John E Powell

For spring kings and summer bows, look over the chart and select a 30lb. setup to target the 30-50 depths. At these shallower depths, choosing 30lb. copper will allow you to use a smaller lighter reel than the thicker and heavier coppers. Keep in mind that these depths on the charts were using a mag spoon and when using an attractor your depth will be 10-20% less due to the added drag. The Okuma Clarion 553 high speed is a great reel for this setup. If you happen to have a Convector already, you can change out the stock gears and install a set of Clarion gears. Upgrading to premium aftermarket carbon fiber drags at the same time would make some great reels for not a lot of additional money. The Tekota 700 is a good reel too, but do yourself a favor and change out the drags as the stock drag on the 700/800 reels is pretty bad; once upgraded, they are great reels. For summer kings, I would select a 45 or 60lb. copper to reach 50-70 foot and a 60lb. copper to reach the 70-90 depths. The big advantage of the heavier copper is that you have to let out less line (and reel less line back in) to get to the same depths. For example, I'd much rather reel in 400' of 60lb. than 600' of 45lb. You'll need a really large reel for the longer setup; Penn 345 and Okuma Solterra 50L. For me, The Tekota 800 doesn't have enough capacity to have adequate backing for a really deep rig. Other people here will disagree with me on this, but I want to have 200 yards or more of backing. I have a deeper rig than these, but it's a beast... Penn Senator with 500' of 60lb. copper and lots of backing. My point here is to suggest to you that you want to use reels with really large capacity to have adequate backing. For rods, I suggest no more than 7' for planer board rods, but 8-9 foot is better for a chute rod down the middle; the longer length makes it easier to maneuver around riggers when landing fish on other rods, but it will tire the angler more than a shorter rod and most people will find it heavy handed. The main reason most people hate the longer coppers is they are using inexpensive reels with slow retrieve rates and they are using rods that are too long that tire the fisherman more than the fish.

I had a nice Stamas a while back that had a similar large low engine box for twin I/Os. Placed a huge cooler up on it flush to the front of the box and cooler hinges rearward. With a pad, it made a great seat to fight fish from. Just enough room for your feet between the back of the cooler and the inside of the transom. My elderly father loved it, it extended our fishing together by many years. Once the fish was in the net, we lift and drop the fish right into the cooler for hook removal. We never had to worry about him sliding and falling on slimy decks. A quick spray with the wash-down hose would lean the area rearward of the cooler. I'd sometimes lean on or use the edge of it to catch my balance working lines in rough water. I suspect many people would look at an engine box as big as that and think that's just too much wasted space, but the cooler seat on the box really works well as an elevated fighting chair and turns the lost space into usable space. This should be a consideration for anyone looking at a boat with a similar dual I/O box layout. Nice looking boat at a fair price.

You might want to take a look at Stanley Boats out of Canada. I saw either a 19 or 21 Islander dual console in the water at Toronto harbor a while back and it looked impressively well built looking at it from the dock. I also crawled around inside one of the larger models with a pilot house at the Toronto Boat show a couple years ago and left with a similar impression. http://www.stanleyboats.ca/stanley/islander.html

Clueless, really? Lying, really? Have an agenda, really? Wow... what a rude post.

I believe the Fish Hawk operates at 70kHz. It is a fairly unique marine sonar frequency and won't pose an interference problem with common 50/83/120/200 kHz sonar transducer frequencies. You may wish to consider, as part of your boat selection process, the ability to mount a high performance thru-hull transducer or in-hull transducer vs. a transom mount transducer for your main sonar unit. Generally speaking, a high speed thru-hull or in-hull transducer will perform better than a transom-mount transducer and would be more desirable from a performance aspect. For a fish hawk, transom mount will be fine. Hull design and trailer configuration will play a role in this. I would make sure to ask each boat manufacturer your considering about this. If they offer a thru-hull /in-hull location or "prep" for one, try to judge whether this is integral to the hull design or something they are willing to add on (I'd be very cautious of the latter). If you go to the Airmar website and study the information there, you can learn a lot about the options available to you. Then, when you talk to the boat manufacturers about what they have to offer, you will be well informed and able to make a decision that best meets your needs and the capabilities of your chosen hulls. I learned from experience, the hard way, by not doing this. I ended up having to spend a fortune on a transducer that both worked well with my unique boat hull and met my performance expectations. I was lucky that this particular transducer was available for my Garmin black box as it is not available for every sonar manufacturer.

Black Box - yes, there is no display with a black box, info is displayed on your chartplotter screen instead of a separate dedicated fishfinder display. If you buy a separate chartplotter and fishfinder, you can only display that devices data on that particular screen. There is nothing wrong with this approach, probably 90%+ of the boats fishing Lake Ontario are set up this way. But, if you go the black box route, you can send the sonar data to any network display. So, if later down the road you add a second display, you can display whatever data you want on either display. Some people set up two displays by the helm (even a third at the transom), others set up one at the helm and one at the transom. Going this route gives you flexibility. If you do go this route, I recommend you stick to one brand that has everything you might think you want down the road, (radar, autopilot, etc.) . Some brands with strong track records and complete product lineups include Raytheon, Garmin, and Furuno. Engine monitoring is a bonus as well if compatible. Traditional downspeed and temp probes are designed to be stand alone products. It may be possible for someone with extensive electronics capabilities to integrate a fully digital device like the Fish Hawk X4 to a network, but it doesn't seem like it would make sense to do so as you just have two data points, speed and temp, it's not like a sonar or chartplotter image full of data.

I think the first thing to consider when working with a clean slate is to decide whether or not to go with a network backbone (either NMEA 2000 and/or a mfg proprietary network). There are a lot of advantages to doing so. Namely, the electronics can provide data to each other. For instance, your gps can provide position data to your VHF in the event of an emergency when the distress button is pressed allowing search and rescue personnel to track and locate you more quickly. Network systems can be easily expanded or upgraded by purchasing modules that integrate with existing displays. Also, software patches and updates can be performed for all devices across the network (from the same manufacturer). Want to add an autopilot later on and have your GPS send position and steering data from a point you pick on your chartplotter to your autopilot? You'll need a network for that. If you go the network route, start out with choosing your Chartplotter/GPS as everything else will plug into this. Make sure you get a unit that has some method of applying software updates and patches like a SD card port, or via a cable and laptop computer. Add in a black box fishfinder and the best Airmar transducer you can afford. Then add your VHF to the network for distress position data and you have the basis of a good system that can be expanded in the future with AutoPilot, Radar, or even a second display. If you decide not to go the network backbone route and pick and choose separate items, most can still be connected to some degree, however, functionality is often limited and there will be no way to update items that do not have external ports or a method to connect to the internet. Make sure you get the VHF fed with position data if nothing more (or buy a VHF with a built in GPS). On my boat, I have Garmin proprietary network and a NMEA 2000 network. I have two displays an 8" and a 12", radar, black box sonar, and VHF all connected. When there is a software update, I download the patch to a SD card and take it to the boat. I power up all the units, slip the card into either of the chartplotter sd ports and it asks me if I want to perform an update, I select yes and everything connected to my network (except the non-Garmin VHF) is automatically detected and updated. It takes about 2 minutes start to finish. I can see any combination of chartplotter, radar, radar overlayed on the chart, and sonar (single dual, split, a-scope, whatever) on either of the displays because they all share the same data over the network. This fall, I will be upgrading with a new autopilot that will be added to the network (pick a point or create a trolling route on the chartplotter and engage the pilot). Lastly, outside of the network, I would consider a downspeed and temp probe mandatory electronics and part of any good electronics package. Order of importance to me: VHF (for safety), Chartplotter/GPS, Downspeed and temp, Sonar/fishfinder, second display, Autopilot, Radar.