martintheduck

You can get a shimano crucial from Gander Mountain for like $130 right now. That has been my favorite fluke/weighted worm/all around plastics rod so far (aside from my $250 Cumara). 7'0 or 7'2 MH w/ fast or x-fast taper.

I've tried a few setups to cast crankbaits further - more specifically 10ft and deeper crank baits. I seem to be able to get squarebills to cast for "miles" but anything bigger and I can't get them to go as far as I'd like. I've tried to following setups: - 7'11 Medium Cumara moderate taper - AG Winch - 10/12lb test. - 7'2 MH Crucial fast taper. - AG Revo STX - 10/12lb test. - 7'0 Falcon Bucoo moderate taper - 10/12lb test. - Tried combinations of all the rods and reels... Best success I've had for deep cranks has been on the 7'0 Falcon setup listed above. I've tried loading up on them more. Tired dropping to 10lb test. Just curious if y'all have anything I could try to launch them further. I've been having to run 14ft cranks the past weeks since there has literally been a shad-feeding-frenzy going on at my lake. Any advice is appreciated!

So what horsepower is it? How fast are you going when it's porpoising?

His description of the problem went clear over my head. I read the title and figured he meant the boat is walking. I will also throw in my only experience with the porpoising ----- My boat did it (18ft w/ 150hp) and it turns out I was driving the boat wrong. I learned a few things actually.... 1) My boat is not meant to drive at less than 25 -> 30mph. It will STILL start porpoising even despite adjustments I've made... such is the nature of the game. 2) Learned to get up on pad you're supposed to jam to WOT trimmed all the way down, then back off the throttle a bit. My boat will porpoise if I just ease into the throttle and don't give it enough power. 3) I wasn't trimming enough. Based on boats I've driven before, they're setup has usually been "get going and trim just a little." - In my boat, it's "get going and trim up a LOT." Like I trim for a solid 4 seconds before the motor gets to it's proper position. So here's how I get the boat going and avoid porpoising - jam to WOT (trimmed down), back off a little from WOT, start trimming up. Trim up till motor is parallel to the boat (then I continue in smaller increments till I get to my max RPM's or top speed). Now that I've actually read your description, I'm almost convinced you're driving the boat wrong.

Louisianan former Yak fisherman checking in ---- First off - love that profile picture! Second... Fished alligator inhabited waters constantly. Had plenty of gators chase my top water frogs right up to the boat and when they get kind of close, they just sit there then swim away. Did many school projects on gators growing up and looked into everything again before getting into the water.... only time you need to really be worried is mating season and around their nests. A mama gator will murder you if you encroach on her nest. I've accidentally gotten pretty close to some HUGE gators in Black Bayou (at least 12 feet and FAT FAT FAT) and I about pooped myself. Hurriedly paddled away and nothing bad came of it. If you're really worried about gators, get a big ole bowie knife and strap it to your leg. I can't imagine gators being a big problem for anyone except those in South Louisiana Swamps and Florida.

Length of the boat? What HP motor are you running?At what speed does it start bouncing? Take a picture of your motor and how it's mounted to the hull (so we can see what holes it's mounted in). EDITED: Your description went clear over my head and I was convinced you were chine walking... not porpoising. ANYHOW ---- get us the above information.

Having recently purchased a HB si unit, I wish I would have gone lowrance. The picture quality seems to be substantially more "crispy" on the lowrance's. You could afford 2 900 range HB units. Check BBG Marine Electronics... they've been seeling 900's for around $1200 recently. Mount the SI unit on a RAM ball mount @ the console and a DI unit @ the bow. Use DI unit @ the bow and spin the console unit around wile fishing and use it for SI.

5" swimbaits always get a 4/0 or 5/0 EWG hook screwlock hook for me. 1/8oz keel weighted for down to 3 feet slow reelin' it. If I'm burning em' in pretty good the 1/8oz keep it just below the surface.

Awesome ideas with the weights. I love cranking deep divers on a 7'11 with a 5:1 winch... well not LOVE, but I really feel a sense of accomplishment pulling in a deep water lunker. I really like this idea of weighting cranks because I can cast out, let it sink to the bottom, and get good bottoms contact for a HECK of a lot longer than with a deep diver. (at least that's my theory)

100% Thank y'all for the responses....Raider, Mike, Retired, Farmer, slone, nibbles... and everyone else.... can really relate to you Raider with that recent "novel." It pretty accurately describes my younger life and where I learned a lot. Stephanie - I've been stuck in the "victim" role for a little while now and I've been learning a lot in the past weeks about how it's really an internal/personal thing that I have to force myself to get out of. Things have definitely ironed out a bit here recently and a lot of encouraging things came from what you guys posted. You know, sometimes it's as if I look around and EVERYONE looks like they have their "stuff" together and "it all went according to plan..." I don't know if it's this small town where everyone is married and has kids early or what! Appreciate the reassurance that I'm not some bumbling screw-up who missed the boat (although I do own a boat these days)... truly... thank you 100x's

Just like it says.... Has your life panned out like you thought it would? Elaborate? My answer: No, my life is totally different than I thought it would be. When I was growing up I always wanted to be a Veterinarian or a Lawyer or something and figured I would have gone to college and graduated in 4 years and got some masters degree or a PhD... have the wife, kids, house, car, close friends, etc. Figured I would be living in a big city, be connected with all the whose who, etc... real big aspirations. Well I graduated high school, got into a great university, then dad passed away and devastated me. Dropped out of college and worked for 5 years and moved to this small town in North Louisiana to go to a state school. I don't know the whose who or this town. I'm 24 and don't have a great job, I make decent grades, can't seem to find a gal I want to marry, SO HAPPY I don't have kids yet, and I gave up on having some great high dollar career. I've been doing a lot of thinking recently about how my life is completely different than I thought it would be. I still don't even know what I want to do for a career! Just need some help here guys - please, tell me I'm not the only one who hasn't had everything go according to plan? Any "fatherly" wisdom? Thank you ahead of time

You should contact a company and ask them. The only differences I've ever noticed are the components used... like eyes specific for the corrosive saltwater.

This arouses so many hateful thoughts inside of me....that's a real tragedy

WFN is available with comcast, but like GrizznNbassin said - THE COMMERCIALS! So many! I end up DVRing everything I want to watch so I can flip through them. I was watching a show the other day about ice fishing and no lie, 3 minutes of the show came on then it went to another commercial....

They used to do the BASS Classic coverage and apparently it wasn't getting enough viewers to keep it going. You can catch FLW series on NBC Sports on Saturday afternoons. I have a 24/7 fishing channel called WFN - World Fishing Network. They usually break it into blocks - Saltwater, Bass, Yankee Fishing. By the way - I have comcast cable. Also - a few months ago I saw an episode of Major League Fishing over on ESPN. I don't know how popular that format is yet, but it appears to be geared towards your average viewer.... lots of action, fast paced....

I've just got to get this off my chest.... 3 weeks ago I was out fishing the local river. Made a little 5 minute run to my trusty hole and as I'm trolling up through there I notice a strange looking thing floating in the middle of the river, but don't think much about it. I go ahead and fish as normal... get the boat into the cut and start casting to the river to work the crankbait up a steep ledge. First cast, I get snagged on something and troll over to the snag and notice it's stuck on a d**n trot line. I follow the line up to the shore, pull in my snag and free it up, then notice I am pulling in that strange object from the middle of the river! I keep pulling it and turns out that strange object is the float for the trot line! THEY HAD A TROTLINE STRUNG COMPLETELY ACROSS FROM ONE SIDE OF THE RIVER TO THE OTHER WITH A FLOAT IN THE MIDDLE!!!!! I was ticked, so I cut it... put it in the boat and threw it out. Fast forward to today... Same scenario EXACTLY played out. Another trotline, but this time it was strung across the opening to my favorite hole. I cut that sucker again because it could have easily wrapped up my motor with how shallow it was running. I AM SICK AND TIRED OF THE UNMANNED TROTLINES IN POPULATED AREAS! IT'S NOT LIKE THEY ARE FRESH LINES PUT OUT A FEW HOURS AGO... THEY ARE LINES WITH MOLD AND CRAP GROWING ON THEM THAT HAVE CLEARLY BEEN SITTING THERE FOR A FEW DAYS. TROTLINERS - CAN YOU PLEASE USE SOME FREAKING COMMON COURTESY? IF I CATCH MY PROP ON ONE OF THESE, I AM LITERALLY GOING TO LOOSE IT.

I MUST know - has anyone tried this? I gave it a shot today, but didn't catch anything. Put a 1/4oz tungsten bullet weight, swivel, 2 foot leader, snap, then a SK-KVD Square bill. Fished a square bill in 25 foot of water!

I laughed when I saw them using a double axel trailer

And give em' a chance to break your record!

Just dropping by to give my two cents - please - when you install it, make sure all your fittings are tight and properly sealed. I had a loose fitting on mine at the console and nearly crashed going 60mph... one of the scariest experiences ever... AND TO THINK - it was all because of a loose fitting

Neither... look at Phoenix boats!

I'm no expert on the interference question, but from my current experience I will recommend you move the transducer to the trolling motor. I only have 1 SI/DI unit and I have it mounted at the console. I swing it around when I'm fishing and it's really terrible to be trolling, run over something, and the spot is 18ft behind me. Goodness I can't wait to buy a second unit.

I'm in a similar situation to you - need some cold gear but don't want to drop the money on it. For now I'll just layer longjohns, sweats, jeans, bibs, and then some heavy upper gear.

1) When it comes to saltwater fishing, I keep every legal fish and eat the hell out of it.... I will only mount a monster redfish... say like above 20 pounds. NOW - When it comes to bass, I'm pretty firm on the idea I will ONLY mount it if it's my state record fish. Currently our record is like 15.97lbs which was pulled out of my home lake in 94'. If it's anything smaller , I just want the picture... I just really want some evidence to corroborate my story that "the fish was THIS big..." So - I'll mount the fish only if it's some kind of record. I don't even care enough to get a replica because no matter how good they CLAIM the replica looks, they end up looking nothing like the fish and it's a fake plastic fish that looks stupid hanging on the wall in my living room. 2) I have yet to lose a fish by gut hooking it and NOT being able to save it. You can get a gut hook out pretty well with fingers through the gills. I'll say, if I really butcher it up bad and it's bleeding everywhere I will just cut the line and use a "styptic pencil" to stop the bleeding. SO - No I don't keep it because I don't take chances like that when fishing or hunting. With my luck I'd get caught and they would take my house, boat, truck, dog, refrigerator, and my left big toe.

The past few weeks the weather has been cooling off in Louisiana and the bass have obviously been moving a bit shallower. Now - the water right now has been fluctuating between 79-83 degrees. I was out at sunrise, surface temp was 80, and I was fishing a pretty steep ledge that dropped from 6ft to 30ft pretty quickly. I tossed out a c-rig and ran it up the slope quickly... the fish were piled right where the slope flattened out. They would crush that c-rig worm as soon as it hit the slope and started going up. So I caught a few 2 lb's and then tried to toss a Norman dd-22 out, but it obviously wasn't getting deep enough... they wouldn't come up to touch it. I could see the fish glued to the bottom down there and a few had some size... saw it all on electronics.. Anyhow - was really wishing I had a huge deeper running crank to target those hogs down there. Has anyone used a 10xd? How'd it work for you? What setup do you use? Line? I've been running deep cranks with a 7'11 Medium Cumara cranking rod, AG Winch, and either 10lb or 12lb Invizx. Seems like you wouldn't want to run smaller than 14lb line on that big ole' 10xd? Any comments are appreciated!