chowder

Sea ducks are actually ‘good eats’ . My personal favorites are shredded breast meat fajitas or ground breast meat tacos. I’m also very fond of smoking the breasts and combining with pork or beef and making the mix into brats. Like most wild foods- you can’t turn a sows ear into a silk purse , you have to learn and listen to your inner muse, read a little and most things can turn into delicious food https://honest-food.net/eating-sea-ducks/

I will add that during hot eye bites I typically run just 1 mag wire dipsy divers and 2 reg braid dipsy divers per side in order to minimize my time spent getting a fish off and rig redeployed.

Yes divers slide well on 40# mono ( I don’t actually use big game but don’t think that’s an issue). 40# mono is imho the ‘right’ stuff, it will last a season without getting compromised by wear unless accidentally nicked. I’ve gotten so I only use a 20’ stretch because much more than that seems unnecessary

General pointers on jigging for Flx lakers: 7’ mh rod, baitcasting reel, 12 lb superbraid to 5’ 8lb floro leader ( Albright knot). Have 3/4 - 1.5 oz jig heads - sharp sharp hooks. White super fluke , and chartreuse. Find a concentration of lakers- don’t jig where there are no fish ( keep looking). Use bowmount to maintain position. Drop straight down, bounce 3 times ( that’s it!) then rapid retrieval. Most hits are light, like a ‘tick’. When a ‘tick’ is detected set hook absolutely immediately, many people just miss a lot of the hits. They will chase on retrieval as well and this hit is unmistakable. They will hit on the drop sometimes, best advice for anything but the retrieval hit ( instant rod load) is set the hook anytime something seems off. In general 50-60 fow is great, keeping the jig vertical gets tougher at 100. Start with 3/4 , increase as necessary to maintain vertical presentation. Did I mention that you absolutely should find a concentration of fish. Yeah I did. If you can’t find a concentration you are far better off trolling drop offs or wherever you can find bait

Gen 2 guy here. Darrel personally helped me get the system up and running. I will be running it Saturday and will post my experience.

Good talking with you Harvey. See you next week!

Pm me please, thanks

I run my slidedivers on a 80’ -60’ stretch of 40lb mono. It holds up well to the traffic on it and naturally provides a stretch cushioning on high shock hits from big fish: Superbraid to mono ( Albright) , slide on SD bead to swivel then a 12” + stretch of 20# floro to snap swivel.

I’ve seen this leader twist on 8” flashers with flies before but only here and there - not sure what causes it .

I use fish thief snubbers on Ontario with regular divers on wire . Litebite slide divers on Erie , Reg slide divers on braid for high spoon divers on Ontario

My first choice is black and my 2nd choice is black . Having said that I just realized my small divers on the browns rods are red (port) and green ( starboard). I’m sure there are plenty of theories out there but imho I’m not sure it’s a game breaker

In-line boards take all the fun out of browns and walleyes because you have to size the rod to handle the drag of those little boards not the fish that you are fishing for ( a lil better with eyes just because you are typically going slow enough that inline board drag is somewhat reduced but an eye fights less than a brown so you aren’t much further ahead).I had a 16’ boat with a mast and big boards for 15 years. I would strongly recommend going that way. The fact is that a small open boat can often provide easier access to a dual planer mast and stowing boards than some big boats allow.

Welcome aboard. Lot of experience collected here. Ask away