dgfidler

I use Panoptix LiveScope on Lake Erie trolling for walleye. I have the transducer mounted on a pole so I can aim it wherever I want. You’ll be able to aim it backwards and see your downrigger weight as well as the flasher fly and any follows. If you have livescope you’ll no longer need depth probe, just speed and temp. It shows actual depth of objects not just distance from transducer. You’ll be able to track a magnum dipsy to about 110-120 back. In shallow water trolling 30-40 deep, u can see the running depth of two dipsy divers at same time (1 & 3 setting) and see the fish strike. On Lake Ontario it’d work really well for finding suspended browns in shallow water. On Lake Erie it works really well for identifying areas where walleye are suspending in top 15ft of water column. These fish are notoriously difficult to find because you never see them on standard sonar because they scatter as the boat approaches. I don’t know if it’s possible to vertical jig for salmon, but if it is possible you’d be able to know when your bait is in vicinity of fish and observe how they react to it.


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They work. I’d recommend the line furthest from the boat be in highest holder, middle line in middle holder and inside line in lower tube. The advantage of a tree is it uses very little gunnel space giving more room for your dipsy rods and downriggers


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If trolling with inline boards, connect the tow lines on the two masts and you can hang the inline boards to keep them out of the way and readily available




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If you’re actually trolling with big boards, this type of rod holder setup works well.




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More ideas for the DIYer. Removable Scotty tubes. Make the mast from 1 inch solid stock to do this. I use it this way when trolling with inline planer boards.




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I added Garmin LiveScope to my boat last winter with the intention of improving my inland fishing. I have the transducer mounted on a pole on my gunnel so I can aim it any direction to look for fish. On Lake Erie, I discovered that you can see the running depth of a slide diver to a range of about 90 feet. With a large ring this translates to about 55 down which is plenty for walleye fishing. I’m pretty confident the range will go up to 110 feet with the ultimate ring and heavier weight. After discovering this capability, I have moved to setting slide divers ‘visually’ with the livescope. If you have two out on one side, you can see both, and you can see ‘follows’ and strikes in real time. Sounds too good to be true, but I’m not lying or even exaggerating.


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Grady White 208 with 150 Yamaha and 15 hp Yamaha kicker. Current AP is TR1. If it’s windy, I put trolling bags, one on each side off the front cleats, and increase RPMs on the kicker. The increased RPMs give the kicker more thrust to steer with. The 10 and 15 minute circle function is a really good way to do turns with a spread out. I like this feature so much that I want an AP with control head so it’s easier to do. I do not like the fact it’s discontinued and I’m replacing with Raymarine EV150 with kicker tied to the main. If the TR1 had a modern user interface to easily use all the features, it’d be the ultimate trolling solution.


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I’m a TR1 user and am in the middle of converting from a kicker autopilot to an autopilot on the main tied to a kicker as my winter project. The TR1 system is a great ‘kicker only’ autopilot which has unfortunately been discontinued by Garmin. For some reason used units are selling in the $900 range on eBay, so I’m going to replace mine and sell it now while there’s still a market. I have exhaustively researched autopilot systems recently and feel I totally understand how they work. I’m assuming you have a permanent tie bar where your kicker moves in unison with the main motor. If so, I think a ‘kicker only’ autopilot would require you to disconnect from the main whenever you want to run on autopilot. A kicker autopilot would not be capable of moving both the main motor and the kicker, but an autopilot on the main can control both easily. For that reason, I’d recommend an autopilot on the main. I’ll answer your question about whether the main must be running. Since you have seastar steering, it is run by a pump driven by your steering wheel. When you turn your wheel, a little pump behind the dash pumps hydraulic fluid to the cylinder attached to your main motor. Whether the motor is running has no effect. Your hands turning the wheel provides the ‘power’ to the system. An autopilot simply provides power to an electric pump tied in to your existing hydraulic lines to steer your boat with a computer instead of you doing it by hand. You have so many options. The first option is you don’t necessarily need an autopilot at all if you have no desire to cruise under autopilot control. A 36v bow mounted trolling motor is capable of keeping your boat on course. Many people have this setup. You’d just set your kicker and main motors straight, apply the amount of power for your desired speed on the kicker then set the bow mounted trolling motor at 30-40% and engage the trolling motor’s autopilot. If you have Humminbird electronics you’d go with minnkota terrova or ulterra and if you have lowrance, you’d go with motorguide xi5. All of these trolling motors have ‘spot lock’ capabilities that are ‘must have’ features if you fish inland in my opinion. I prefer to not use a trolling motor to steer on the Great Lakes and leave the trolling motor at home, but if I had to choose between having an autopilot on the main or a trolling motor, I’d choose the trolling motor because it does work. I basically use TR1 on big water and bow mount inland.
Your other option is an autopilot on the main. There are a lot of choices out there. You have a 8.3 cubic inch cylinder and it’s within the minimum specs of most autopilot systems on the market. I’ll just say say a few words about the ones I researched then conclude with my choice. Sorry for writing a book, but I really have spent a lot of time in this and feel like I have something to share.
Garmin Compact Reactor - this is very inexpensive. Garmin states it’s suitable for cruising only. I actually think it’d work, but I cannot find a single user saying it works for them in a trolling application. I’m a huge Garmin fan. My electronics are Garmin, love the livescope, would not fish without livescope, but if it doesn’t work, it can’t be upsized. I’d be stuck with it if it turned out to be inadequate and I ruled it out.
Garmin reactor with smart pump - if you’re willing to drop 3k and have room for that smart pump, this would probably be the best. It has an excellent remote and even can be controlled with a wristwatch. It uses a brushless DC motor that’s variable speed. This is the choice if cost is not a consideration. Garmin is a major player in aviation and a marine autopilot is ‘child’s play’ compared to their aviation products.
Lowrance outboard pilot - very low cost and many people have good things to say about it. It’s based off simrad technology and they have been making autopilots for some time. I’d buy this if my head unit was a lowrance HDs gen2+ Catskillbob just endorsed it here.
Raymarine Evolution - EV100 or EV150. The current specs on the EV100 say up to 6cu inch cylinder, but it used to be more. They lowered the specs on the EV100 when they introduced the EV150 from what I gather. I cannot find anyone saying anything negative about these units. At $1200, frogger is probably running the EV100. I found so many online posts saying they slow troll with either EV100 or EV150. There’s a YouTuber who put an EV100 on a Parker 23 pilot house and he runs from Florida to Bahamas with it. The parent company of Raymarine is FLIR. This is a serious tech company. When you see military footage of something in crosshairs then it blows up because a laser guided bomb hits it, this is FLIR technology. I’m going with the Raymarine EV150 for these reasons. They have a remote available, but it’s unclear to me whether it’s compatible. It supports an optional ‘rudder sensor’ which can be added to help with slow speed trolling. I chose this AP because my research leads me to believe it has the best chance of working well for trolling at a $2000 price point.




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I should have taken a photo of it, but the Catawba pier was exactly at water level in the boat launch side. The lake side was only a couple inches above water level and waves were going into the pier.


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I was in western basin of Lake Erie this weekend. I have never seen the water level there so high. I have no idea how long it takes for that to make its way to Lake Ontario, but there’s a lot of water on it’s way!


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A few years ago, I walked in there and asked him to help me pick out some spoons and flys as I had never fished the lake before. He picked out a large paddle, a cut bait holder, 6-8 spoons, and some flys and drew up a six line spread and showed me a couple areas to try on a map. I think we caught 7-8 kings and a few steelhead that weekend. I was impressed by how helpful he was and I’ve been back every year since.


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I have lowrance HDS9 Gen3 with airmar B150M thru hull transducer. I can track bottom at any speed and can mark suspended fish up to about 25mph in less than 50 fow all on the auto settings. Works great for walleye on Lake Erie. On Lake Ontario, the fish marks start taking up less and less screen space as the depth goes over 100fow that I lose that ability to mark fish at speed. Perhaps I could zoom the display to a fixed area from say 50 to 100 feet, but I have not tried that.


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I’ll add that the ‘lite bite’ feature really works as advertised. Lake Erie had a record walleye recruitment class last year. I was fishing the slide divers last October and was getting tripped by all the (at the time) 4-5 inch fish. I was amazed.


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I have a TD and was going to do this. I contacted the Precision Trolling app support and asked them for the ability to add a ‘user entered’ dive curve so I could add my own slide diver data on the app. Mark Rowanack himself responded back that the slide divers are on the list of products to support in the near future, so it’s likely the precision trolling app will have support for the slide diver soon.


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I came from Ohio Father’s Day weekend and was moored next to Fishnut (we were in the small Grady White). The fishing is as good as he reports and he was kind enough to give me some pointers to improve our catch. We ended up catching a dozen kings. We were doing better on spin doctor/fly and flasher fly than spoons but we’re primarily walleye fisherman with limited experience on Lake O. Our 300 copper was really doing well until the backing to copper connection failed on a large fish. We had a 12 color and 8 color running all weekend without a hit but that 300 copper with flasher fly got hit all weekend. Dipsy 180-225 with spoon on 9ft leader also did very well. I love how it’s not so crowded compared to Lake Erie western basin. Can put the big boards out as far as you desire and not worry about getting close to other boats. The other thing I love is when we fish for walleye, we spend a lot of time speculating whether we might have a fish on. We’ll be analyzing the rod tips looking for one rod to be bent slightly more than the others. These salmon announce very clearly when they’re on the line!!


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I believe the forward looking sonar would be good for finding early season brown trout. I believe there fish scatter when you drive over them and you never see them in shallow water. Here’s another video where a tournament fisherman discusses using this technology to fund walleye suspended high in the water column

Here it is to buy from Hodges Marine. Item description is consistent with the Garmin site. This is the one you need:

https://www.hodgesmarine.com/Garmin-Gold-Cylinder-Bracket-Mer-9-9-1999-2004-15-p/gar120-1010-01.htm?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIy5i53p622gIVFarsCh2Jtwh2EAkYASABEgIYjfD_BwE&ppcstrkid=1565162769&click=19&ppcsclkid=inTeQHBm9goD&ppcsu=xhg7f5djqeniramsegdoh


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The Garmin support site shows part number 120-1010-01 as compatible with Mercury 15hp 99 and newer

https://support.garmin.com/en-GB/?faq=iWIKkJsON5AUtL3TUMduC7&searchType=noProduct&utm_source=faqSearch


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I can vouch for the Panther 55-0416. Very sturdy and functional bracket


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Just measured the set back at 10in. I don’t think it will work on a straight transom. I have 08 Yamaha F15.


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I have that mount. I couldn’t tilt my motor. I’ll give it to you for shipping cost if you want to try it. I went with the lift bracket once I realized the tilt issue


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Here’s my ‘too good to be true’ find. I already have this boat in 2002 model with ox66 150, but this one is two years newer, it’s nicer, and has even lower hours and more power. This boat tows well with a full size SUV also. The 208 is great if you want to trailer. There are boats out there if you dig deep enough.

https://www.cooperss.com/asset-detail.php?name=marine&id=1789


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I wanted to follow up on this. The TR1 is installed and will really make our trolling more efficient this year. I used a group 24 battery that showed as 60 percent charged. I trolled for two hours with the TR1 and and F15 connected. I rechecked the charge percentage when I got home. The battery showed as 100% charged meaning the F15 was able to take the battery from 60% to 100% charge while the TR1 was operating. I’m all set now!


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Last winter, I rolled the dice and bought a Grady White 208 with only 54 hours for 14k out of Boston. It was the same story. It had sat on a rack its entire life. My boat is very clean and that low hour engine is very smooth. I haven’t found any evidence of salt water damage or any type of corrosion anywhere in the boat. I say go for it.


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I have two masts that are track mounted on the gunwale right behind the windshield in pretty much the same spot at yours. I like it. You won’t have to mess with a tether line. Your tow line will be right there where you need it. I’d give it a try before changing anything.


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