Chuck Smth

As mentioned, with cable steering the choices are limited, but that said if I had to troll without an autopilot I'd probably give it up. It makes that big a difference. Probably puts more fish in the boat than any other piece of gear. My $.02, YMMV. CHuck

A FishHawk has a weak link between the ball and the probe. This way, if you snag your ball on the bottom you only lose a cheap downrigger ball and not an expensive probe unit. Second,the downrigger ball has a lot of mass so it won't equilibrate to it's surroundings quickly enough and third, who wants to keep a battery in the cannonball? You'd also need to run a finned weight in order to keep it tracking straight for the speed to be accurate. Other than that, it's a solution to a problem that doesn't exist. FishHawks work really great the way they are. Chuck

Frogger you are so right. My best customers understood the difference between price and value. Like my mentor taught me, "When you sell price you're only as smart as your dumbest competitor!" Chuck

In my personal experience, dealer agreements in the marine business often aren't worth the price of the paper they're written on. I've seen manufacturers break their own territory agreements. I've had a boat manufacturer's factory rep. send a customer from my territory to another dealer out-of-state and lost a deal because of it. That's after spending beaucoup dollars as a dealer to stock, advertise and promote their boats. As far as pricing, you cannot dictate a selling price. As I noted earlier, that's a federal offense (Sherman Act) and you can have a very expensive slap on the wrist for that, along with a lot of bad press. All IMHO, YMMV, that's cool.

Try bass fishing, it makes salmon trolling look pretty darned affordable,

Manufacturers cannot dictate the selling price. That's a federal offense; HOWEVER, as part of your dealer or distributor agreement (aka "contract") they may dictate that you only advertise a certain price. Take for example, TRACKER boats. I sold many, many TRACKER boats for less than the nationally advertised price. It will be interesting to see what happens with Ranger now that they have put a lowball nationally advertised price in the BassPro catalog. Ranger always had the opposite problem, they loaded dealers with inventory and then the dealers needed to move them cheap. If you were a new Ranger dealer you were always competing with dealers giving them away. Chuck

Transom savers come in two basic flavors. Ones that attach to the trailer frame and ones that slip over the back keel roller. If you have a bunk trailer you generally want the slip over type. If you have a roller trailer you generally need one that attaches to the last cross-member ( since no keel roller is present) but that can be complicated if there are trailer running lights in the way. Roller trailers are a real PITA. The main thing is to make sure the transom saver can go from the roller to the lower unit without hitting the bottom of the transom. Most modern fiberglass boats with Coosa transoms are just fine and happy without a transom saver. You really need it more to keep the motor from bashing the trim rams on bumps. BTW, when I fish saltwater it's the ruler rather than the exception to not see transom savers - even with 4 Verados hanging off the back! Saltwater eats transom savers alive. Another alternative is to buy one of the fixtures that go on the motor on the trim rams to save them. If you don't use a transom saver or have trim ram trailer brackets then tip your motor all the way up, flip down the trailer latch and then lower the motor onto it. The motor should be balanced at that point and put the least stress on the transom and trim. Aluminum boat transoms are - ephemeral. Not if, but when it's going to rot out. Were I to buy a used aluminum boat my first off-season project would be to remove the wood and replace it with a poured transom and then never have to worry about it ever again. Yeah, some people will post "Oh yeah? Well my boat is 40 years old and the transom is perfect:", but trust me, it's not. Even though it looks great you get electrolysis between the aluminum transom and the motor bracket and bolts. This results in pinholes in the aluminum and the wood starts rotting where the motor is attached. I sold high-end aluminum boats for a long time to put myself through college and took a lot of "perfect" trades in with shot transoms! If you have an aluminum boat get a bunk trailer and a transom saver. IMHO, YMMV. Chuck

Interesting discussion about the rollout, but I don's see many comments on the data here. I found the data interesting and stuff about natural reproduction was an eye opener too. We should have some bigger fish this coming year. Maybe not like they were in the 80's ( Those of us that were fishing then sure remember them!) but the fish should be well fed and heathly. I would have liked to see some data on the lamprey control and my experience in 2021 was more scarred fish and we caught some with lampreys attached. I think I remember reading something about how all the rain had blown out the creeks and so they weren't able to treat them, but I can't recall any specifics. Chuck

The big question always is, "How rough is it out on the lake?" Good news is that you can get real time wind and wave information from your computer or phone. I put this quick tutorial together to show you how. You old-timers can add in any other tips on how to use them. You can also get historical data which is what I used to do the 2020/2021 wind comparison. Hope this is helpful for those who don't already use this data. Chuck

Yeah, right on. The buoys are a great resource to use. Maybe I'll do a video of how to access them with your phone and get pictures of the seas, wind and wave data with graphs and all kinds of useful data. The data is aligned with my journal too. We didn't have to make those long runs out to 300' like we did last year. Fishing was a lot more "old school" this year.