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digitroll

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Everything posted by digitroll

  1. Sorry to hear your selling Rusty! I get it if your not using something it's tough to let it sit idle too. These boats fish well up to 5 ft swells in Lake Ontario. I keep my front bow as light as possible with nearly no weight and a bow cover always in place. No electric trolling motor or batteries up there. I do have a 30 lb bell anchor but that's it. You will have no problem selling it and it's wise till wait till Spring during the peak selling season. I sold Starcraft boats for 14 years retired now. I know a good friend of mine that might be interested in your boat here in Vermont.
  2. My 2013 Starcraft Fishmaster 196 with 4 months to go to finish the 2024 season at this point has 10,997 miles recorded on my Simrad Autopilot log checked today and 3,100 hours on the previous 150 hp Mercury and repowered 200 hp Mercury 5 years ago combined. Is it fair to say it gets some use?
  3. Some great questions asked and some good support answers! I honestly haven't been this excited about a new product since I installed my first autopilot in 2005 on my boat. It's a great system to validate with my Fish Hawk Ultra and run both to play off each other with great data of temp and depth! I can move stuff around to take advantage of keeping my lures or paddles above the fish most of the time in the warmer water. It's even worked very well in our own Lake Champlain for landlock salmon our home water with Lite Bite Slide divers. I like both systems and they complement each other! Fishhawk and Smart Troll!
  4. Very true Les! It took me a little while to get use to seeing these differences hardly believing it and then I began just trusting the depths and temps on the screen and made my adjustments! Felt very confident when Divers starting popping vs. riggers many times over 3 trips to Ontario this past year! My buddies the first day on another boat without Smart Troll never had a bite on their divers. I can relate to this prior to Smart Troll!
  5. We did run into the bottom by accident as the diver rod was bouncing at one point on our two day trip and I looked at the sonar and the readout on the diver probe and it matched! We also have the Fish Hawk X4D Ultra on a rigger that I constantly see a match with temperature and depth when comparing to the Smart Troll probes! When I first started using it a year ago I would sometimes get depth on the probe that didn't make sense maybe 15-20 ft higher than I previously read going in the opposite direction. I put my Fish Hawk TD on that diver to verify what I was reading! Thats when all this clicked for me that these readings were accurate. Using pressure sensing technology in the probes. I used my Fishhawk on the rigger to keep that in the right spot too! Having temperature data on the Smart Troll probes validates wherever it is running to the depth when compared to the other smart probes and Fish Hawk probe. No diver rod is the same I have found out so the short answer is not all the time is it equal to another diver with same reel same wire and same full reel. Hard to believe but true! However with riggers my Fish Hawk probe is very close to the other riggers around the same depth. If you want to run a Smart Troll probe on another rigger that is an option too. Currents and waves effect the dive curve when you turn the boat more than 30 degrees! Here is a summary video of our two day trip last week:
  6. I have run 4 divers with Smart Troll probes on my previous 2 trips to Ontario this year and it works very well in May at the Bar and the Oak in July. Due to the fact we were fishing so deep in early September I dedicated just two divers to run that deep 95-110 ft on my divers that was in the zone above the fish and temp break. I have been running divers for 25 years and I am confident having used these with 4 that I can achieve pretty good success with just two divers. Doesn't mean I will abandon running 4 as I have that option in May and July to run that program if it's slow. I have that same experience as many here that Gambler describes. When we make turns in the currents and waves the dive curve changes quickly and adjustments are sometimes needed to keep it running where it's getting bit. My buddies diver rod was off 50 ft compared to mine last week. He made the adjustment to get to 95 feet with the Smart Troll probe. Soon after he was getting bit and the rest of the two days! Smart Troll allows a person to quickly adjust and when you get bit on one diver you can see where it's running and adjust the other diver to that depth. How often you have had days the fish are biting one diver and the other is dead?
  7. What have I learned in the last 13 months using Smart Troll: Our Smart Troll system kept are divers in the zone and proved to be our best option on these stager salmon in 140-160 fow! Can't say enough about this system after 13 months now! It just keeps our divers busy putting them in the sweet spots! We only used two divers with Dreamweaver Deeper Diver dipsies on a 2 setting running 95-110 feet down for these Stagers on Sept. 4th and 5th. One day we spent 13 hours on the water and the two probes didn't run low on battery life. We have done well with 4 divers the last two years at the Oak and the Bar in May and July. Now I am contemplating going back to 2 divers! Why? I feel I am have more confidence with 2 divers running them at precise depths above the fish many times in warmer water just above the thermocline than running 4 blind divers before I had the Smart Troll system! Efficiency over quantity of 2 divers vs. 4. We fish 2 people on my boat and I have a lot of confidence with my two divers. Less headaches and better management during a hot bite with 2 divers with Smart Troll on my 19 ft Starcraft Fishmaster. If I can become more efficient with 2 vs. 4 divers with the same amount of bites or more then it's a big win!
  8. Great time before bringing our son to college as a freshman today at WPI in Worcestor. Emphasis wasn't on fishing but many activities he would enjoy on a trip like this. We did manage to float for Rainbows and Dolly's landing 8-10 fish (25 bites)over a 10 mile stretch of the middle Kenai river under very tough conditions due to precious heavy rains resulting in dirty water the guide said before we arrived a few days earlier. We both lost trophy fish at the net which still was a blast battling them in the current. I chose this kind of fishing because these are native fish that are returned to the river and it's more interactive and fun. Jigging for Halibut or flossing for pinks and sockeye didn't appeal to me. Fun when that bobber goes down and they bite! The kings now on the Kenai are down to a few hundred returning are in almost extinct mode these days. Wade and I really enjoyed casting along the banks and hooking these fish along the 10 miles of river we drifted in 4 hours. We would do it again somed
  9. 6 days in the books "At the Oak". Very successful trip! Joe and I had a great time! Landed 76 salmon and steelhead and one nice Brown. We had an incredible 130 bites. Kept a steelhead and small salmon for the table for friends and the rest released for another person to enjoy! Really nice weather and conditions!
  10. Fisherman by nature are very honest people! If you ever sell fishing gear on forum sites you will never get hosed.
  11. We were fishing out on the Bar a few weeks ago and we snagged some gear out trolling (300 ft weighted steel and 500 ft mono backing with a Ninja inline board attached) The owners phone number and name was written on the board. I called him up and he had lost it some 5-6 hours earlier that day tangling with another boat. He was from Windsor Ontario and asked me if I liked hockey and who was my favorite team. Matt sends me a shipping label to send the inline board back after we returned home. Today a package arrived with a thank you gift. The stick was used by 2016 Hobie Baker winner Jimmy Vesey for Harvard and now #26 for the NY Rangers. The stick came from a regular season game in Vancouver. His company creates unique stuff from NHL hockey players sticks. Grilling will be much better now!
  12. My lithium battery test study just completed for the new Fish Hawk lithium Ultra probe. 107 hours on one charge since April 1st covering 16 fishing trips averaging under 7 hours per trip. This for me is on par with 4 AA batteries from the past for shelf life.
  13. This windshield measures 92" wide and 22" tall. It cannot be shipped.. Has to be picked up in Vermont. 6E294970-BF97-4638-88FC-E5D49338ED5E.heic 2E8F6320-E4B1-4B5A-ADA1-37A9386A5E5B.heic
  14. Starboard side and center glass original. Port side Plexi glass. Also extra original center glass piece and plexiglass piece will separately for $50 or include for $200 package. IMG_4603.HEIC IMG_4635.HEIC IMG_4636.HEIC
  15. That seems odd. I have my Go Pro 8/9/11 Mini added to my I phone App. and have no issues using it remotely. Did you call Go Pro support?
  16. Nice to meet you guys Jacques! The bite really got tough later in the week and into the week I noticed after returning Thursday. Lot of east wind this derby more than I have ever experienced in 20 years fishing here this spring Loc derby. It was a grind at times! Keep up the effort! Our 19th place fish shocked me staying on the board nearly a week starting at 7th on May 5th (big bite sunday)! The bite normally gets better and a fish like mine disappears quickly off the board.
  17. The first Lake Ontario Bar experiment with the Smart Troll was very productive! Our 4 wire program took 80% of our 105 bites over 6 days totaling 47.5 hours washing lures. Using our Fishhawk Ultra with the depth at the probe with the other Smart troll probes on our wires let us dial in our presentation once we establish temperature and depth of the probes working unison together. We started out spacing things apart until we get bit and then make adjustments based on those hits. Dealing with currents and changing boat direction in waves helped us keep our lures in the active zone the fish were biting. Speed at the ball with our Fish Hawk helped us maintain that bite also when turning around with waves. We added .5 miles per hour going west with the current to keep our lures dancing. Other things that helped was when we had a knock off on the wire or a small fish that didn't trip (rare) we could see on the display the depth go up from it being tripped or dragging a small fish long before watching the rods. We also were looking for 45-47F at the wire depths as well as the rigger to keep us in the action. Surface temp was 50-54F by the end of the week. I feel it added more fish to our catch overall by drilling it down quickly and having accurate data and depth.
  18. A great 6 days at the Bar totaling 47 hours of rods in the water trolling. 4 wires and 2 Riggers for two of us. Sunday was the best day with an insane bite! We landed 70 Kings / 3 LT / 2 Steel / 3 Coho. 1 nice king on the LOC board for awhile before it gets booted in the next few days. All were released to swim another day and the one we registered 20 lbs 12 oz 40" we gave to a couple of fisherman visiting near the Youngstown weigh station on the river. Smart Troll system was amazing tracking my Slide Diver wires in the water. It was 80% wire bites this week! Great time!
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