PotomacBassin

What's the etiquette on tournaments and music. My coangler started playing his radio during the last two tournaments and for me it makes it hard for me to concentrate. He did ask if it bothers me, but I politely said no.

Ok, but in theory red is supposed to be the permanent one and blue temporary, correct?

Thanks guys!! I already have blue. Blue is temporary (medium) and red is permanent (locktite), correct?

I have a MK 55 Edge and there are two alan wrench screws that function as the pivot for the elbow of the trolling motor. After a full day on the water the one screw is usually loose and one time it even came completely out. I was wondering if anyone ever had this same issue and if using a non permanent thread lock would suffice?

I go by BB everyday after work and see this pond and always wondered about it. Can you even get down to it? I thought there was a fence around it and always thought it was just a crappy water runoff place. It looks kind of deep. Did you try it yet? And I wouldn't feel silly at all with all the techies looking at me with my rods.

Life is rough catching 3's.

They could be fish traps but I caught a crab in neabsco before and saw them in powells creek along the bank before. I guess I just always assumed they could be freshwater crabs.

I see crab traps the whole way up to Neabsco almost every year. Does it always mean, where there are crabs there is salt? I wasn't sure if these were freshwater crabs or not.

Thanks guys. I'm usually from Quantico/Chicamuxen to North of that.

I was wondering how many of you flush your motors after every outing because of the brackish water. Mercury (and I'm sure other manufacturers) recommend it after using it in brackish water but it just seems a little bit of overkill. I store my boat away from my house so it's hard to do this often.

X2 on Rage Craws

Bring a pair of cheap wire cutters. Then learn to cut the hook and use a pair of pliers to grab the point of the hook and pull it out that way. It slips right out. If you can see the point of the hook, you're guaranteed to get it out better than any other method/tool I've ever used.

I'm sure this has been covered on here before, but I figured I would share. I snapped my trolling motor cord about halfway through our tournament on Saturday and spent the rest of the day having a ball putting that thing up and down. After doing some research, I replaced it with 5/32" clothesline. Yeah, that's right... clothesline. It's steel cord wrapped in some type of plastic/rubber. It's basically the same concept/material as other $80 replacements. I don't think I'll be replacing this for a very long time and in the future, I'll probably replace that cheap nylon cord that comes standard on my trolling motors with this same stuff. There's also no stretch which made my trolling motor seem about 10 pounds lighter.

X3 on the NO AD. It's non greasy as well after about 2 minutes of putting it on.

Just to stir the pot, this is a 6 lb. lunker fish caught in a Potomac Tournament. Doesn't really matter, just take it as you wish. This isn't me by the way.

Yeah that or you can eyeball it. Just measure from the ground up to the tongue receiver and then measure the ground to a little above the middle of your hitch (because the ball sits on top of the middle of the hitch). Subtract the two and that's the rise/drop you need.

I heard the one guy just drove right up onto the beach when there was probably 2 inches of water over the flat. People were saying he fished there all the time so they weren't sure why he went in. It was a great educational day, though. You were able to see all the structure that we usually fish and even saw a few more spots that we should be hitting up.

As someone mentioned, it should be as level as possible... however, if you have to choose one or the other, you would rather it be with the hitch end of the trailer slightly lower than the other end. This places more weight on the ball and helps reduce trailer sway. As they said though, as level as possible.

I was wondering if anyone was on the Potomac on this day. This was the strangest day I've seen on the river in a while. There was 20-30 mph NW steady winds for two straight days (Fri-Sat) but I never expected this to happen. We had our tournament and launched around high tide at 6:00 in the morning. The water was at 2 feet at our launch (normally 5-7 feet at high tide. Well apparently the wind didn't allow the tide to come back up. I didn't think the tide would go out again since it was already so low.... but it did. We fished our shallow areas early because I figured early may be the only time we could fish certain areas... by the end of the day it was all mud in those areas. We fished the same area all day and had a blast. Caught 13.62... not enough to place (8th) but we were catching quality fish all day long. At 2:00 we decided to fish another creek but it was way too low and the boats in the marina were all beached. I had to get on plane coming under a bridge at the deapest point (a no wake zone as well) but it was my only hope. I then high tailed it out and back to the marina at 2:15. Weigh in was at 3, but low tide was at 230 and I was worried I wouldn't make it back. Well I'm sure glad I did. Going back to 2:00... I saw about 3-4 boats beached on our way back to the marina area... once we made it back to the launch/weigh in area, there was about 6 inches of water. I had to pull my trolling motor up so it was just skimming the top of the water to keep moving and my partner was on the front with me. Other people didn't fair so well. One guy was completely beached in the no wake zone by the launch and other people were trolling from outside the barriers the whole way in. The guy beached finally just put his motor down and floored it... All I could see was a huge mud rooster tail coming out the back and he was barely moving. Luckily he finally made it back 45 minutes after weigh in. It was a bizarre day, but a fun day of fishing. Hard on my boat though... I cracked the top case of my trolling motor and it's in the repair shop now. Just wondering if anyone else adventured out for this freakish day.

Search online for some coupons from the auto stores.

If you're trying to get the cheapest one, just shop around online. I'm sure Walmart is pretty competitive, but look at the auto parts stores as well (Advanced Auto/AutoZone/Pepboys). Just look for a 'deep cycle' battery and this is what's knows as a trolling motor battery.

I'm not sure if lawnmower batteries are deepcycle/cranking, but if you're going to rig it up the lights/depth finder I would make sure the lawnmower battery is not just a cranking battery. They make deepcycle/cranking batteries that will last longer and you can probably pick one up pretty cheap. A regular cranking battery is like a car battery and they aren't designed to be depleted much below full charge. The hybrid deepcyle/cranking will be able to be depleted and return to full charge more times than a simple cranking battery.

Is there an echo? Ha Just kidding man.

Dude, just hook the two up in parallel. This way your trolling motor will have two batteries to go off of then. Plenty of juice for everything. The only issue would be is if the old battery is that--old. The newer battery will hold a charge better and will be drained by the older one. Not a horrible issue to have, but it's always recommended to start running batteries in parallel with two new batteries.

Wow man, you didn't have to do that. I owe you a cold one.