Bobinette

Ohhhh man that looks rough!!! Is the damage from the recovery effort? Big loss on the boat if you have no insurance but hopefully the engine is fixable.

Yes we are both fine from my accident, thanks. Were chilled to the bone but not much else. A lot wiser though!!!!

First, glad you're all well and thanks for sharing your story. Accidents happen in a split second so safety must always come first!!

Adding to this is my story of years ago in the Orangeville reservoir in Ontario. We flipped a 12' aluminum boat in the fall not more than 100' from shore. Were dressed in warm (read: weigh like bricks when wet) clothing. Sitting on our life jackets and fishing away. My friend stood up, lost his balance and we were over. Everything floated away in an ever increasing circle. Our life jackets were nowhere to be seen, unbelievable but true!! We couldn't swim 1 stroke in our heavy clothes. What literally saved our lives was a very fortunate find of a submerged stump about 5' under water that we stood on for about 3 minutes, which is how long it took for a good Samaritan, who seen our mishap, to reach us and haul us into his boat. It has changed the way I view and think about safety.

My point is that the life jacket works only when worn!! Period. It is the single most important tool on our boats BUT only when worn!

Putting this out there to save some frustration for some of us and maybe some cash as well. I blew a board in my 1 year old unit about a month ago. Sent it up to North Bay for warranty repair and afterwards when I asked why this could have happened I was explained by the tech something that`s not even in the manual, which is pretty basic to put it mildly. So the problem stems from having a side imaging transducer which due to it`s shape tends to lose contact with the water at higher speeds. When this happens the unit tries to establish bottom contact. Because factory setting for "MAX DEPTH" is AUTO and if you're like me you leave this setting alone, as the unit tries to reestablish bottom contact it will keep increasing the strength / wattage of each ping thinking that it must be in very deep water, it eventually will ping so hard that it fries a few diodes on some of it's circuit boards. Crazy that there's no limiter of some sort but that's how it is. The remedy can be one of 2 options. One is to add a second, high speed, transducer and a Y-cable connection thus this high speed transducer is always in the water and no loss of bottom contact. Two, this is what I did, is to limit the MAX DEPTH setting on the main page (press MENU twice) to say 300' which is more than enough to cover the portion of Lake O that I fish and by doing this the unit will only send out strong enough signal it would need to get through 300' FOW, never frying itself again. 

Hope I explained it clearly enough to understand, PM if I can answer any Q's.

Cheers

If you're willing to go into the $40k+ price range I would seriously consider this boat: https://www.stabicraft.com/. These guys look impressive and made for big water. Only boat I would ever buy if $ was not an issue. Only dealers are on the west coast but there are a few available scattered around if you are open to buying a used one. Good luck in your search!

On 3/22/2020 at 6:48 PM, whaler1 said:

Don’t plan on it impacting my fishing or hunting. Actually I think I will be doing much more.



Sent from my iPhone using Lake Ontario United

X2  

Got it. Those are some good looking sonar shots though! LOL  In skinny water I don't usually look for the fish either but, as you said, for structure and depth. My original question was relating more to open water, big lake fishing. Eventually I am sure I will get the hang of it. In the meantime I'll have tons of fun learning!

Massive schools holy crap!!!

my thoughts are with you, a nasty thing to happen!!! Hope you can save your season

Thanks Legacy,

is that all bait in the 4 pics that are in 100+ FOW? 

Was out on the weekend and LOTS to learn on the new unit but looking forward to it

Looking forward to learning and spending time out there. This seems to be a whole different bowl of wax than what I known to be fishing up to this point. Again... thx for the pointers!!!! 

Looks awesome Les!!! Thank you very much for posting the picture, really makes it clear! On this pic it looks like there's all kinds of salmon, I guess, chasing the bait. I mean this is "hook" city!!!

I will drive the boat down to Niagara river this Sunday for a test run, maybe chase some rainbows.

sounds good. ty for the reply! I can hardly wait to get out there and see what those "hooks" actually look like on the screen!!! lol

newbie guy with a newbie question!! To replace the very old unit it came with I just bought a Helix 9 SI DI for the boat so now I have no excuse why I am not seeing the fish (I hope!!!). My question is this:

Do I look for bait fish or "arches" on the screen while locating fish on Lake O? Meaning what makes you guys start trolling where you do end up starting? Or is it just experience and you go by water temp, time of year...etc?  (don't own a Fish Hawk or similar...yet)   I know it's sort of a big question and I am not looking for anyone's honey hole but I mean it more as a general starting point.

Thanks in advance!! tight lines

Hi all,

New to the forum, new to Lake O in general (finally got a big enough boat to go on the lake with). Just saying hello.

21' Sylvan Pro Select  / 115 Evinrude / 9.9 Mercury kicker

Wish you all a safe season!!!