mcipinkie

Heck man, I'm 74 years old and have owned at least 30 boats. I have 4 now. Still haven't found the right one. You expect to get it right first try. Not going to happen. LOL !! That's a 25 year old boat. If you buy a boat that old, you need to be able to work on it yourself, or else you'll find out in a hurry how much money you can throw into a hole in the water. All of minnow's ideas are sound, but for a 25 year old boat, you need some experienced eyes, either yours, or some else's. My gut feel, without seeing the boat, is that the price is way too much.

Stay at home. Get on the computer and make all the posts you can. FB, Instagram, SnapChat and what ever else. Stay off the water. Anyone that consults an app to decide whether or not to go fishing shouldn't go.

You need to take a needle nose and reach in the male connector and bend one of wires very slightly to give it some friction in the female side. Bend them both if you want. Be delicate. This ain't a job for club hands, but I've done it often. It should help hold the connection together and improve the electrical connectivity. You could screw a wire clip to the mount to keep the wire from backing out. Looks like you have plenty of holes.

Used props are all over the web and Craigs List. I carry a 25P Yamaha M for my 200 SHO. Not the prop I would want to run, but would get me home. Tempest's are all over the place and pretty cheap. Get a Yamaha hub and away you go.

I just bought 4 pair of Fiskars for Kids at WalMart for $1.19 each. If I can just keep them away from mono and FC, I'm set for another year.

Russ, Sounds like some people just want to dream up crap to worry about, don't it? Must be WuFlu. I've never turned off a sonar while running. Never fished with anyone who did. Not even an old Super Sixty. That's how long I've been doing it.

Fiskars for Kids. Watch the sale bins at the grocery store. I've bought lots of them for $0.59. Great for braid, but once you cut mono or flouro, they won't cut braid anymore.

The first thing you need to do is to accurately determine how much line you are actually putting on the spool. I have a Berkley line counter and use every time I spool up a new reel. I put 75 yards of main line on my spool. 225' on the line counter. Then I fill the spool with backing to the appropriate level. Then I walk it off in my yard (Big yard), tie the backing to the spool and wind it up. Little bit of a PITA, but you only do it once per reel. When you respool, you just cut off at the knot and wind on new line. I find 75 yards adequate for all but my long cast techniques (big cranks, carolina rig, etc. Short range rods, flipping sticks, etc. get 100' of main line. I was amazed at how much line I was wasting before I started measuring. I'd buy a 300 yard spool of line and get two reels and half a third. Now I get 4 reels out of 300 yards, just like I wanted. I saw a KVD video and 75 yards was what he used also. I use braid for everything and save a lot of money by not wasting line. 75 yards is the answer to your original question.

Kinda works with my "What have we Become" post don't it? $10 for a sinker?

Regarding the $75 gloves, they are on TW. All these prices are from there, and I know that there are cheaper places to shop, but almost everyone knows TW. I looked again this morning. There are gloves for $130 that I didn't see. I didn't make any of this up. Just interesting. Hell of a lot more interesting than WuFlu !!

RANT WARNING IN ADVANCE !! I was shopping for new landing net on TW this afternoon and was shocked at the price of a new net, and they didn't have Frabills. Then started looking at other stuff to see how much some of this stuff costs. New Fishing Shirt - $75 New Fishing Cap - $25 Fishing Gloves - $75 New Rod - $650 New Reel - $700 Chatter Bait - $18 Crank Bait - $25 Line - $35/100 yds. Depth Finder - $6,000 Power Poles - $2,000 Trolling Motor - $3,200 1 oz Sinker - $10 Landing Net - $90 I'm not being critical. I own some of this stuff myself. I fished a tournament yesterday. About 60 boats. Over half of them were less than 2 years old, including my new Skeeter. Use $50,000 as a median price for a tournament rig = $3,000,000 worth of bass boats out for a Saturday fun tournament. I'll bet every one of them had some of the premium products from above in the boat. Now I looked at the premium products so the costs will be higher than normal, but this is startling. You know this stuff is selling. Who buys it? Who are the manufacturer's targeting? I was watching some of the ICAST videos on YouTube. The values of some of those products is scary. How can the industry continue this? Do we just have this much surplus income? Boat sales are through the roof. Tackle is in short supply. It's a boom market. I'm 73 years and relatively financial secure, and within reason can afford what ever I want, but I don't buy much of this premium stuff. RANT OVER !!

I saw your video on the Eugene bend knot. Tried it. Liked it. Great knot. Easy to tie. Using for both FC and mono. Is there a reason you don't use for mono?

Let me tell you what I think I know: Basically I'm a slow fisherman. I like to work my stuff carefully. However, after 45 years of tournament fishing, I have noticed that day in and day out, with an occasional exception, most successful tournament anglers, at all levels, fish fast. Now some of this is due to the competitive aspect of tournament fishing. "I got to fish that before some one else does." I'm 74 years old and it has been hard for me to speed up, but I have, and find myself more successful. The goal as it was explained to me is to put your bait in front of as many fish that want to bite as possible. You can make 10 casts to a fish that doesn't want to bite, and maybe you can convince him, or make the same 10 casts trying to find a fish that wants to bite. Of course there are exceptions. Four day tournaments with every target on the lake getting hammered, high sky cold front days, 36 degree water, severe fishing pressure, but I've won more money fishing fast than fishing slow.

I'd not be an a.., and expect BPS to take a hit for my lack of effort. If you had looked at the rod closely before you bought it you should have known you wouldn't like it. I've bought lots of rods in almost 70 years of fishing. Taken some back to the store if there was something wrong with it, but never just because I didn't like it. "I didn't like it" is not a vendor problem.

The proper answer to your question is "yes". Fish hit a swim jig, or any other bait for that matter, in a variety of ways depending on their mood. Sometimes, the strike is just like a crank bait loading up, sometimes they freight train it, and all you do is try to hold on, and sometimes it's a tick, just like a crappie bite. I always hit 'em hard. Suggest, if you want to be successful, you do to. Some discretion is required depending on whether or not you have light wire hooks, or heavy. What power rod you're using. Is the bite near or far. Line test, etc. Everyone wants a magic answer. There isn't one. You just have to learn. I'm 74 years old, been fishing for almost all of them. Consider myself relatively proficient and good with a jig, but I guess wrong alarmingly often.

I've managed to lose the little disc in the back of several Spro, or similar, frogs. Looks like it's lead or something similar. Been robbing from others and moving forward, but I need all my frogs. Has anyone seen a source for these? Hate to toss frogs with what they cost now for lack of a little piece of lead. THANKS !!

I'm buying Kool-Aid stock !!

Like most of us, I drank the flurocarbon Kool - Aid. Drank it long ago, gallons of it. Still drink some. Pretty much know what happens to Kooi - Aid drinkers. Really, except for a couple specialty applications, I've gone back to braid and a mono leader. Very few times that Big Game doesn't work as well for a leader as any thing. Cheaper, easy to work with, knots well.

Either I'm lucky, or rig different than you. I generally get by with 1 or 2 tubes a day. Most of time, my tubes out last my worms. I started with the G7 tubes, liked them, but too pricey. Bought some tube off Amazon, cut it up. Works just as good. I don't run the hook through the tube, but through the plastic under it. Keeps the hook where I want it. I skip cast a Neko rig a lot and have no issues. You may want to try a smaller diameter.

Aluminum is nice, light, hard to work with, and expensive. I framed my 2000 Lowe 1648 with wood when i bought it. I had to replace the deck, because I drilled too many holes in it, didn't seal them well and let it rot. That's how you learn, I guess. The framing was in good shape. I had painted it and the deck. I replaced the deck in 2018. Encapsulated everything in glass resin. Drilled no holes that were not necessary. Sealed the heck out of them. Expect it to last as long as me. I'm 74.

One other note of interest: In areas that have slot limits, the fishery is improved (at least that's the theory) by removing the fish under the slot per the limit allowed. The purpose of a slot limit is to encourage the harvest of small fish. If the theory is correct, we CR people are actually damaging the fishery by not keeping the unders. I actually do understand the theory on a lake that is overpopulated with little fish, but I don't like to clean fish any more, and my wife doesn't like to cook them. Shame, because 10 - 11 inch bass taste great.

If you have the money, or the skills, it can be taken out. It won't be cheap or easy. Might consider another boat. Seriously, this is a big job.

Never !!

Are you going to fish at all during the spawning season? Whether or not you see them on the bed, you are catching spawning fish. One more thing to keep in mind is that the perch and blue gill have just as much right to live as the bass. Heck, the bass eat them. Maybe we should kill all the bass and protect the sunnies. This is the world. This is the way it is in nature. You did the right thing. You did the best you could. Move on !!

I figure it this way: If you are investing for the future, don't buy fishing tackle !!