Nameless Fish

I thought the same thing for a few years, trolled with my 150hp 2 stroke main with a couple bags out and it did fine. $25 a trip in gas for the main seemed pretty decent also. Then I found a good deal on a 8hp 4 stroke kicker, now I troll the same amount of time for less than $5 a trip. Not to mention it's way easier to control speed and I no longer need trolling bags. Now I question why anyone would not have a kicker...

Water is high but launching is do-able... bring boots if you don't wanna get wet.

lol... you can have the best electronics money can buy. Still won't put fish on the deck if you don't know how to use them. Fishawk X4d is very new and arguably the best probe system money can buy right now. I'm betting you're thinking about the much older fishawk 840 system, which is night and day different than what they are talking about. You're "younger than us"... a quick google search and you could have been just as informed as us too. But you chose to answer without knowing what we were talking about... not the best way to introduce yourself to forum.

Yeah slow morning here also, definitely a lot of debris out there. Ended 1/2 with a 17lb king that came on a 200 WS with a spoon in 105 fow. Other hit was rigger at 50 but he shook off at the boat (another king). We Started to see some good marks in 80-90fow but then the wind picked up pretty good and we headed in.

Bring your boots if you’re gonna launch at Mexico. For reference those are 35” tires and how deep I was to launch the boat. It was prolly 8-10” of water where the ramp started

Yeah boots were needed when I was there last. It would a bit of a ride to Oswego... or you could just stay close and fish the plant like the rest of us that launch out of Mexico.

Ill take the Mag boards... PM sent

I think I'd have to see it work firsthand before I'd try that... an untripped Mag dipsey with a ring, out 300' will rival the hardest fighting salmon in the lake.

How does the arm trip if the line is only connected to the dipsey at one point?

I contacted fishawk about RAM mounting options earlier this year. They told me that the standard flat surface RAM mount fits the fishawk mount perfectly. I have one but haven't installed or tested it yet but this is the model # they were talking about, RAM-B-107-1U-238.

Trailer to Mexico and launch from there.

That's a pretty good idea... I noticed if I don't double loop the red clips even the 65lb braid will slip through and cause the dipsey arm not to release. That prolly wouldn't be and issue using those S clips, I just wonder how difficult it is to remove the dipsey with a big fish on the other end? I could see the clip and loop becoming a little awkward to remove with an uncooperative fish on. I run inline planer boards so everyone on my boat is very familiar with the OR-16 clips and I know they come off easily under tension if looped properly.

I figured it wasn't new to a lot of people, but I still see the occasional question about dipsey leader lengths on here and videos with ppl handlining in fish because they want to run long leaders behind their dipseys. I debated on changing to slide divers to be able to run longer leaders but I already have a bunch of dipsey divers so this saved me from having to purchase a bunch of new slide divers. Also slide diver setups still need to be stored on the rod which can be a pain sometimes.

So I happened to see this technique on a YouTube video a couple weeks ago, not sure if it's news to ppl here or not. But I figured I'd give a quick review of my first run with it yesterday. So on my wire diver setups, I tied on 30ft (you could do longer if you wanted) of 65lb braid and then a 10ft flouro leader to the end of the wire. Then you attach red OR-16 heavy releases (ones with the pin in the middle) to the front and back of the dispey diver. You attach the dipsey to the braid (double wrap the clips and leave 8" or so of slack in between them) and then deploy the dipsey like normal and unclip it like an inline planer when you're bringing it in. I attached the braid on top of my 1000ft of wire so my reel was still calibrated correct I just zero it out once I clip on the dipsey and let out whatever amount of line I need. You still have all the benefits of a wire diver setup but now you can have as long of a leader as you want without the need to handline in fish. Also makes pre-rigging and storing dipsey setups easier as you don't need to have the dipsey attached to the rod anymore. Only managed to get 1 salmon on the dipsey yesterday but it tripped the dipsey just like normal, we removed it as it was coming in with no problems and landed the fish. Offshore no longer has the patent on the red clips so I bought a box of 10 knockoffs clips with rings for $12 on ebay and they worked fine. Only negative of the setup I can think of is with 40ft of line out my baits are prolly running a little higher then the dipsey but you can always compensate for that by setting the dipsey a couple feet deeper than you're targeting.

Mine is not power tilt either and I have it mounted right on the transom of an aluminum boat very similar to your setup. I release the tilt and put a small piece of 2x4 between the bracket and the motor itself. Then I run a ratchet strap around the trailer bunk supports and the motor and crank it down. My thought process is the motor is now tilted up enough I don't worry about it hitting the ground, it can't bounce around with the strap, plus the 2x4 has a little give to it so it shouldn't break anything. Prolly not the best solution but has worked fine for me for over 2yrs now.

Those are Black's releases and def one of the best releases out there. The small screw on the side is to adjust tension, if you're dragging fish around loosen up that screw and it will take less pressure to pop the release. Line twist is important too, I usually do 7 or so twists and then put it in the release. If you don't do enough twists you will not be able to preload the rod as line will just keep slipping through the release.