VolFan

You can’t stop them, you only hope to contain them.

He’s right you know… Virtually all of my flatheads have been on white perch filets not live bait. Except for one I caught on chicken. If you put filets down with a float they float around and give off scent and look enough like a fish that they’ll eat it. Live bait can be troublesome near cover.

I use Okuma BattleCat rods and similar round reels to the above. 50 lb Academy braid to a swivel, with a sliding clip above that. 24-30 inch 20 lb CXX leader to an 8/0 circle with a float about 8 inches from the bait. Cover or rockpikes on points with some current has always been my magic combo for flatties.

3 Muskie and 100 or so crappie??? I may move to Ohio…

Tragedies do happen, as do accidents. But so many of these things are single points of failure by a reckless captain and/or not taking basic safety steps. If you, at high speed, hit a boat that is sitting still, that is your fault.

well that sucks. crap.

You can actually catch them and donate them to the raptor rehab center at Latta Plantation. They feed them to the rehabilitating raptors. They are also phenomenal catfish bait.

Is that enough?

Yeah yeah yeah… Cake?

Curado D and E series, probably 50e if I had to pick one reel. They just work…forever.

Lipless cranks. People love them. I have tried. I have failed in perpetuity.

Rods are very nice as are the Okuma swimbait rods. As others have said - that is a big weight range for one rod, so it’ll be better at one end of that range.

Did you bring rods? There should be striper up the Congaree in downtown right now.

If they’re really fruit flies, there’s a Terro trap for them that works great, but you have to figure out where they’re coming from (old fruit, compost bin, etc). If they’re gnats, there’s the great yellow butterfly-shaped sticky traps that you can stick in your houseplants that are almost magical. YMMV

I’m an idiot. It’s the battery. I put it on the charger and it was at 60% after sitting for a day. Took the charger off and watched the voltage drop by .1 v every couple seconds… At least I know what it is.

Thank you - I left out that the battery is 6 months old and on a full charge. It stopped working even with the main motor running. I also detached and reattached the power cord from the back of the cradle and the unit to the cradle. The power runs through a fuse box and there is an inline fuse that comes standard on the Garmin power cord. I was going to remove that one and just use the dedicated one at the fuse box. Right now it has two fuses, one standard inline and one at the fuse box. I’m starting to think that the inline one is a little loose inside the housing.

I recently installed the above into an already-existing fuse box. It replaced a Striker 4. I left the inline fuse intact. It worked great for one trip, then I had a couple intermittent shutdowns while going from one spot to the next. This past trip it was reading low voltage intermittently, then shut off and wouldn’t come back on. When I got back home, it turned on with no issues. Neither the inline fuse nor the fuse in the box was blown. No issues with any other electronics onboard. I checked and redid the electrical connections from the box. I may remove the inline fuse and go straight to the fuse box. Any other thoughts?

Oof…There was what looked like a Jake standing on the corner of a traffic light in south Charlotte earlier this week in the middle of the day. I almost wrecked the car pointing him out to my coworkers. It looked like he was going from the BP station to Nothing but Bundts. One of the crazier wildlife things I’ve seen.

I think my point was - if you’re going to spend the money to buy an auto-inflate, the string bikini of self-preservation, why would you store that instead of just comfortably wearing it? As far as boat speed or water having anything to do with it, that’s a personal choice, but we are in a thread where it was a kayaker who drowned. So it even happens (and more regularly than it should) at no speed.

I don’t understand the thought of buying an inflatable to stow it. If you’re just going for compliance get a cheaper foam vest. Neither helps you when stowed.

My dad never made it far enough that we had to make this decision. My mom started going into dementia about 6 years ago (probably more like 10-15 but it’s hard to tell) and it was bad enough that she didn’t fight us much on it, but it was hard. My mother in law suffered from dementia and some mental illness, and almost killed a few highway construction workers when she came flying into a working zone, hopped out of the car screaming that someone was chasing her and trying to kill her. The sheriff’s office had her committed and then we found a more permanent residential facility for her. My grandfather on my dad’s side drove too long, and it ended with something horrible happening in a grocery store parking lot that I will not recount here. There are health specialists to help you with these decisions and the execution of them - they can help walk you through ways and when’s to do this. I wish I had been better about it.

It sounds like it was a local guy (local guy to that lake) that wasn’t fishing the kayak tourney. https://www.counton2.com/news/local-news/coroner-identifies-missing-lake-marion-kayaker-as-summerville-man/amp/

Yeah I think divers found the body. It was a member of the local kayak bass fishing club here (Queen City Kayaks) that found the boat. They had a tourney on the lake that day. He called authorities and posted it on Facebook in case it had gotten away from someone. Terrible terrible outcome.

Something shad-y (silver/white/light purple) Something golden shiner-y (gold/light brown/maaaaybe chartreuse) Something perch-y (vertical bars, orange or light chin) Herring-y if you have bluebacks just cover those. Cover more of the ones that you have more as forage.

Best 5 fish for 108” is a great day any day. Super proud of your effort and more importantly for me, your attitude after some disappointment. That acknowledgement and positivity is going to lead to wins.