mr 580

A few years ago I bought a Factory Reconditioned Humminbird with a great price and 6 months warranty instead of the standard 1 year warranty for a new one. I bought it in the spring so I had factory warranty for the whole season so not much difference in coverage considering the downtime we have in winter. The only thing I could find with it that the looked altered was the plastic screen cover had been sanded in the center where there a casting mark. Have had no issues with it and still using it. Important to buy with a manufacturer warranty and to be sure you use the product during the warranty period.

If you don’t want to deal with flares and their date codes, there is another option. The USCG has approved a LED battery powered day/night emergency light that flashes an SOS. Comes with a daytime orange flag and costs around $100. Light itself has no expiration dare, however the three C cell batteries are to be replaced annually. I don’t see any cost savings when you figure light cost and battery cost vs flare cost. NYS Parks also accepts them on PV’s in lieu of flares as my inspector mentioned it as a good option. I did buy one as I feel the cost of the flares to be a bit much. Be interesting to see how it works out.

Get a stainless U bolt that fits tubing on tower with long enough threads to add a second mounting bracket. Use first bracket to tighten U bolt to tower. Put an eye bolt in second bracket and open eye to attach pulley then double nut to eye bolt. U bolts available at most hardware stores.

You might try locking kicker in a straight position then steer with big motor not running. Likely won’t make tight turn but would work for most trolling applications. If you need to turn tight tight fire up the main. You are not out much $$$if it doesn’t work.

Depth Raider uses coated cable and antenna. Fish Hawk uses a transducer to receive signal from probe-no coated cable..

Ok, glad to see you got some help. Your description was a bit confusing so it wasn’t clear if you had a display issue or problem with probe signal feed. Sounds like an antenna will fix you right up.

When you power up the display you should have several dashes appear on display. If the display stays blank you need to check 12v power supply and ground for display. The coax cable, antenna, and coated cable feed the 9v signal to the display from the probe itself. Sounds like your issue might be in the wiring to your display if your screen stays totally blank.

If most of your fishing is Lake Erie, the 12lb ball will be fine with a probe. For non probe rigger might not be bad idea to drop to a 10lb. On Erie most people are trolling slower especially if running crawler harness and same goes for cowbells for lakers.

The small alternators on kickers don’t keep up with the draw used trolling especially with high speed riggers. What position is your battery switch in? Best bet is to run 1 or 2 position not in “both”. When you run “both” the weaker battery draws down the better battery. Also how old are your batteries? I’ve had older batteries that load test as good when fully charged, but then discharge quickly. 3 years is roughly the life expectancy of a battery. Your Honda should have an alternator. I had a Honda and the alternator output feed was an option sold separately. So check your wiring to see if it has been wired in to your electrical system. With fully charged batteries, you should be able to run all day on a single battery with your second battery as a backup. Between trips charge the battery. My next kicker will have a larger alternator for sure.

Attached are couple pics of the track setup on my Proline. I have a 12" track and a 24" track on each side and the two factory mount flush mounts. For Lake Ontario I have a 4 rigger spread with rear riggers on Cannon swivels mounts w/o track then 2 riggers in 12" track on Traxstech swivel. For Lake Erie the two track mounted riggers come off and more rod holders go on. To me tracks provide a lot of flexibility. The standard flush mounts angle isn't quite right for great lakes trolling so I don't use them too much- I tried to angle them differently and it wouldn't work without hacking them up so I left them stock. I have aluminum backer under the tracks. Nice thing with tracks you can add as you go a long. Hope this is helpful.

The Mag 10A motor assembly has a internal gear arrangement with three plastic pucks. When those pucks disintegrate the motor begins to “skip” on retrevial. Pull output gear off shaft and lift cover to expose the pucks. I made some new pucks for a rigger I used to have- think I might have the jig and the composite material to make more. Cannon doesn’t have motors for that model available. I had trouble finding pieces to fix my rigger and that was probably 7 years ago.

Snap weights are a good option. Make a lot of sense especially in smaller boats where rod storage is tough. With 3 and 5 colors plus some snap weights a lot of depths could be covered. In line boards also save space and go well with snap weight setup.

If you are heading to Dunkirk or Silver Creek just PM me and I’ll share info. For anything over 7 colors I have been using Tuff Line Microlead and I run my 10 colors on 50 Saltists. Makes a big difference using a high speed reel.

I setup a 250 BR walleye copper on a Daiwa 57 LC5 this winter. I can’t say how much backer in terms of feet were, but I felt it was more than adequate. My thought was same as yours- hit 60 or so down with less line than a 10 color. I played around with the walleye copper a few years ago in shorter lengths to possibly replace some lead core but wasn’t happy with the result. If you have silver bass wad up that copper you can have quite an impressive mess.

It’s been a while since I’ve fished Honeoye but likely still fishes the same. Usually pretty much a night bite early trolling plugs shallow. Should be a weed line to work in daytime. Lots of bass and panfish. I used to fish it in May, after Memorial Day it got too busy for me. At night you had to watch for “stealth” trollers without lights and docks. Was never big on numbers but you could usually find a few eyes. Living in Rochester area it was a close option for eyes. Being small info was always limited and guys were tight lipped.