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Never use RTV/Silicone sealant for below water line application. The results are not immediate, but there is a reaction that occurs as the RTV is exposed to water. Over time the RTV breaks down and one of the chemicals in the RTV will give off an acidic compound that can damage/discolor the gel coat. It will also cause problems with the polypropylene products used in the mfg of bilge/areator pumps. Use only products that are made with polyurethane. 3M's 5200, or 4200 for below water line applications. They also have a clear version for above water line applications. I think it is 5000. You can pick up all three from Wal-Mart for around $5.

As far as bass and dragonflys go, I look forward to the end of May through the first two weeks of June here at home every year. Reason being is that it is the time of year that the Dragonflys are in full force here. Not just early morning or late afternoon, but all day long. You can catch some really big bass on top all day long. The bass in my avatar is one of the bass I am refferring to. She came out of 18" of water on a bright sunny day around 2:00PM. (Memorial Day 05) I found that the Strike King 3x floating lizards work very well with 10-12lb mono and a 2/0 hook. (3/0 hooks or flourocarbon pull the lure to far down and doesn't work as well.) You can cut off the head or legs to get the right size if you need to. If too much is cut off, then you will need to go down to a 1/0 or smaller hook. The only draw back is the set-up is so lite, you can not get great distance on the cast. You have to keep a low profile when fishing from shore, and be very quiet while in a boat. I normally will let the lure hit the water let it sit for a few seconds and then twitch it once. If no takers, then I will make the lure hop out of the water landing 6-8 feet away from the first spot. I do not drag the lure across the surface, because I have seen too many bass completly ignore the lure as it swims through the water. I have thrown back to those same bass landing the lure just inches from thier heads and they will crush it. Most of my bites happen within just a few seconds of the lure hitting the water. A few have even come as the lure was moving a few inches above the water.

If you attach the t/d wire to the t/m shaft and the steering cables you will only have a little slack on the deck. Just enough to let the motor store or deploy. I think I have around 8 " of cable on the deck. The rest is under the floor. Edited for spelling.

They both are an equally important part of my fishing arsenal. I use the t-rig and c-rig in a lot of the same places. Docks, points, flats, just to name a few. They both have completly different actions with the same result in the end. Fish in the livewell. I will even use the c-rig on the trunks of laydown trees that are long without the big mess of smaller limbs. If it has a few bigger limbs, like a laydown that has been in the water for a long time and started to decompose somewhat, the c-rig will come through it just fine. I have took a lot of bass out of trees with a c-rig. It is not just for use as a search bait. BOTH have their place on my boat. It is nice to get the lure deep and it still have the weightless appearance that you get with the c-rig. The slower fall is sometimes is what is needed to intice the strike. Other times it is the quicker hopping or bottom hugging action that you get with the t-rig.

For those of you that are interested, I am the director for the Midwest Sportsman NC Div 1 trail. Our season is coming to an end in August. I will be starting a new trail in late October early November with a few open tournaments to keep things rolling untill the points tournaments begin in Mar 07. My division is based on three lakes. Lake James, Hickory and Rhodhiss. There will 6 t/x (Mar-Aug) on these three lakes for points. Open t/x are Oct & Nov and will hopefully be on Norman, and Jan & Feb will hopefully be on Norman & Keeowee. Here is a link to my website: http://www.freewebs.com/midwestsportsman_nctrail/ You can also find links to MWS homepage as well.

Triton_Mike, I am only referring to the lakes in the mountains of WNC. With these lakes you can have many different terrains that were flooded giving all three specises their prefered range on a few lakes. On these lakes one of which is Fontana, it is only apx 22 miles long, but it is very deep (380 feet at the dam) with three major creek arms. The best largemouth fishing has almost always been in the creek arms, and the smallies in the deeper sections of the lake. (At least for me) We pull smallies from humps at 75 foot depths pretty regularly. (While jigging walleye) Whenever we get on spots, they seem to be from 50 feet and up to about 15 feet. Keep in mind that there is water that is in excess of 200 feet very close to some of these humps. The majority of the largemouth come from 5-20 feet, in water that is less than 50 feet in depth. There are a few good size largemouth that are on the main lake, but they are normally near bluff walls with a shelf that comes out apx 75 feet at a depth of 30-60 feet, which will drop to over 150 feet in the distance of a cast. Seems to be a good spot for smallies and spots, but you will rarely catch either of them here. The big'uns have a foot hold on some prime feeding grounds and will not let it go. I think that these largemouth are keying in on trout that are coming from the rivers into the main lake as they seem to really go after the rainbow trout pattern. I have however seen what you are referring to about lowering the numbers on largemouths on some of the lakes I fish in the low lands. Hickory, Norman, Keeowee, Murray, and Hartwell to name a few. On Keeowee, the spots seem to be pushing the smallies more and more toward the upper end near Jocasse dam, and the largemouth into the creek arms. On Murray, I have not caught a largemouth in my last three trips. (Mostly due to were I was fishing) And last t/x on Hartwell it was 3 spots and 2 largemouth. I have to say that the worst news for me is that there are now spots in Lake James. A guy brought one to the scales last month in our t/x there. This is another prime lake in our area for smallmouth, but it is a much smaller version of Chatuge. The worst news is that the DNR shocked up the state record smallie here last spring, and I fear the worst for the smallies here as well.

As far as spots go I have noticed a more negative effect on the smallmouth population that largemouth. I live in the mountains of NC and most of our lakes have smallies and largemouth that co-exist well together. Simple fact being is real estate. L/M don't hang out in the same places in great abundance as smallmouths do, so there is little competition between the two. Now the complete opposite can be said of the areas that spots and smallies populate. I have seen the almost complete demise of the smallie on Lake Chatuge since the introduction of spots. reason being is the composistion of the lake. There are few ideal places that the smallies feel "at home" on this lake. It is a lake that is high up in the mountains, but fishes very similar to a resevoir in the foot hills. It is not as deep as a mountain resevoir, ( a mere 120 feet or so at the dam as opposed to 300+ on most others), It is more of a bowl with coves than a ravine that has been flooded, has some rock, but not as much as other surrounding lakes in the area. Most of the rock was on sumberged humps or points near channel bends. Prime spots for both. There for the feeding grounds for smallies and spots were virtually the same. So far to date, the smallies lost. Other lakes that host both smallies and spots, have not been as negativly effected. Due to composistion with deeper structure and more rocky banks the smallies have been able to hold their on so to speak. Numbers have declined some, but you are catching some spots now that were not there before.

As far as the heat goes, fish at night. I have better success after dark in the summertime anyway. Just make sure that you tell someone where you will be, and when to expect you back. Take precautions for hiking safely to and from your spot. Take someone with you. Take more than one light, extra batteries, cell phone, first aid kit, extra snacks, a warm jacket, shoes with good traction and ankle support. It is very easy to roll your ankle on a mis-step after dark. If that happens, then the warmer clothing and extra food will come in handy if you have to be stationary due to injury. Just try something that is very different from what you are doing now. Go someplace different. The closest lake to where I live is 70 miles. I do however travel over 150 miles to get to some different lakes at different times of the year. It not only helps me to stay on fish that are active close to year round, but changes the veiw. Take someone that knows some different techniques that can teach you . Take someone that you can teach. I guess you could also say that your signature says it all.

Trim down and come off plane slower. If you come off top skid too fast it can cause the boat to pitch left or right. By trimming down, you get more of both the boat and motor in the water as you slow down. As far as right hand torque, it can be due to improper setup. The cheap fix is a $15.00 torque tab. The more expensive fix is the torque tab with a jackplate. The most expensive choice is hydraulic steering. Before trying either varify that propshaft to pad distance is correct. Trimming too high or not high enough can cause the right hand torque issue as well. Trimming too high can cause prop slip percentage to increase, as will the motor setup being too high. If the motor is too high you will see a rooster tail shooting high above the cowl. Rooster tail should be almost even with the top of the egine cowl when on top pad. Just because the engines rpms running higher with the trim all the way up, doesn't mean the motor is trimmed to the sweet spot. Trimming too high in effect pushes the transom deeper into the water causing loss of forward bite because the prop is pushing slightly downward and forward instead of fully forward. Trimming too low or the motor setup being too low will cause the prop to have too much bite. This will cause the boat to not have enough lift and the boat will plow causing the motor and prop to have to push harder to reach higher speeds. Thus never reaching the sweet spot either. A damadged prop, or improper prop pitch (prop is too big causing lower rpms resulting in trimming too high to gain max rpms.) ) can cause right hand torque as well.

It almost sounds to me that you are refferring to two different pieces of equipment in your post. A flasher has no grayline. It only has a led that spins in a fast circle and lights at different points to indicate depth and other features. Reading a flasher is a very different from reading a graph with a LCD screen that shows a "picture". You can use a flasher to tell bottom composistion, baitfish, stumps, treetops and fish, but for the newer generation that grew up with a LCD screen it is more difficult. The little subtle flashes all mean something on a flasher, but to the untrained eye they are just that, flashes. (Mine included) Some old school fisherman swear that they can tell the difference between wallye and bass with a flasher. The plus to a flasher is that there is little to no delay in the reading that you see. With graphs, even the newer ones there is a small delay due to processing time as to what you see. No where near what it used to be, but still there a little. As far as using a graph, at higher speeds you are not going to get all the information you are looking for. You will mainly get the the depth reading and other large events that change under the water. (River channel lip to channel bottom, large thick weed beds) There is just too much changing for the unit to process that information while on top pad. Now if you slow down to a steady speed less than 15 MPH or so you will start to see more things happening on the screen. If you slow down to a trolling speed or even down to idle, you will see everything that you are asking about. As far as fish symbols, are you reffereing to symbols or arches? I do not use the Fish ID feature for the simple fact that it wil pick up junk and call it a fish. (Tree limbs, bubbles, and schools of bait fish.) I want to be able to tell the difference between a small school of bait fish and an actual fish. Learn to read and see the arches instead of relying on the fish id feature. It will open the door to a whole different aspect of reading the graph. You also can not see the thermocline with the Fish ID turned on. Another key thing that I like to see when fishing in the summer time. As far as arches go, they will look different depending on the fishes location in relation to the sonar beam, and the direction and speeds that the boat and fish are traveling. They may look similar to either of these: \ / /\ __ . (Understand that the keyboard was not designed to make fish arches, but that will give you an idea.) The two half arches show the fish in the outer cone and off to the sides. (Since it is a circle, the sides can be front, back, left, or right.) The true arch is a fish that has moved from one side of the cone through the center and back out the other side of the cone. The flat line is where a fish is in the cone, and is either not moving or the boat is not moving fast enough to make the arch symbol appear. It will remain a flat line as long as the fish is within the cone also. By "surface symbol" are you referring to the noise/clutter that is seen at the top of the screen? If so, then that will vary from lake to lake. It is a reading of different things. It may be an alge bloom, plankton, or it could be mud that is present in the water from run off or eroision from boat activity. In the clear lakes that I fish, most do not have a lot of surface clutter, but when ever I go out of the mountains into the lowlands I see it. It is normally worse in the summer as there are more alge and plankton near the surface than when the water temps are cooler. You want to see some clutter. If you block it all out, it will take aawy from part of the effectivness of the unit. Same said for too much clutter also. If you use the sensitivty setting in manual mode, by using the surface noise reject at different levels, you can use the surface clutter to help set the level of sensitivty to see some things that are over looked when the sensitivity is in automatic mode. Set the surface noise reject to say medium if the water really has a alot plankton or alge present, then start turning the sensitivity up untill you start to see a second "false" bottom. You do not want too much of a second bottom, just enough that you can barely see it on the graph. You will know it when you see it. It is a real P.I.T.A. if you are on a lake that has constant depth changes though. What x-trued said about grayline is dead on. There will be different shades depending on the bottom composistion. Reason being is that the softer the bottom the more of the sonar is absorbed by the bottom and not returned to the transducer. Resulting in a thinner, lighter grayline. (Vice versa with a wider dark grayline) Sometimes you will have a very thin light colored grayline with an immediate darker thin gray line underneath it. (The devil is in the details here) This could represent a rock bottom that has been silted over through the years in an aging reservoir. This could play out to be a prime area for fish that like to spawn out deeper. A thick light colored grayline also has another meaning as well. It can mean submerged vegitation. If you look at the shore and see that it looks like it should be fairly hard but the graph is showing a questionable bottom, then throw something that will get down to that depth and see what is down there. (What is stuck to the sinker on a c-rig or to the trebels on a crankbait) In late spring and early summer, the weeds are not that tall as of yet, so they can look like a soft bottom, and be hiding some very nice fish. As summer progresses you can see the weeds on the graph alot easier as they will be much higher from the bottom. These are some of the things I use my graph for. I am sure other people have other things that they use theirs for as well. Time on the water will be your best teacher. If you have the manual by all means read it, then re-read it, and keep it with you on the boat while fishing. It will be your best source of information when you are on the water and can't ask anyone a question that you are not familiar with. Edited for stupidity. Got my grayline colors bass-ackwards. Too late to be typing technical stuff that requires any train of thought.

Yes they will help get your boat on plane quicker, and they will help keep the nose from bouncing to a certain degree. If you are running heavy, from either gear our people onboard they will help. They will help if you are going to be pulling skiers also. Once you get your boat on top skid, they are not that big of an advantage IMO. I caught a large wake off of a deck boat and the whale tail took a hard bite on one side. It was not a very pleasant expeience at all. It caused the boat to roll hard to the side that caught and try to turn into the wake. Only time that ever happened, but it was enough to make a lasting impression on my mind. I remember the the top rail was just a few inches from the water line, and I could barely keep the the wheel in my hands let alone try to steer.

The Intruder series is not a FITCH motor. It is a carbed motor. The FITCH motors are all injected motors, so that is one thing you do not have to worry about. You do however need to make sure that the VRO (Variable Ratio Oiling System if I remember correctly) is the upgraded version, or is disconnected and running with mixed oil in the tank. Do not rely on the pre '96 VRO's without the upgrade as they had their on gremlins as well. A faulty VRO does not take out one cylinder. By design, the oil is mixed with the gas prior to the carbs and thus would take out all cylinders. As far as price goes, My '96 Javelin with a Johnson 150 Faststrike was $8300. (This is basically the exact same motor as the one you are looking at on the Stratos. It just has a different name and paint scheme) If I compare my boat and my buddy's 285 XL the lay out is very similar even though there is 8 years difference in the two (His is newer)

I have a 96 Javelin 389 TE. It is a Stratos boat with the Javelin name. (Chevy GMC) I have been very well pleased with mine so far. As far as the 285 XL, I have personally been in one on Lake Murray in SC with the wind blowing white caps that were at least 6 feet high. One of the scariest times I have ever been one the water as it was late Febuary and way too cold to swim. But the boat came through it well and I so did I. They take rough water well with little spray. If you are looking for a speedster, this isn't it. They will run low to mid 60's with a 150 HP Merc V-Max.

My dad fished out of his for 12 years. It served it's purpose while he had it. (Even fished a few t/x out of it, and some big waters like Santee Cooper)I was just stating that the Bass Striker is not a top of the line boat. As with any used boat weigh the good and bad before purchasing any thing. It is after all 19 years old.

The Bayliner Bass Striker is a bass boat. It is by no means a top of the line boat. It was Bayliners way of having their foot in the door with a fairly decent cheap entry level bass rig. There are few bells and whistles that came stock. My fathers old boat did not even come with tilt and trim. There was alot of wood used during construction. Some of the flooring was even wood with out any fiberglass or epoxy resin coating. The HP restrictions are fairly low due to hull design and composistion. The 17 footers were only rated for 135 HP. The boat itself is actually very light. Most also came with a Force engine. With a 85HP on my fathers old Bass Striker it would run around 40mph.

What year 200 Venom? Better yet check out this link: http://www.boatsetup.com/SparkPlugChart.html

If you really want to find out if it is the fisherman or the gear, ask your buddy to swap rods for a few and see if he still out catches you. If he doesn't, then it will rule amino acids and brands of chew. Making sense that the faster fall rate of the flourocarbon, or the lack of line visability was leading to more bites. If he does, then he is doing some little something that the bass like that you are not seeing or doing. This would be a good time to push him in the water and make him swear on his life before letting him back on board that this never happened. If not he will be telling everyone that he wooped you with your own rod.

Fish tapes are the way to go. you can pull the wires through real easy with one of those. I've used copper wire, heavy electric fencing wire, and coat hangersand nothing compares to the fish tape. I found that if you have to have to pull any wires through a boat by yourself, it is best to stretch the wires flat out behind the boat in a straight line. By pulling slowly, they do not get in a mess and kink up as you bring them over the back of the boat.

The only difference between the dual purpose and deep cycle batteries when used as a trolling battery, would be the percent of repeated draw down that can be acheived without doing damadge to the battery. Dual purpose or hybrid = apx 50% True deep cycle = apx 80%

If I remeber correctly, the grease Ben is referring to is called "flux".

The impeller is the main part of the water pump. It is what picks up and moves the water into the motor.

All makes of engines have their problems. My friends Merc 150 XR-6 blew after less than 1 1/2 years. As far as Johnson, it would be the early model ficht motor that would be the problem child. The Faststrikes are some of the more durable motors that OMC produced. My Faststrike is 10 years old and still runs strong with 165 HP at the prop according to the dyno. Still holds good compression in all 6 cylinders, but could blow up tomorrow. As with any used product check all of the important things such as compression and let some oil drain out of the L/U to look for metal chunks. Don't just hear the motor run, take it for a test ride. Ask the person that is selling the boat if they kept a maintenance record. Check the floor for soft spots or other signs of rot. Look underneath for repairs to the bottom of the hull. (never know if the owner hit a log.) Check the transom to make sure it is not broken or rotten. When you buy any used piece of equipment, it is a crap shoot. With a little bit of caution, you can turn the odds in your favor.

I had a 1980 16 foot Skeeter with a 150 Johnson. I put the 65AT t/m on it and had no problems with lack of power. A 24 volt sytem will last longer under windy conditions because of the amp draw. The more voltage you have, the less amps are required to do the same amount of work. The less amps you draw, the longer your batteries will last throughout the day. Not to mention, if you can run on a mid setting as opposed to wide open, you will keep your charge longer also. I now have the same 65AT t/m mounted my Javelin 389TE. It is just shy of 19ft with a 150 Johnny. The t/m does strain a little at the end of the day now, but it still gets the job done.

With out knowing the exact set-up, it sounds like the motor is sitting too high. Are you trimming the motor all the way down before taking off? Does the prop have the blowout/weed ring installed?

I am far to lazy to retype one of my earlier post concerning pressure changes. This is only an opinion, but it makes since to me. Like I said I am way too lazy to type all that again.