capt ace

NICE Burky, that sounds great! After a lot of thought we will be taking some time off of the tournament trail to just run charters.If we do fish any tournaments this year it will most likely only be with charters. That should prove to be an interesting week. Once again, that should make for a nice addition to the turny and maybe bring in a few more boats to our end.Good Job!

Amen Pete. Amen!

 You may also want to consider amperage output of your kicker to recharge your batteries while you are trolling and the main engine is turned off. Most kickers will put out somewhere between 10/15 amps if they are set up to do so.

Just a thought! 

It's a great unit and takes a lot of guess work out of the equation. Check out this link:       http://fishhawkelectronics.com/wordpress/

It gives a lot of insight on how to use it and its purpose

We have always liked the idea of having a stand alone fishfinder and gps. If one unit goes down, you still have the other and they  can usually be interfaced as well. 

Thanks.

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Rick, where do we sign up for this event? Can we do it on line?

We have them on our charter boat. You do have the option to back off on the black tension knob and let the boards spool out under tension of the clutch . Works great so you can go do other things while the line is bleeding out. We tie a big knot in the end of the planer board line so that it can't pull out of the spool when all the line is let out. This way if you don't get to the reel in time before all the line comes out, it won't let go and go away. We then tighten up the  clutch knob and reel in about five or six wraps electrically to take the pressure off of the line going to the board.

I personally think that you are asking to get spooled one of these days by using only 450 ft. of backing on lake Ontario. All it's going to take is a real good size king or a foul hooked one and you will be seeing the gold of that Shimano reel. Imagine how much less usable backing you will have to use if you run that copper out on the boards,too. We use Fins spectra braid for our backing on these kinds of set ups. It is 50lb test and only 10lb diameter instead of 12lb like Power Pro. On our 500 copper Shimano's we have 90 passes of Fins which is around 900ft of backing. This fills the reel right to the top which is where you want it to be anyways.

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There's an ole sayin' that goes 'Full moon fish at noon". It does carry a lot of credence!!

 A lot of times going out in the morning in the dark or greylight, we can actually see the thermocline on our graph by setting the frequency to 200hz. This is an excellent place to start your set-up on. The fish will be in it or strongly relating to it as a lot of aquatic life gathers here in the low light. You will actually see the thermocline picture on your graph dissipate as it gets lighter out. First thing in the morning we run our lines either in it or just above it to get those early morning bites. 

Last week of July, first week of August for kings that are still silver.

The point of the X4D is that it tells you, based upon water pressure, the actual straight down location of the temperature vertically from the surface to its location in the water column. In other words, the actual depth of the temperature. For guys like me who fish temperature most of the time on a day to day basis, knowing where the temperature is vertically in the column really helps me to dial in on the fish. I now know where to run my dipseys and coppers more accurately. It just takes a lot of the guess work out of it and gives you up to date information on what's going on down below. I did check my probe out in a known depth to verify its accuracy and my unit appears to be spot on.

I have run both the torpedos and the sharks, and all else being equal weight wise, I have to give the nod to the sharks. The prices on the sharks have come down considerably on their website and are right in the same ballpark price wise as some of the others.

I second Northwoods, they had the best price when I bought mine last year.

Amen, Werner. I have a $4400.00 Lowrance radar unit that won't work because of a rim 200 power chord which they quit making. I just found out that their HD radars like the lra1800 need a rim 300 chord to interface with my older chartplotter and they quit making them and there are none to be found. That's what I hate about lowrance and that's why I will never try to deal with them again. Built in dynamic adolescence and no parts to fix them when they break. What really sucks the most is that we are talking about units that cost in the 1000.00's not 19.95 on TV. WTF?

Atommik all the way here.

you do this until the fleas show up and then go to heavier line?

By the time the fleas show up and we are fishing for kings, we typically don't run spoons. We usually run either flies or meat or both. That being said, if we aren't getting bit, we have been known to fish spoons. One thing to keep in mind, the 12lb test Gamma actually breaks at around 17# or so. Gamma also doesn't seem to load up with fleas as bad as you would think. We also check lines a lot more frequently when the fleas are around, especially on dipsys because if the dipsy lines load up they will float up in the water column. You know when it's happening because you can see the angle of the line change in the water as the dipsys rise in the column. With the spoon rod, we just pop it and slap the fleas off and send it back down.

The Solterra 50L has tons more room than the 345 Penn gti. I have 750 ft of Atomik .037 copper on one Solterra with a 1000ft. of 50lb Finns backing on it.

Yes. We run 12 lb Gamma on our spoon rods.

 The best bands we have found are the number 19 from staples. What we do is wrap the band around the line several times and then insert both loops of the band into the blacks and snap it shut. Done this way, the band will not slip and the rod tips can be cranked right down to the water. We set the blacks tight enough so that the band breaks and the blacks stays closed.. The black's setting by the way, is left on the setting that we use when running attractors. When the band breaks, it just falls off of the fishing line. Having the rubber band wrapped around the line instead of half hitched, does not affect the integrity of the line.

  Using the rubber bands we can see small fish bites, but it takes a bit to break the band which insures a good hookset on mature fish.. The bands can also be broken manually if needed, just pull the rod by jerking up and breaking the band.

  We have been doing it this way for years. It allows us to get away with using lite line for spoons which we feel generates more bites, especially on those tough days when the temps are up and the water's blue. 

When we run light line and spoons, we usually run with a rubber band on the line put into the blacks. You can see smaller fish bites, too.

Yup!! No problem. I have a bunch of friends who do just that.

Literally thousands of kings on the 600lc Shimano reels over a decade of use with no issues except you do need to clean and regrease the drags every other year or so. There are also aftermarket drag kits available for 9.00 or so from Tuna Tom's and they are silky smooth as well as basically maintenance free.

My experience with higher gear ratio reels is that they require a bit more effort to reel in do to the higher gear ratios.