Tim Kelly

They don't exist. The cheapest side scan unit is the helix 5 si. I wonder how possible it would be to use side scanning on a float tube as your legs would probably get in the way of the beam for one side of the image.

The Lund Pro guide tiller series have good front decks, but not much of a rear deck.

If you can wait it looks like Daiwa have an Alphas air coming soon. That should be within your budget and ideal for BFS. http://forums.tackletour.com/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=66786

If you can't get a boat on plane it will only go at displacement speed (which is a consequence of the boat's length/width - rowing sculls are long and thin to give them a higher displacement speed as are oil tankers), then start pushing a wall of water as it tries to come up on plane. Pushing the water makes it incredibly inefficient, so is barely worth it for the minor speed gain and the massive wake you make. If the boat is not going to plane with the motor, it's probably not worth swapping the prop, unless you want a lower pitch to troll slower.

Excellent. Man up.

My very best wishes Dwight.

Agreed, those Matzuo hooks are particularly poor. I won't use any of them now, but it was the daiichi ones I had trouble with. Eagle Claw hooks are so much better now than they used to be, I dare say their sickle hooks would be fine, as you've found, but the OP might want to find out what brand hooks are being used in the jigs he's looking to buy.

I expect it depend on the sickle hooks. If you can find out what make the hooks are they might be good, Bluebasser likes them, but I had some (Diaitchi ?) ones which I found weak and snapped at the sharp bend regularly. They hooked fish well enough, just weren't strong.

I like CXX, it's strong, low stretch and not as prone to weakening after backlashes like FC is.

Superb. Simcoe is on my bucket list!

Couldn't care less about the tournament, but my goodness, what a bag of fish! Absolutely tremendous. How were you catching them?

Good luck. I've got a crap shoulder too and going to see a surgeon in a few weeks. Don't really trust any of them to sort the problem out to be honest, but will be interesting to get his opinion. Hope yours gets resolved this time.

No chance of getting it rigged with a Suzuki or Yamaha 200 I suppose? They look like they'd be a better match for the boat than the V rod or Honda that Lund offer in 4 stroke.

Would backing save him?

Seriously, a red drum could get 200 yards away from you? Surely if you've that little control you're unlikely to land it whether you've got backing or not.

I want to be independently wealthy too.

Daiwa is supposed to be bringing out an SV103 soon. Old zillion body, SV spool and I think 7.9 gears. Should be absolutely perfect. http://www.daiwa.com/About/pr_sv103_reels.aspx

That certainly seems to be a common view amongst the pros too. Until I start missing unacceptable numbers of fish I think I'll keep the aesthetic approach going.

Snaptastic. LOL

You he-man.

I bet they work well John. How's the hook up ratio?

I had my friend Tim over for a couple of days fishing, we were foiled at every turn by bizarre circumstances and adverse weather, but he did get this twenty pound class pike on Saturday morning, just about dawn. Took a TRD with a 3/32 head and a size 2 hook. light spinning gear. funnily enough the hook was nearly straight when I scooped it into the net for him.

You can. Medium light rod and a half decent baitcaster with 8lb line will do it fine, but there's no advantage to using casting tackle like that for them and plenty of disadvantages. The point of using casting tackle is mainly to be able to use heavier line than you could on a spinning outfit. That would be counter productive with a ned rig, and as you're using light line and a softer rod, spinning tackle makes it so much easier to allow the lure to drop vertically. Learning to cast spinning tackle well is at least as difficult as learning to cast baitcasting gear well. Teaching yourself how to control the line coming off the spool to give you the accuracy is a challenge, but worth persisting with as spinning can be just the right approach for some methods.

Thank you, just watched it. That was exactly the way I was rigging it this summer.