WIGuide

I've got a Drotto and I really like it. In all honesty reaching under and clipping it was never that big of a deal to me, but depending on the landing, sometimes walking up to the font of the boat would make it slide back a little and then you're getting out to crank it back up tight. With the Drotto, drive it up until it clips and get out of the boat, or have your partner pull you out. Living where I do, I see a ton of different landing in a year, some so shallow and flat you have to take your shoes off to get out of the vehicle if launching solo to others that feel like you're backing off a cliff. I haven't run into a situation yet where it didn't work. I highly recommend.

No it doesn't. It has a manual reset breaker, but it's not one that has a the ability to be turned on and off unless it blows.

It doesn't matter if people have caught bigger fish, if it's a good one to you, it's worth posting. The only time I've seen people do anything like you mentioned is when someone posts a 14 incher and call it a 4 pounder.

Both C-Map (Lowrance's mapping brand) and Navionics (Garmin's mapping brand) allow you to preview their maps on their websites. The only C-Map card compatible with your unit is the Discover map card which covers the majority of North America. To preview what the maps look like, go to https://www.c-map.com/chartexplorer/ and be sure to select the Discover/Reveal option and leave the toggle off for shaded sea floor as that's only available on the Reveal card. If you're looking at Navionics, only Navionics+ is compatible with your unit. https://www.navionics.com/media/wysiwyg/docs/Compatibility_Guides/GPS_Plotter_Cards_Compatibility_Guide.pdf This will show you what features will work on your unit and going here https://webapp.navionics.com/#boating@6&key=sfrrGjkmfP will allow you to look at their maps as well as the "sonar charts" aka user gathered and uploaded data to help build better mapping.

Ok so in another 30 years it's all yours lol.

That's quite a tricky question....If I wanted to fish how I like to, with my confidence baits I could make it through a season with what I currently have, maybe more. If I had to substitute other baits I have in their place I could probably go somewhere close to 5?

Haha thanks! That seems like a pretty fair trade.....as long as you take over the payments too ?. That's about the only down side to the new to me ride. They're still out there somewhere!! Hopefully I find them someday!

I'll usually use information I find only as a starting point. Maybe it works in my area, maybe it doesn't; or maybe it's something I'm not as good at and can't make it work in those situations. My point is, I use their information as more like brainstorming for ideas on how to catch them. I'll go out and run with it, generally a few times, and see if I can make it work for me. If I can't I don't completely rule it out, but if I can't get it to work under a few different conditions, I'll move on to something else. You do that with enough things and you'll learn what works for you and can learn where to apply it in other areas you fish.

I haven't posted fish pictures here in quite some time. I used to quite often, but due to switching jobs, moving a few times, and life being busy in general, I ended up taking a lengthy hiatus from BR. Now that I'm back, there are still trucks driving on the ice on our lakes so getting out in the boat may be a bit of a wait, but hopefully not too long. First tournament is scheduled towards the end of April on the Mississippi River. In the meantime, here's a few of the better ones that decided to come visit me in the boat last year.

Pretty cool little deal right there. I'm lucky mine fits down just to the side of my console so I can grab it quick from the front deck and stays out of the way until it's time to run somewhere.

Spot lock is great in deeper water, but if you're up shallow there can be problems. A perfect example is a body of water I fish a lot that has fairly stained tannic water and a lot of grass. It also has a lot of stumps in and around the grass, a lot of which you can't see because of the first 2 things I mentioned. Using spot lock there can be interesting as it can turn and grind you into a stump if you don't know it's there. Also, if there's a mucky bottom in those same shallow areas you can end up really stirring things up, so if you're trying to bed fish or even just casting to an area you can end up blowing it out unintentionally. Lastly, spot lock will always end up with the bow facing into the wind. That's fine and in a lot of situations that's not a big deal and can be adjusted for, but depending on what and where you're fishing, it might not work so well, especially with a second person in the boat. Having shallow water anchors can take away all those challenges allowing you to sit in the same spot and position regardless of wind, current, or obstructions. I feel like if you can only invest in one, overall spot lock gets used more often and would be my first choice, but having both is better yet. For me, I can pole down regardless of bottom composition and have a good hold in up to about 6 1/2' of water, anything deeper I use spot lock.

That one definitely has me scratching my head. I would try pulling from your 3 in 1 transducer and making sure you have the specific model transducer selected and see if that helps. If it's pulling from there you may also be able to go to pages ->Settings->Sonar->Instillation->Temperature Calibration. The other thing you could do right now is with the boat out of the water is see how they read in relation to the ambient air temp. You should be able to put some sort of thermometer right next to it and see what the reading is.

It looks like a kind of cool deal, but they don't have any mounts yet to connect directly to the trolling motor. As much as I move around, that's a major drawback. I know they plan to come out with them, but until they do it's a no go. In my opinion, it should have been one of the first things they designed to give mounting options to everyone.

I had my old HDS Gen3 9 on a C sized ram mount. As long as your boat isn't too rough of ride it would be just fine. Personally having ram mounts for the past 10 years or so, they were decent, but going forward I think I'll be looking at something a little more solid.

There aren't many times I'll venture out without any form of electronics. My old boat had them ram mounted and I'd always remove them for travel due to having to always re-adjust the mounts if I left them on (thank you horrible WI roads). There have been a few times I fished without them in recent years and it was late in the year, when the amount of daylight after work was severely limited. In a few of those cases I left them off, knowing I was going to be fishing a fairly shallow river where pretty much every target is visual and I would have rather spent the few extra minutes on the water rather than messing with them. The only other time was when I somehow managed to forget them at home for a weekend trip up north. Still found fish, but not as quickly as I would have with them.

It should be possible. The Ulterra and Terrova I believe use the same bolt pattern. My dad has installed a few of each for family friends on PT175's and they are somewhat of a pain due to not having a much room to access up front. Be prepared for some skinned up arms. They can also be installed with a quick release bracket to avoid the cover issue if needed. Personally, I think I'd rather have the cover modified, but that depends on how you use it.

Both are solid units and I'm sure you'd be happy with either. The AI 3 in 1 is good SI transducer, but you could upgrade to the AI HD transducer which is compatible with the live, but it carries a hefty price tag. Overall, the Lowrance has quite a bit higher display resolution so if image quality is what you're after I think it will be the better option. Transducers can keep improving, but if the screen res isn't there, you're never going to be able to take advantage of it.

How are you coming up with the fact that data returned is high and what sources besides the NMEA temp do you have? Also, are your units running the latest software and are they just NMEA networked or are they networked with Ethernet as well?

I've had it happen from time to time. It's awesome when you find them schooled up and start a feeding frenzy. A great memory is putting my dad on one of his first off shore schooling experiences. We were fishing a point that sticks out into the river channel with one really big stump on it. The stump is on a hard spot and we found a really nice school on it. In about 45 minutes I believe we caught close to 30 without moving the boat.

The carbon cranker I believe is the straight graphite model. I haven't fished that specific LTB model, but they're lighter and thinner than the glass rods with the same type of taper. I do have an older graphite LTB M/M and Premier MH/M cranking rod along with an LTB Glass H/M and can say they've all have a good moderate action. I feel like for the power the graphite rods have a little more power as they load deeper. The 7'3" H/XF will be a good rod around grass. It might be just a tad stiffer than the Victory, but pretty dang close. The H/M Glass LTB that I have is the rip n chatter and I love it for fishing chatterbaits. I usually have it spooled with fluoro, but I'd probably switch to braid if I wanted to do some serious ripping out of grass.

Welcome to Bass Resource!

Welcome to the forum!

Welcome to Bass Resource!

I fish them a fair amount, I wouldn't consider myself an expert with them. I've tried a few brands, but generally when I find one that works I try to stick with it and just buy different colors and weights within their lineup.

Good luck, go get'em!