Ben

If you are constantly throwing those Senko's in the same pond, the bass will make you change. Won't be long before you can't buy a bite on a Senko. Here are some things that will work well also. Try a T-rigged 6" watermellon lizard with a 1/16 - 1/8 oz weight (depends how deep it is) and swim this so it's just above the junk. A whacky worm also makes a good changeup. This time of the year a devil horse will draw you a lot of strikes. Might even try a Rapala repetedly jerked under sharply (use minimal forward movement) and let float to the surface will also get bites, but it's getting a little late for those. A 1/4 - 3/8 oz buzz bait pulled over or next to cover will get you a lot of fish, fish it so the blades are just breaking the surface with a slow sputter sound, don't burn it. As the water warms up more, the fish are going to get tougher to catch so you need to start looking for deeper cover or a creek channel you can work with a worm.

Are you hooking the point back into the Senko to make it weedless, if so you may be hooking it too deep. Also, EWG hooks are a must on Senko's. I use nothing but Gamakatsu EWG hooks and nothing smaller than a 3/0. In the 5" Senko, I normally use a 4/0 - 5/0 hook. Another thing that helps is being a line watcher, I seldom feel a hit on a Senko when fishing it as a jerk. Paying attention to the line, you will see 95% of your hits.

Are they the regular 50 amp breakers made for this type application. If so, they will normally have a stud approx 1/4" dia on each end. If they are already setup up for a TM they will have an extra metal bracket on one end that will bolt to the stud on the battery and the TM cable will bolt onto the other. If they don't have that extra bracket, you will need to come up with a couple or do a little "fancy" engineering to make a couple from heavy brass or copper. Install one on each positive post of the batteries. For a 50 amp breaker, I would recommend you be running at least #6 battery/welding wire. Much less than that and you could start getting wire resistance, causing the wire to get warm and a drop in TM performance. If you are running in series for a straight 24V you will only need one on the positive post of the battery the TM's cable hooks to. Actaully, you can install them on the positive or negative post, makes no difference, but the common assumption and hookup method is they have to go on the positive.

Yep, I have a 17ft Grumman cargo canoe with the cut of back I've had for 40 years. Bought it used when I was 17 and wouldn't take a new one for it now. I have a 96 4hp Merc I run on it. My wife (girl friend then) dunked us the first time she was in it so she has never gotten in it since. You talking about running an eight on one, bet you don't do much turning at WOT. That's probably like trying to turn my Stratos at 80 mph, ya jus ain't gonna do it. Well, actually you're not going to turn that thing much at 60 without trimming it way down.

Hey Keith, That's a very nice outfit you have there, nothing to drop your head about there. Something just a little smaller is what I'm looking to get for fishing a lot of the rivers and backwaters in my neck of the woods. I use a standard 15ft jon with a 25 Merc but there's not many trips I make I'm not banging something with the prop or LU. One place is so bad, I take the 25 off and put a 9.9 on because the LU doesn't run as deep. I keep bouncing back and forth between a Jet Drive or a tunnel hull. Both are suppose to handle shallow water well but having to jump logs, trees, sandbars and just about everything else in some of the rivers give a lower unit real problems. A local DNR guy ripped a 40hp Merc Jet Drive off the back of a DNR boat on one of the rivers I fish a lot. With the new one, they added a small hydrualic jack plate and he says that works great. Now he can raise the intake above the bottom when going over stuff and hardly has to slow down.

Big, nice, new boats are for those that have a much larger income than the average working person that doesn't want to go in debt up to his eyeballs. When the average working guy buys one on these finance plans, you see him trying to sell it less than a year later with the words "must sell" but he's wanting almost what a new one cost to to pay it off. I do feel, if you can't work on them yourself, many times you are better off lowering you wants/desires to what you can afford and buy the most new boat you can afford. If that's a 15ft jon with a 25, you are still better off than buying an older, bigger boat. Just don't go too small on the motor to try and save, you will never be happy with the boat. At least buy an outfit that still has a few years warrenty on the motor. There is nothing worse than paying a large chunk of money for a "good" used outfit, just to have the motor blow shortly afterwards and it's another several thousand dollars to get it fixed. I've seen that numbers of time. It also kinda sucks when the thing breaks/'acts up every few times you go out in it. Because I build and have a number of hotrod 3.0L OMC's for my own use, I have people ask me all the time to modify their little motors to get more power (make a 30 a 75 etc), it don't just don't work that way, so don't think you will buy a small motor and get more power from it.

Bullets are fast, but what they don't tell you that boat is a lighter layup than the average production Bullet, plus the hull was blue printed and Paul Nichols, their "test pilot" can drive the living crap out of one. Paul has had one running 119.8 with a Jay Smith racing engine pushing close to 400 hp. For the above average boater, you can expect something closer to the 80's maybe low 90's with the 300X. A friend of mine has a 20DX with a modified HO (approx 280 hp) on it that runs 92 but he has spent a lot of money and time on his setup.

I run a modified Johnson 3.0 looper that started life off as a 200 and now dino's 308 hp from 6,200 to 6,500 rpm. On a 18.5 ft Stratos, I can cruise at 4,500 - 4,600 rpm, approx 47 mph and it burns almost dead on 8.5 gallons per hour. I've never checked it at WOT. The only reason I know the 4,500 rpm burn rate is I run them for two hours at that rpm breaking them in. I can say, at WOT, is will go through 40 gallons of gas VERY FAST. But, when you're running 80 mph you don't have to run that long to get there. Even though this motor is extensively modified, it is ported, jetted and tuned to peak performance at those rpms and with 150 lbs compression, it will burn actually burn less that your average out of the box stock motor. 3 - 5 gallons per hour is your norm. With most motors 4,500 - 4,600 is where they get max fuel economy. Based on the motor, the hull design, weight and setup.

Standard outlet will not handle the current. That TM could be pulling 30 - 40amps when on max. If you check with Graingers they have a 75 amp connector (flat and usually shown as gray but come in several colors, but both ends have to be the same color) like they use on golf carts chargers etc. These are the best. I think BPS and Cabela's has them also. You will need two, one flips over and plugs into the other so there is no seperate male/female. Now, if you are running a 12/24 volt motor, they are not going to work because you've got to connect three wires and those only have two. You would have to use a second one for the other wire and just use one terminal in it. Lowes or HD is you next option with a large round three/four pin plug and receptical that will handle that much current. The problem with that is you're gonna pay close to $70 for both ends. Most marine dealers sell circuit breakers that connect to the battery post and you connect the TM cable to it. I would get at least a 40 amp and a 45 if they have them. Get one smaller and you may start popping the breaker evertime you go very far on max.

I have a degree and approx 40 years in electronics. I also deal with industrial batteries on a daily bases so I do have a little background in what I'm talking about. You can have 10, 12V batteries hooked in series so you have 120VDC, but you still only have 12 volt batteries and each or anyone of the 10 can be charged with a 12 volt charger without disconnecting anything, as long as you hook the charger in the proper polarity to the post of only one battery. Your onboard charger is not a 12V and a 24V charger, it is three 12V chargers. That's why you hook a pair cables to each batteries negative and positive post. OK, I'm making an assumption here since I've never used a Dual Pro because their technology is to out of date, but I have used others and I've never known of one that used a 24V charger to charge the TM batteries. Bassin101, depends on the year model of the motor as to the recommend method of charing the cranking battery. The newer motors with solid state regulators can be damaged by the arc created connecting a disconnecting a battery charger, for those it is recommended to disconnect one of the cables before connecting the charger. With an onboard charger you don't have to worry about that, it stays connected so there is no arc. Now I know a dozen people will say they do it all the time. Before I started using onboard chargers I did too, bunches of times, until I finally popped a $140 regulator one time. As for connecting and disconnecting, you don't have to do any of that. If your bow has the switch marked "run", "charge", and you use that socket to connect the charger, that switch connects the batteries in parallel so you will be charging both batteries at the same time. If that is the case, I would recommend you get at least a 15 - 20 amp charger for that. Forgot the batteries. Sealed batteries are a little cleaner to mess with, but don't normally have the amp capacity of the unsealed batteries. I prefer the unsealed but I maintain may batteries properly and get three - four years use from them. Proper maintenance is the life of a battery.

Unless there's a Homeowners committy and rules in your neighborhood against recreational vehicles parked in the drive, if the neighbors didn't like it, they would have to move. Knock the back wall out and make the garage 10ft deeper to make room for everything. The next option would have to be to do away with the HW heater, build a workshop out back and move all the garage stuff out. If the market is good where you live, sell that house and by one with a larger garage.

In my neck of the woods, they have pretty well finished when the water temps have reached the low 70's at four feet. On large lakes that can be spread out over several weeks. The fish in the shallower back waters spawn first and then the cycle moves down toward the bigger water. If your water is clear enough and you can see the fry, that's also a pretty good indication.

The main problem I have with them, everyone I've had starts fogging inside the display after several months use. I have had a couple of transducers the temp unit will quit in. Turn the LCD off and back on and the temp will start working again for a while. As for working at speed, that why I have a good console flasher also. At 60 mph the LCD might show you what's 100 yds behind you, at 75 I haven't found one that will even register the bottom. Flash graph is a great improvement but still doesn't match my flasher with running flat out. I'm shooting the flasher through the hull in the center of the pad and the graph's is mount on the next strake out. The pad is probably lifting the that transducer out of the water when it's running more than 75.

Doesn't matter to a 12V charger if the batteries are hooked up in 12V, 24V, or 36 as long as it is only connected to one battery. If you have two batteries and ony one charger, buy you another $30 charger. Hook one charger to each battery. You don't have to disconnect or switch anything. The chargers are only going to see the voltage of the one battery they are connected. Two 12V batteries in series make 24V but each battery is still only 12V. Three bank onboard chargers are basically nothing but three 12 volt chargers in one case that share some of the same parts. As for a charger, a 10amp will charge almost twice as fast as your 6 amp. Don't use anything larger than 15 amps on a deep cycle TM battery. You can use bigger chargers but they have to be turned back to less than 15 amps once the battery reaches 80% charge or you will damage the battery. I would also suggest charging the cranking battery everytime also. I most cases after running the electronics and pumps all day, the cranking battery is only at approx 80% when you load the boat. The charging system isn't usually run long to keep it fully charged. Three bank onboards are the way to go (for two TM and one cranking battery), I do though prefer the ProMariner, but when you don't want to spend you next six months fishing budget on one, the drop cord with three recepticals and a couple of cheap chargers work. Just don't leave them connected for long periods after the charger has cut off. Some can still have enough charge current to overheat a battery. Oh, and for charging in a closed garage, no problem. They will not vent enough gas to cause any problem. You should leave the deck lid open over the batteries. With it closed there might be the possibility of enough build up to cause a problem by the spark you get when you disconnect the chargers if they are still charging or just finished.

Dang! brand new to this site and seem to have already rubbed a sore spot just making a comment. If you know the areas you fish well enough you feel you don't need one, that's great. Probably 85% of the lakes and rivers in the south, you want see the bottom in five feet of water. Even in lakes I've fished for over 40 years, I still use mine to keep my boat in the depth/position I want to fish humps, points and channels I'm fishing. In the spring when fishing shallow, I may never turn one on, but when they move back deep, I never turn it off. If you drop markers, you are showing everybody else exactly where you are fishing. If they see you pulling fish, you can bet they will fish it.

You can always go on line and order them directly from GYCB. They are definetly worth getting. I've been using them about six years with great results. They also were great when the summer bite is slow fished carolina rigged off main points, not just as a shallow water soft jerk.

In the old days "before the electronic model" we used to drag a sash weight to feel out the bottom. I bought my first electronic model (a flasher) in 1965 and would never be without one. I've probably been through a couple of dozen since then. I keep two on all three of my boat now. My Stratos has three, one bow and two console, when I running down the lake or just moving around looking for bait fish, I prefer the flasher, but when moving slow and checking out structure I prefer the LCD. I'll tell what a very good bass fisherman told me when I was first learning. Most of the time, when you are casting to the bank, 90% of the fish are behind you, so would you rather be fishing for 10% or 90% of the fish. The trick is learning how to find that 90%. As mentioned, fishing without one, you are only fishing a very small percentage of the areas that hold fish. Don't matter the species, you're not going to find the level the bait fish are holding or the underwater structure the fish could be holding around. Unless you are fishing for deep water schooling fish, don't expect one to be a fish finder. Even at that, unless you buy one of the better models (approx $200 or more) don't expect to use if for more than just showing bottom contour and larger stuctures. There is a learing curve an it will take you quit a while to learn just what you are seeing. Don't expect to start right out finding more fish. First off, you've got to learn a whole new game of how to locate and catch fish on structure, and then what types might be holding fish during the time of year you're fishing.