Snakehead Whisperer

Thank you for your kind words. I felt that I had a responsibility to share what happened to me, in case somebody would take it to heart and at least consider the decision a little more seriously because of it. What you say is all true. I had plenty of excuses before, but now I view it as a no-brainer. For me it is a 100% of the time thing now; whether underway or just fishing, I'm wearing my life jacket. I've had the boat out several times since this incident, and the motor is fine (after draining about a gallon of water from the crankcase, fogging, fresh fuel and about 90-minutes running on the stand.) I've still got enough gear to fish, and have replaced much of what was lost. The lesson learned from all of this was a bargain at the cost of the gear I lost.

The 11-13 looks quite a bit heavier than the 17-0, hands down in my opinion (both great fish nonetheless.) The 6-2 smallie in the photo to the left looks larger than the 11-4. Who knows?

Glad that you stuck with it. That's a great price. The re-arming kits are only $21 too. Thanks for the heads up.

Those are massive hooks for those little jigs, but I'm sure they'll work just fine. There are times when I wish I had jigheads like this.

It's a skitter walk in either silver mullet or chrome. Hard to tell from the pic, but those colors are very similar.

For cranking and jerkbaits you are probably better off with mono. I prefer PowerPro for braid. Pretty much the same setup I use on all of my spinning gear. Just out of curiosity, what length of leader do you use. I prefer a longer leader, usually about twice the length of the rod; but I know this is a preference thing. One issue I could overcome with a shorter leader is not having the joining knot reel onto the spool, but this has never really been an issue for me. The benefit of the longer leader is that I can change lures dozens of times before trashing the leader. The slick really makes a huge difference on casting gear. Great line for frogging.

Never heard of this town, but I like the name.

Same here. I feel your pain.

Nice looking lures. I really like the Tennessee shad and rootbeer-ish looking ones.

At a loss for superlatives Dwight. Those days are what it's all about.

1. A scanoe is a canoe with a flat stern (transom on the back.) 2. Fair enough, gas outboards do require maintenance. The 31 series battery is going to weigh 20lbs. more than a small outboard, but that's a moot point since you don't want to deal with an outboard. How long the battery will power the trolling motor in 1 charge will depend on the current draw of your motor and the reserve capacity of your battery. I'm guessing that 20 miles will be stretching it. Many newer bass boats charge the deep-cycle trolling batteries from the alternator whenever the outboard is running, which greatly increases your trolling range. The one thing I can say is that putting a trolling motor on your canoe is going to be great, regardless of whether it'll go 5, 10 or 20 miles on a charge or top 6mph.

A jon boat without a trailer is going to be a real hassle to load/unload. In my experience launching a boat from a trailer is far easier than carrying one from a car/truck to the water. Kayaks are nice when you want to fish waters that have limited/no access, but if you want to bring a friend I'd get a 14' or larger canoe, or a jon boat that's at least a 1448. I do a lot of fishing out of my jon boat and my canoe, and the 1 piece of advice that I have is keep it simple. I removed all of the decking and most of the carpet from my jon boat and I'm much happier with it now.

My Tuffy jon boat has a 1" plug, but it's not a Tracker. I'm pretty sure that's a standard size for jon boats though. Fwiw, I usually carry 2 spares in addition to the plug in the hull.

I know what you mean. I only meant that a trolling motor on a canoe is not a substitute for paddles. Wasn't recommending to sprint around all day paddling like a madman, just meant that 6mph is pretty easy to do if need be. When I fish out of my canoe I usually use the trolling motor about half of the time or less, but then again I usually take the canoe because I am fishing extremely rocky and/or shallow waters where I don't want to foul up my prop. Paddling all day is a lot of work, and coupled with casting and retrieving all day it becomes a workout; this is where the trolling motor excels imho. I'm pretty sure that bassinshankles canoe doesn't have a transom though, but maybe it does. I've run a 3.5hp air-cooled on my 17' Coleman RamX, and that was sketchy (way overpowered.) Afaik the Coleman Scanoes are rated for trolling motors only, not gas outboards. The torque of the motor will put a lot of stress on the gunwhales with a regular motor mount setup for canoes, and the aluminum ones on the Coleman canoes bend really easily. A 2 or 3.5hp would move it really nicely though. edit: Just found this online. Sound in the video is pretty low volume.

It's a great addition to your setup. The tm is really nice to have after a long day of fishing when you need to head back in.

I'm assuming you don't do much serious canoeing then. Obviously it depends on several things (e.g. do you know how to row, wind, weight, physical condition, current, etc.) The OP said he does 5mph pushing 6 according to his gps with paddles. I've clocked thousands of hours fishing from canoes and with 2 people on board it's no competition, paddling is faster and provides far more torque/thrust than a 12volt tm. If you're by yourself in a 15' Coleman then it might tilt the scales slightly in favor of the tm, but even then it's doubtful if a person is in decent shape. There are several stretches of the Potomac where our 55lb. tm won't overcome the current going up river, so we paddle to get through.

Echoing what's been said before, you will probably move faster paddling. The trolling motor is nice to have, especially if you're feeling lazy.

Been fishing them. LMB and crappie.

Nice looking baits. Now I'm curious though, what's cold water in your neck of the woods? I'm probably not going to be fishing a square bill anytime in the near future :'(

The last Toyota I owned was a '79 Corona, but that was a great car and I got 250k miles out of it before it died on me. Would've lived a lot longer had the oil light worked when the oil pump failed

I use the 2.5-4" minnows all the time for walleye. I usually fish these on a dropshot or a jig head. Like Bluebasser said, they will catch a fair amount of cats too. I also nail a lot of crappie, rock bass and yellow perch on these in the winter. The 4" crawler in watermelon pearl is a really good dropshot bait.

Brings a whole new meaning to glider baits.

Nice. Good to know. It's almost unbelievable that your truck shipped without gear oil to begin with.

Did Toyota make good on it for you? That's a pretty bad oversight on their part.

My father in law tows a 27' cabin cruiser with his 2012 4x4 TRD Tacoma. Never had a problem pulling that boat or stopping, and the truck is a manageable size for city driving whereas the Tundra is pretty huge. The boat and trailer are probably in the neighborhood of 8,000lbs. The one thing I do know is that he recently traded in his 2010 2wd Tacoma because of the boat, and that truck was much more pleasant to drive. The 4x4 drives like a truck, the 2wd drove like a Camry and got far better fuel economy. He towed the cabin cruiser several times with the old truck without incident, but feels safer in the 4x4. They are both 4.0l V6's.