FishingFool34

He pretty much nailed it... but the forecast can be wrong sometimes. I was out this Sat in my 18ft aluminum, it was absolutely perfect! They were spot on with the wind speed/direction. However I was out the Sat before in 6mph SE... they had the SE part right but 6mph was way off (it was close to double that). I've had other times I made the hour drive up towing the boat only to find worse conditions than forecasted and had to suck it up, not even launch and go back home. The weatherman is the only person that can be wrong 50% of the time and still have a job! Personally if it's calling for anything over 7mph first thing in the morning, I don't bother going no matter the direction. Wind tends to build as the day goes on.

He pretty much nailed it, they def work and I have caught fish on them as well. If I had real meat I would run that well before I used the rockets though. Soco baits just came out with their own version of "articial meat" that looks good also.

I forget which brand it is but one of them actually includes a couple toothpicks in the package with their meat rigs.

I believe what you're talking about was a post I made on here. I still run them like this with no issues so far, mainly because I fish with my father a lot. He is mobility challenged so it was impossible to have him walk back a dipsey rod to net the fish. Also was a pita for me to try and handline in the leader and net the fish. Now I unclip the dipsey and he reels in the fish. Another reason I do it this way instead of slide divers is I already had a bunch of dipsey divers and a bag of OR-16 clips was cheaper than buying a bunch of slide divers.

Why stack poles when you can just run a fixed cheater on the same rod?

A member here (troubles is his name I think) makes fixed "slider" clips that work well. I would only ever run a fixed slider spoon with a FF. It's a huge mess when you tell someone to put a free slider on the port rigger and they don't know which side is port and they guess wrong!

The two outside lanes are still closed as of Saturday. Water has gone down some, the land along the 2 outside lanes has been underwater for months but now is basically right at water level if not slightly above. So it is going down, just very very slowly.

How did you like the Soco bait strips? I ran into those guys at the Mexico launch this past spring back having battery trouble. I pulled a battery out of my boat to get them going for the day and they started telling me about how they were gonna make a better cutbait strip. What they told me about it at the time sounded pretty promising.

Depends on what depths you're trying to target. I'll use #1 most of the time, but if I'm trying to get down to 90' or deeper I switch to mags. If I run 4 dipseys I will run mags on the deepest 2 and #1 on the 2 higher ones. You will mark bigger schools most often in the fall when they start staging, spring and summer it's small pods or single fish usually.

Correct to a degree, your sonar puts out a cone and depending on the frequency of your transducer and the water depth. This will determine the size of the area you will see on your screen. It is very easy to not see fish but still catch fish. Planer boards are almost always outside of the sonar cone and depending on what settings you use, the same can be said for dipsey divers. Fish can easily be outside of the sight of your sonar but still inside your lure spread or drawn into your spread. I've had many good days fishing while not marking nearly as many fish as I caught.

The thermocline is a good place to start if you aren't marking fish or once you first get out there. But if you are marking fish then you would adjust and fish the marks instead of water temp.

300yds of backing is a lot... if you're deadset on having that much backing you couldn't go with more than 200ft of copper on that reel. downsizing to 200yds of 30lb braid would prolly let you fit a 250 copper, but a 300 copper should really go on an 800 tekota

Anyone have or have used one of these? Curious to know what size you got for a standard trolling rod. I’ve seen videos with the “big game” version and it looks huge! Prolly more for ocean fishing rods imo but I could be wrong. I’m thinking between the “all species” and the “big bass” models.

I run lead on inline boards so no need to attach it far behind the board, maybe 5ft. As long as the lead is under the water you should be fine.

Couple years ago I was fishing salmon river and watched the guy next to me fight a salmon with a J-plug still hooked to it... the fish ended up breaking him off unfortunately.

I tried dipping an old net I had in plasti-dip a few years ago... the kind you use to coat tool handles. Didn't turn out well, made a big mess and the cost of plasti-dip needed was over 1/2 the cost of a brand new coated net. Don't waste your time or money

If you don't know how much backing you're going to need that is the best way to do it. With the backing on top initially you can make sure you get the max amount of backing and completely fill the reel so your linecounter will be correct. The correct linecounter part applies more to wire/braid diver setups than copper, but it's still a good idea to try and fill the reel either way. Then simply transfer it to another reel.

Yup, that is a big flaw with the older Magda reels. Upgrade your reels, never had that issue with Convectors or Cold Water reels I use now. I remember trying to take my Magdas apart on the water with 100s of feet of line in the water to remedy this... huge PITA.