down the contrast so you can try to make out the edges of the cover and the edges of the fish. Get closer and set your range to 50’ and your depth to 2’ deeper than the water. That will get the most pixels on the fish. From there you can compare the fish to the grid size on the screen.

Every year I’ve done at least one trip where I picked a technique or theme and only did that. It started with the “all plastics outing” a couple summers ago. Last year I did a finesse only trip. I don’t limit it to one particular lure but to a theme that I’d like to be better at so that when I need to pick it up in the future I have a good basis and confidence. After the all plastics outing I actually swapped from throwing a jig to throwing a Texas rig for the bulk of my pitching. Last year I caught so many bass on a ned rig that I’ll never not have one tied on. I’m not sure what this year will bring yet. It might be a big bait day (nothing smaller than a 6” magdraft). Might be a FFS day and only catching fish I can see first (minnow, jerkbait, etc). I think a day of dragging (Carolina rig or football jigs) would serve me well also.

Thanks. I didn’t think so based on fitting it together but not fitting together.

Hi gents, every shimano spool I’ve had has been interchangeable within a size. A family friend passed a couple years ago and his wife was recently getting rid of some of his fishing stuff. My dad saw stradic 3000 spool and grabbed it for me, knowing I have that size (he fishes vanford 4k size). It’s an MgB spool though and for the life of me I can’t see that it will work on my modern stradics. Was there something special about this spool that I’m missing? And anyone want to trade for a different stradic spool that will work for me? rick

Winter is done here. I haven’t checked the bigger lakes but all of the small ones and the rivers are thawed. The bigger lake around with a temp probe says 41 degrees and warming so that’s thawed out (it just needs another 18’ of depth). We are 60 and rainy now and 65 and sunny this week. Boat pickup is next weekend so I should be on the water Sunday…

The Cara amistad would do all of that. It’s rated down to a half and that’s about right. The tip is soft enough to throw a naked half ounce soft plastic but I fished it with 6” magdraft freestyles also (8/0 owner beast hook).

Also, pretty sure she wasn’t fishing for bass. I think she was panfish fishing and caught a bass.

you'll get lots of replies about many topics about how to catch bass. Everyone learns differently, lakes fish differently in different areas of the country and time of year. There are dozens of different types of presentations supported by dozens or hundreds of lures and variations of lures. And that's not even going down to color. That's a lot of variables right from the start. Then there is the biggest variable- you. So watch videos, maybe get a guide, etc, but try to simplify. Pick the things that you do well or that agree with you and stick to them. Get good at them. Focus on one lake. Learn how it fishes through the year. Once you figure out a few things and get good at them, then learn a few things that are adjacent. Like moving baits and fish a spinnerbait and crankbaits all the time? Great- try chatterbaits, lipless cranks, and swim jigs in similar situations. You could do a lot worse than sticking a couple different jigs on a couple different rods and not putting one down ever.