PotomacBassin

Ha. I got my boat late last year and I just arrived at Guntersville from Virginia. Same situation. I just wiped off the grease so we'll see what it looks like after driving to the lake tomorrow. I never thought of the grease expanding but this makes perfect sense, especially after driving 600 miles. I'll check inside the hub caps after I dip it in the water to see if any water's getting in. I didn't notice it getting any worse as I drove farther so maybe it's done. But the one side was worse than the other so I'm hoping it's just because I added that much more to that side.

I just greased up my hubs for my fishing trip and I added a good bit bc the manual said to push grease through the hubs until new grease comes out. After driving for a while some grease has splattered on the inside of the wheel (looking from underneath the trailer). Is this normal? It's a newer trailer so I hope I didn't bust a seal.

x4 on never point the rod tip at the fish. This is the easiest way to break off a lure. This is how I intentially break off my hooks if I'm in a snag that I can't undo. Point the rod at the snagged hook and pull straight back. Ha.

Say a prayer and/or jump in and tackle her like the croc hunter. Just kidding. I just try to keep constant pressure on them when I'm fortunate enough to have a big one on and reel at every chance you can gain ground on them. You have to constantly be thinking where you're going to land the fish at (especially bank fishing) and what you need to do in order to accomplish that and be ready to adjust because the fish will never do what you expect it to do. You'll know how much you can horse them when you see how they're hooked. If you have them in the upper jaw you know you can give a bit more tug as opposed to when hooked on the loose fleshy skin on the side of the mouth. Then just enjoy the ride.

Is this ad on the 'nav module' upgrade? This is the only one that's available to purchase in the ap for me except for all the foreign country maps.

I'll be fishing Saturday, Monday and Tuesday. Maybe Sunday morning (hopefully).

It does help. So what do you consider a high wind here? 20+? Four feet is pretty unsafe. How often does that happen? I'm seriously considering not even taking the boat now.

By the Bestwestern Plus (southern end of the lake). How big of wakes are we talking about when it starts to get dicey? The weather's not looking as good as I was hoping for months ago. It looks like a cold front is coming through only for the days I'm going to be there.

I'm hoping someone with some experience at Guntersville can give me a little input. I'm going to Guntersville this week from Virginia and I wanted to know what to look out for as far as wind and how the lake is affected by wind. Here on the Potomac, a southerly wind over 15-20 mph with an outgoing tide can be pretty intense with 2-3 foot swells. How bad is the lake affected by wind and is there any threshold that I should look out for in the forecast (10, 15, 20 mph, etc). Is there any direction of wind that affects the lake more? Thanks a bunch and I hope to see some of you out there.

Last call...

I wouldn't pull it too many times without gas in it. As you know 2 strokes oil the motor via gas/oil mix. Without oil being in the motor for a while you should probably hold off on cranking it until you get gas/oil in it.

Awesome. This is the same technique I use (discussed above) , except sometimes the shank is too long for me to not cut the hook and get it out, so I cut the hook then take it the same way you do out.

Well the entry fee is more like $80, but the membership fee is $40 for the first tournament you're in for the season. The payout for 50 boats is typically approx. $1900 and second gets $1,000. There is a payout for every 5 boats, so if 50 boats enter then the top 10 pretty much get at least their money back.

Still available... I have 1 possible, but nothing 100 percent yet.

All you need is a pair of heavy duty wire cuters from home depot and needle nose pliers. I know sometimes you have to leave the hook in, but it's not always guaranteed that it's going to rust out. Some people pinch the barbs which is awesome but you still can't always get the hook out. My method requires that you can see both the pointed/sharp end of the hook and the eye side of the hook (shank). If you can see both, all you do is use your wire cutters (looks like regular pliers but has a sharp cutting blade) to cut the eye side of the hook as close to its throat as you can. It doesn't have to be too close because you don't want to risk cutting the fish. You're essentially cutting the shank of the hook in half. Then you take your pliers and grab the sharp end of the hook and it will come straight out with nothing to snag in the fish's throat.

I feel so much better after reading these. I too have cut a jig to retie after catching a fish... layed my rod down for a minute, then picked up my rod and jig at the same time and threw my jig overboard to have a tight line to reel up before the next cast. Well that jig didn't get casted again.

This goes without saying, but keep your eyes on craigslist and different areas of craigslist... Nice boats with good deals will pop up and go before you can blink.

My partner just had a last minute business trip assigned to him for this weekend so he'll be unable to make it. This is for the Lake Anna Potomac River Circuit (LAPR). The entry fee is $80 plus a one time $40 membership fee. So the first tournament is $120. There's approx. 50 boats that entered this time last year and it pays pretty nice. It lauches out of Leesylvania State Park, Virginia. We'll be fishing off a Tracker PT190 with a 115. I'm looking for someone to take his place this week and catch lots of fish with me. PM me if you're interested.

As described above, budget is key... With that issue aside, after my first boat, the little things that I wanted were: more space/storage, trolling motor battery run time, and safety. Make sure you have enough space on board to be comfortable (again dependent on budget). Safety is a big thing for me since I run on the Potomac. Large swells develop on windy days here and I was running a 14 ft. jon boat with my 3 year old son (hugging the shorline). I had enough of that and determined it wasn't worth it so I upgraded to a 19 footer where I can take the entire family on. So I guess the biggest "little" thing for me was safety. The trolling motor run time was for my second boat... I ended up adding another battery in parallel with my first one to have longer run time.

I have no idea why they do it... it's programmed by the motor computer. Just Mercury's way I guess.

This sounds right... I broke in my 115 optimax last year on my tracker. The motor itself breaks itself in for the first 10 hours by using a gas-oil mix of 25:1 which is double oil than the regular 50:1. But I remember the 3K-4K rpms for the first hour... it took a while to get on plane for me, but necessary to start out slow. Then I think the second hour is not to run the same RPMs for more than a certain amount of time no matter what rpms it's at. Just keep extra oil on the boat for the first 10 hours (or always for that matter ). But just to be safe keep a little extra onboard. Ha. Congrats man, enjoy and be safe.

I have a 115 Opti and I use Stabil (for ethanol) for every fill up and Quicklean (for carbon buildup) for almost every fillup. Mercury recommends using the Quicklean for every fillup to reduce Carbon buildup...

The dual purpose just means that it can be used as a deep cycle or cranking battery. A cycle for a battery is a discharge and then a recharge to full capacity. As I'm sure you know, cranking batteries aren't meant to be fully discharged and this is why deep cycles, as their name implies, can withstand being almost fully depleted and can be recharged back to almost full capacity. You can read a lot of posts on batteries on BassResource and this has been a hot topic lately. You'll see that there are a lot of variables with battery life and electronics in general and there are no absoutes. Some variables include the weight of your boat and tackle, wind, current, battery age and conditions, etc. However, there are some very generic formulas you can use to get a 'ballpark' figure. The reserve capacity is how long the battery will last at a 25 amp rate. A 50# trolling uses an approximate amp rate of 50 amps at full speed. At 50 percent thrust you will be using a 25 amp rate. This means at 50 percent thrust, you can get approximately 3.5 hours out of your battery (210 mins/60 minutes). At full and contstant thrust you'll get half that.

Dang! I didn't move any forward. I just added another one next to the other two below the deck on the stern. But I don't think 50 pounds will take me down that much. I was thinking maybe 1 mph. When I have my 200+ lb friends in my top speed barely drops.

I just added an extra battery for my TM and was wondering if anyone thinks this will be too much weight in the stern for my 19 foot tracker? There's a total of 3 batteries now back there.