moguy1973

Ex-Minnesotan: "I hate these northern winters! I'm moving to Texas where it's warm!" Texans: "Take your weather back where you came from you YayHoo!"

Empire Strikes Backing: The evil empire refuses to use mono to save money and instead spools all their reels with straight braid. Dude, Where's my Caring? : It's the year 2020 and everyone just stops caring about everything because of a pesky deadly virus. Ice Aging: The prequel to the movie Water Worlding Kindergarten Coping: Maniacal 5 year olds terrorize unprepared parents in a small suburban neighborhood Das Booting: Germans sit around and watch their antiquated Windows 95 computers start up. (running time 1h 32min) Blackfishing: Samuel L Jackson, Morgan Freeman, and Laurence Fishburne take a group of inner-city kids on a fishing expedition. Things go hilariously wrong.

I used lag bolts on mine when I replaced the bunks but if I had to redo it I'd countersink the heads of carriage bolts and do it that way with nuts on the bottom.

Been fishing for almost 50 years and have used snaps for most of them and have only lost one fish due to a snap breaking, and it was on a foul hooked grass carp. As long as you use the proper sized snap for the fish you are fishing for there is no problem using snaps. Your line will break before the snap will. Think about it, just about every single hard bait has split rings that hold the hooks on. You don't see that hardware breaking left and right.

The only thing I’d do is upgrade the trolling motor further to a Fortrex or Ultrex. The Edges aren’t that great. If I was in the market for a lake boat the aluminum Rangers are what I’d be looking at.

Why such a heavy leader if you are only using 6lb main line? Not that it can’t be done with a good drag setup but a 10lb pike is most likely going to take your lure and your steel leader if you aren’t careful with small mainline like that anyways. I’d get a new rod and reel set up specifically for bass and not use your trout rod for double duty.

String trick would have worked pretty easily on that one since you had both hands to do it with.

Not sure what website you are looking at but J Francho has it right. 5500-6000rpm for a 4 stroke 60hp Mercury.

You should be getting more around 35-37mph. My 2008 175txw with the 60merc runs about 37 with just me and half a tank of gas with all my fishing gear and empty live well. I also have another trolling motor battery in the back than it came with as I upgraded to 24v. With my buddy and his gear and a full tank and live well I get about 34mph. It also takes a long time to plane out if you have a full tank and full live well I've found. You should be trimming it up until the prop washes out and then back it off a little for max speed. Myself though, I typically cruise around 32mph as just full blast all the time isn't practical and I have no where to be in a hurry when I'm fishing usually. The props on these are pretty well optimized. You could change the pitch but either you'll lose top end, or you'll lose hole shot. From what I've read, going to the max 75hp rating only nets about 2-3mph, not really worth it. My 60hp Merc like the OP has trims out at about 5800rpm WOT

I've been in a 521 Ranger in 3' waves (trough to crest) in a long shallow lake with headwinds coming down lake towards us. Wasn't a fun time and we stuffed the nose 3-4 times and wasn't much we could do about it other than time the throttle to stay up on top of the crests.

I either use 1/4oz 3/0 hooks with wire weed guards, or when I stupid rig them I use Blue Rock Tackle stupid tube jig heads in the same size.

All I use is 4" Bass Pro Magnum flipping tubes. So I guess those are thicker tubes.

Can I ask why being able to stand up in a kayak is "huge"? I've never had the urge to want to stand up in mine. I guess being able to get a higher vantage point to sight fish might be an advantage, but the taller seats some kayaks come with now would help with that. If there's one thing I wish my kayak had was a tall seat to keep my butt out of the water when it splashes into the seat well. I only fish rivers for the most part and standing in a kayak in current just sounds like an invite to a dip in the water and losing some gear.

With the trailer having brakes it helps a lot. The thing the OP may have issues with is that boat will weigh as much or more than the truck so it’ll be pushing it around a lot while being towed. I’m not a towing expert but I was told to keep the weight of the trailer at no more than 70-80% of the towing capacity of the tow vehicle. If the Nissans have a 6000+lb tow rating it should be fine to tow a boat like that. It might be on the edge of what is safe though. I’d definitely keep a majority of the weight added to the boat like fishing equipment towards the back to keep the weight off the tongue.

That fish will be fine and already has that lure out of its mouth. You could get a pair of fish grips to use with lures that have gentle hooks in the future. I bought a pair just for that reason after getting shook buried in my finger after trying to land a treble hooked fish.

Super Slick is what I'll be changing all my braid to. It's a lot quieter than normal Power Pro.

I like them horizontal with the surface. I have a Sammy that sits tail down and I prefer using Sexy Dawgs that lay flat.

It's really what it's going to come down to though. With PC parts, they are already announcing next generation CPUs and GPUs and you can't even buy current generation stuff.

The problem with California is it's really not a place to live on a fixed retirement income unless you did yourself well with your retirement accounts. It's kind of an expensive place to live.

It's not just PS5's and XBoxes. All higher end gaming equipment is in short stock due to scalper and bots. High end PC parts like CPUs and graphics cards are pretty much no where to be found for retail prices. We can thank bitcoin miners for that. They use bots to buy up all the stock so they can data mine for bitcoin. Even used parts are higher than they were this time last year. I built a new gaming PC with mid-upper end parts and it cost be about $1200 back in April. If I would build a similarly spec-ed computer now it would be closer to $2000.

I wonder if this is a Dicks exclusive bait. Not seeing it on Berkeley’s website. Only places I’m seeing it is on Dicks and Field and Stream (same company)

I really want to like JJ’s. I bought the whole gamut of colors a couple years ago in the winter from TW. I dipped a bunch of baits for that year and then put the jars away. I kept them in a cool place, was very careful not to spill any, and kept the lids on the jars super tight. Went back the following fall to dip some new baits I had gotten and it was all gone. Poof. Evaporated somehow. Every jar was dry as a bone and ha hadn’t used much out of each jar earlier that year. Not sure how everyone else stores theirs but that’s what happened to mine. Anyone else have that happen? Ive used spike it too, and I don’t like it nearly as much as it bleeds and doesn’t penetrate the plastic like JJ’s does, but the jar of that I have still has liquid in it to this day. I guess it’s not as volatile as JJ’s or they have better packaging.

I made rod leashes out of old phone charger cords and some cable cuffs like shown here: http://palmettokayakfishing.blogspot.com/2011/09/build-rod-leash-for-kayak-fishing.html

9 months out of the year it’s fine and during the week those other 3 weeks are fine too. Just stay off it on the weekends and holidays during the summer. Otherwise it’s one of the best fishing lakes in the Midwest. It’s party boat central in the summer. They have yatchs that put ocean going vessels to shame on a narrow Ozark lake. It’s not uncommon to have 4’ swells on a busy weekend. Not a place for any bass boat. Springfield is an amazing place to live. You have all the White River reservoirs super close to the south, Pomme and Stockton to the north. Lots of great fishing close by.