WIGuide

The Pro Qualifier should be easily palmable and is on sale for $80 at BPS right now.

$795 hopefully that'll be bumped up this year, but I just started fishing tournaments a few years ago and I'm looking to start fishing a few bigger ones other than just with my local club and the few opens I've been in in the past.

Pretty straight forward to replace. Just note how the old one runs and put on a new one. Any on the market should fit, even the cheap ones at Walmart. When it warms up enough that I can work out in the garage I'll be putting a cable one on my MotorGuide.

I haven't used either of those, but I do use the Rod Gloves. Haven't had an issue with them or their reel covers.

I definitely could say a lot more about it but I didn't think anyone here would want to read my rant about it haha. For sure! Hopefully you didn't freeze to death taking that garbage out!

This X2

Basically what you can conclude from the replies thus far is try one and if it works for you then stick with it. If not then try something different.

XL Armor Coated has a more abrasion resistant coating on it than regular XL. I tried it a little last year just to see what it was like and I'm mixed on how I feel about it. I didn't like the color and it seemed a little stiff. I'm not sure about the memory issue with it either as I haven't seen if it's all jacked up from sitting on the spool for a few months. With my limited experience with it take what I say with a grain of salt, but from what I've seen I liked the regular XL better.

X2 tie them on there so you don't open up your jig box to find that a bunch of rubber bands broke and now you have a bunch of naked jigs

On that size boat you should be fine with the 80 lb thrust. You could go with the 112, but I'm guessing you're fairly confined on how much room you have for batteries and the extra weight in that boat would probably be a bigger con than the pro of more power.

Like these guys said, as long as you can keep a limit alive in it and it meets the hp and/or length requirements you should be fine. It's not the boat that catches the fish anyway!

Welcome to the forums

The weather took a downfall here too, just cold though. I believe it was 22* below zero and with wind chill they were saying real feel was more like 30 to 35 below. That's enough to keep me off the water too haha

This year was better than last year. At least it was up here.

I organize all my hard baits and terminal tackle in boxes of various different sizes keeping baits categorized by type.Within those boxes i try to organize the baits by color with the left side holing the muddier water colors, the middle the stained, and the right side will be the clear water colors. My plastics get stored in gallon ziplocks sorting the original bags by type of bait. For those plastics that I use on a more frequent basis, I have more boxes specifically for that bait. When I fish out of someone else's boat, I have a tackle bag that will hold 5 or 6 3700 boxes and I have spare empty trays that I'll load with baits based on location. I also have a speed bag that I'll fill with various plastics that I'll use for the day. My spinnerbaits get stored in an older BPS spinnerbait binder which works well and extra skirts get packed in a small worm binder. Lastly I have a big open box that I keep my spare new baits in. It gets stored in the back of my Jeep during the year so if I lose something I can just run back to the ramp and grab another one.

Flambeau makes the Zera-rust Tabs and Plano has one too but I don't remember what it's called. I'm sure you can find it on their website though.

Used nothing but cheap ones until I splurged on a pair of Costas that I ran across on the bay for less than half price. Although I haven't got to use them on water yet, they definitely seem to be worth the investment.

I really like the rubber coated nylon one I've got. Not perfectly snagless like the straight rubber netting, but it pulls through the water without the added resistance of rubber and doesn't give the fish a chance to bounce out like rubber seems to.

I've got a box full of Spro's, Live Targets, and Booyahs. I've tried the Strike King Sexy Frog and didn't care for it all that much. I've also got a few others to try this year when frog season comes around. Of those though the Booyah Pad Crasher is my favorite. It walks just as good if not better than the others, it's soft so you get great hookups, the hooks are nice and sharp, and they're cheaper than the others too. I think they're the best bang for your buck when it comes to frogs. Between the Muskies and Northers that live around me, you're luck to get back a shredded frog. So many times when you set the hook all you see is the line flying back at you like this guy was between you and the fish...

^^ This is the way to go. The spooling stations come with them (or at least they did) I've used one for years. I think it's faster than a drill.

I used to fish a lot more with my UL when I was in college. Even then I only bothered to change my line on my UL once a year. Still never had an issue. It's up to you if you wait that long, but 3 times a month is a pretty quick turn around.

I'm throwing in my vote for 50 lb.

They're a pretty good bait all year long! You can really tear them up in the spring though. If you have the patients, they work well out deeper if you slow roll them. It might be easier to use them on a jig head that way, but they work on the weighted hook too.

Throwing in there with a small creature style bait can be effective as well.

I don't have any experience with the graphite series, but I had a lightning rod for 5 years or so. It wasn't super sensitive, but in that price range I thought it was a pretty good rod. They've been around forever and have been proven through the years.